The Explosion of Fish

[Smmenen]

Fish is one of those decks that so few people respected for so long and now, Fish is a dominant player in a way that its never been before - even at its height.

I remember back in the day, like 2003, Westredale would always talk on meandeck boards about how Fish was an auto top 8 at the Waterbury.  Marc Perez built and constructed the most successful Fish deck until now and won something like a million power with it culiminating in 3 Fishies in the top 6 of SCG Richmond I last July.  Fish was the biggest deck going into Gencon despite the apparent weakness to Workshop aggro.   Fish got reamed at Gencon by Workshop decks and (of course) my mono blue deck .  It performed very poorly.  Fish was further dented if not ruined by Oath of Druids in the next few events.  For the rest of 2004, in the tournaments I went to, Fish was getting ruined.  The only fish deck to perform was a UW Fish with solutions to oath, that I knocked out of the top 8 with Doomsday using Back to Basics and Old Man of the Sea from my board.

All of these tools are failing.

Old Man is looking quite frail.  Oath can't seem to stick, and even if it does, it gets ruined by Bouncer and Thief if not just getting raced by Mongrels and Plows to fight the Oath.  Flametongue Kavu is often too small and too slow. 

Ashok's Meandeck Fish that debuted at the Waterbury set a new standard for Fish using Vial and Chalice (over Null Rod to take advantage of Vial).  Vial has meant that Fish can swing with lands while it plays dudes that are now uncounterable.  It's disruption is more brutal and it has a faster clock.  The fish decks are incredibly variable and Jitte has proved another lethal weapon in the arsenal.

These decks brutalize the opponents mana, have very solid utility to shut them down and turn them off and solutions to every threat that appears to keep Fish in check.  The traditional solutions of Workshop Aggro and Oath are not working - apparently - and Old Man is not what it once was.  And I watched the Gifts decks just wither in the face of Fish. 

What lies in store for Fish?  Since its relatively cheap to build, can anything stop it?  The Savoirs cards only add to the Fish weaponry and seem to give no solutions in return.  Is this a good thing for the format?  Is this making Vintage healthier since its now more accessible?   Is Fish a player or a dominant player?  There seems to be no stopping it!  I would love to play a Back to Basics deck, but let's face it: Aether Vial makes mono blue a joke and Back to Basics relatively unimportant. 

Have we exhausted our solutions to Fish?  Pyroclasm is a one shot.  Tsabo's Web is not effective.  Old Man is bad against Mongrels and Rootwallas.  FTK costs too much.  Lava Dart is not very good.  Plague Spitter is trash. 

Certainly these decks lose to getting overpowered, but they now appear to be the most consistently performing decks in the environment and there appears to be no stopping them. 

Even if they aren't the most poweful, it is hard to argue with the fact that they are relatively cheap and anyone can build them.  That means basically that even if they are the second best deck - for most people, they will be the best choice and will be present regardless.  There were THIRTY Fish decks at Rochester.  Do other decks have to luck out to beat them? 

It wasn't Trinisphere that was keeping Fish in check.  It was Crucibles, Oath, and Workshop beats.  Trinishphere is restricted and Fish has evolved to the point where it can now handle the key metagame threats.  Is there no stopping it - and if not, is that a bad thing?  I think Fish is even bigger than it was before.  Right now it is incredibly potent and powerful and the best Fish lists may not have even surfaced. 

[Machinus]

I am happy about the popularity of fish. It is a budget, aggro-style deck that is competitive in Vintage. What does that mean to me? That means more people will show up at tournaments and more people will play Vintage. That means more tournaments, more prizes, more support. Thats magnitudes better for the format than whatever other impact it might have.

Regarding the deck itself: it is an aggro deck. Therefore it suffers from the same weaknesses of all aggro decks in vintage. It has a slower clock, it can't run the most broken cards, and it can't run any good mana acceleration. Power, drains, and rituals don't fit into any competitive aggro decks, and workshop aggro is inferior to stax. Vial and Standstill are both terrible cards by themselves, and it takes a kind of sacrifice of the rest of the quality of the deck to make them good. Marc was playing in a different environment last year. Tog was the deck to beat and Mirrodin block was still new to us. Fish decks capitalize on the traditional aspects of Vintage control decks - that they play a lot of disruptable mana, big spells, and no creatures. With Mana Drain Combo becoming more and more popular, the 1-3% threat density of these decks is perfect for fish to attack, especially when they are starting to play second class accelerators such as mana vault and helm of awakening. Fish has another period of success ahead of it, but again it will develop, be perfected, and again the control players will find a way to beat it.

In the long run, the power of the most broken cards is much stronger than temporary advantages against them.

[Smmenen]

I guess the problem though is that the Fish players are developing stronger and better answers then the other decks are developing solutions.  Savoirs only adds to this problem.  The sheer quantity of options available to fish players is just astounding.  The ability to tune and tech out Fish seems to have no limit compared to the problem of dealing with it.

I agree - it's probably healthy for the format. It's just a little surprising. 

[Luiggi]

Some very interesting points, Steve. I think that Workshop beats will be appearing more and more because of it's good Fish matchup, as you said. I think this just goes to show how cyclical the Vintage metagame is, and how every deck is constantly evolving to handle the decks that start reappearing on the scene...

While I can see your concern with Pyroclasm being just a one-shot solution against a Fish deck during a game, it's also a board-sweeping solution, and can generally kill many of their creatures (except Mongrels and pumped Rootwallas, obviously), making it a really good solution in my book. I think Ugo Rivard definitely made the right call by running them in his CS board...

Also, while Old Man is not as hot vs. Fish anymore, Seasinger has really been pulling his weight for me. Yes, he dies to something like Grim Lavamancer or Fire/Ice, but then again no one is running them these days, since Fish has primarily been some combination of Blue, White and Green lately. Yes, it's vulnerable to StP, but then again so is Old Man. Stealing a Mongrel with Seasinger is pretty hoy, .

Just wanted to chime in.

Luiggi

[Xenoben187]

Old man of the sea is still extremely effective against U/G, and almost makes any other fish scoop.  Playing old man limits them to 3 possible guys, mongrel, rootwalla, and possibly kira.  Rootwalla requires them to keep 4 mana open for him not to get stolen and he can't pump when attacking.  Mongrel gives them -1 card advantage each turn,  Making it hard for them to keep force in hand for your tinker.  And Kira gets REB to her head before your steal her.  Or vice versa.  Not to mention it makes them play vial and challice which is such a relief when it means I can still activate slaver and pentavus.  I wanted to play against fish as much as possible on saturday.
As a side note- old man of the sea is just plain good against other aggro also, I couldn't imagine not bringing atleast 3 in a blue based deck.

[Whatever Works]

I think it has reached a curtain point in the metagame. It is a cycle that happens every 8 months to 1 year it seems. The cycle is simple but very straightforward and goes something like this:

A.) Fish is looked at as a weak deck and is relatively ignored. There is little to no hate/testing for Fish

B.) Metagame is taken completely off guard when Fish succeeds because nobody prepares for Fish, but the deck is still ignored because it is fish and is still a niche deck.

C.) Fish suddenly exploads at a tourney with great results because the deck is still not recognized as tier 1.

D.) People finally realize the strength of fish and begin to actually test the matchup and devote cards from their sideboard to the matchup.

E.) The # of fish decks the succeed reduces extremely quickly and fades from the top of the metagame back to Point A where the metagame ignores fish so it can make another comeback through reinventing itself.

This is just a trend I have noticed about fish. I think the same thing would happen for Dragon, but it doesnt because of splash-hate so there will always be enough hate in decks to prevent a huge explosion, but not enough to stop a small surge here and there from the deck.

Kyle Leith

[Dante]

...
D.) People finally realize the strength of fish and begin to actually test the matchup and devote cards from their sideboard to the matchup.

You want to know why those 3 decks chewed up - the field was 25% fish. 1st place deck has 3 SB pyroclasm. 2nd place has Pyroclasm, EE, and 3 Old Men. Rich had 3 MAINDECK Nev Disks, 1 in the SB, along with 2 EE in addition to an Oath sideboard. Oh, and they all have fat creatures. The move away from Null Rod and onto Vial, etc...is good for these decks, esp Nev Disk. 

The [good] Fish players have always known that they had to adapt in order to survive against more overpowered decks.  I'll bet most of the Oath decks haven't changed very much - either they are a UG Meandeck build with SotN and Akroma, a 5color build like the one that placed 2nd in Chicago, or a BUG version with duress and friends.  All of these decks (at least the lists that I've seen) have been pretty stagnant for 2-3 months now. 

The Fish lists adapted, Oath didn't.

[mr_rogers]

The Fish lists adapted, Oath didn't.

Not to mention Kira is amazing against Old Man.  She also trumps everything for removal except board sweepers.  Kira is the best addition I've seen to the fish arsenal.

[cssamerican]

I guess the problem though is that the Fish players are developing stronger and better answers then the other decks are developing solutions.  Savoirs only adds to this problem.  The sheer quantity of options available to fish players is just astounding.

1.) You have way more people playing and testing Fish's options than any other deck in the format, so they are bound to develop at a faster rate than their competition.

2.) Wizards will always make 1 to 3 drop creatures with interesting abilities. So Fish's arsenal will only grow over time. (This will also lead to highly metagamed creature packages in the Fish frame kind of like we are starting to see now)

3.) Wizards probably isn't going to make cards in the future that intentionally rip someone a new one for playing small low cost creatures. Pyroclasm is going to be the best answer you are going to see for a loooong time.

4.) Fish is such a different concept from every other deck in the format (It uses horrible cards in a synergistic way) that most solutions to Fish are worthless against everything else. This means if you want to demolish it game 1 you have to run "sub-optimal" cards in your maindeck, or you have to have a dedicated sideboard strategy to win games 2 and 3 (This is what people fail to do in the upward cycle of Fish's tournament life).

What does this mean? I think its great for the game. Fish is a fun deck, in that it attacks with creatures and takes some time to win. It certainly better for the format's fun factor and popularity for Fish to be on top then say, DeathLong. Since people tend to be turn off by fast combo decks, yet they don't mind getting pummeled by a bunch of 2/2s

[Greenebean]

I have to agree with Dante. While Fish is able to adapt to very many different meta games, Oath just has to many similarities within its different builds. Oath typically runs SotN, Akroma, or Ancient Hydra for the most part. Fish can change its contents based on the surrounding meta game, while Oath has to focus on its game plan of oathing out a fatty and swinging to victory, without really caring about its opponent.

I know there are a lot of cases, especially with chalice oath where it slants its plays more toward the control feel instead of just dropping and oath and swinging away. What people have dopne with Fish in the past months has turned on a totally new crowd of people who see that they can build a cheap deck, and pilot it to victory.

[Rico Suave]

workshop aggro is inferior to stax.

You're going to have to explain this one.  What does Stax have going for it that Workshop Aggro does not? 

[Saucemaster]

In fact, if anything, The Revenge of the Fish(es) should argue for the rising stock of WS Aggro.  Stax has more game vs. Drain-based decks, but has a much harder time with aggro and aggro-control than Workshop Aggro builds.  But in any case, comparing the two seems to miss the point.  They both use Workshop, but their game philosophies are completely different.

[Machinus]

I was speaking about how aggro decks can't run acceleration because of they have to rely on disruption instead of power. The term "workshop aggro" doesn't really fit into this model because it runs so many cards that stax also runs, like welders, lock components, crucible/strip, similar draw engines, and of course workshop itself, which is huge acceleration. So it is sort of an exception to this rule, but it really is very similar to stax decks. In the current environment I don't think fish/wtf/shit is the top deck, and there are several drain based decks which make up a larger, and in my opinion more threatening, percentage of the metagame. So that's how I get that stax is better. Anyway, they are different decks and in less fish infested environments it will be harder for juggs to place highly.

[Smmenen]

I have really wanted Workshop Aggro to work, but I can't get it to do so.  I have tried most of the decks that people have top8ed with and when I play against teammates, I rarely can get in that final five points of damage with Juggernaut.  Maybe I should open up another thread on Workshop Aggro. 

[Matt]

As long as they're not running Null Rods, Cursed Scroll seems like a pretty serious Fish slayer.

[Greenebean]

But how often is cursed scroll played? I mean you are perfectly right, it is a nice creature killer, but it just doesnt see that much play any more. If I had the choice of playing burn or something with scrolls, oath, fish, workshop, something incredibly broken, burn is going to be last on my list.

[Komatteru]

But how often is cursed scroll played? I mean you are perfectly right, it is a nice creature killer, but it just doesnt see that much play any more. If I had the choice of playing burn or something with scrolls, oath, fish, workshop, something incredibly broken, burn is going to be last on my list.

The fundamental problem with Cursed Scroll is that you need to have a very small hand to make it work.  Since most Vintage decks include multiple ways to draw multiple cards at once (a strange concept we call "the draw engine"), this is a fundamental complete lack of synergy.  You'd really be better off using like, Joblin Charbelcher, than Cursed Scroll, since you can probably do 2-3 damage pretty easy with only 15 lands or so in your deck.  I pull that easy in my T2 deck and I've got 20 lands.  However, belcher has the problem of costing 4 mana to play. It does have the same activation cost and it can kill Mongrels or at least waste your opponent's hand if they try to save it (since they must discard before the activation resolves), but I see that 4 cost being a big problem.  Rich Shay ran The Abyss in his sideboard.  That seems pretty ok (better than a lot of answers), but it costs 4.  The new anti-Fish card is going to be something older that hasn't seen play in quite a while, much like Old Man was.

Cursed Scroll (or my semi-lame suggestion of Joblin Belcher) also has the same problem as Old Man against Kira.  However, at least those two artifacts can serve as win conditions (although Scroll is a bit slow).  The Abyss also cannot work with Kira on the table.

I can't think of a silver bullet off the top of my head.  You can be sure that I (along with everyone else) will be looking for it.

Also, I disagree that Aether Vial is bad on its own.  The other formats have shown us how strong that card really is.

[amidtownrocker]

As of late I have played nothing but Fish. I have been testing a lot of different ideas and builds. From UW to WTF to even BirdShit, and I must say the most potent build is the UW. I have yet to make great results from it but it has been very very consistent. I have gotten my a pretty optimal build down. I managed a 5-2 record in the most recent Richmond, with my only two loses coming to the eventual Winner (FoodChainGoblins) and eventual runner-up (WorkshopAggroVariant). Recently in Rochester I finished 6-2, once again missing the top 8 with my only losses coming to eventual winner, (his pyroclasms wrecked me game 3) and a Round1 loss to a FCG player. In the second P9 Tournament in Syracuse, I dropped at 4-2 with my losses coming to a MonoBlue deck with 4 OLD MAN MAIN! and a Bomberman deck that went on to T8. These results are far from very impressive but they have taught me a lot about the deck and how it interacts with the current metagame. As stated before, most decks cannot run cards main that wreck Fish because they weaken other matchups so most of the time Fish has a good chance to take game 1. Other decks in the metagame then proceed to sideboard good answers to Fish. The problem here is that the Fish deck usually is up a game.

Another problem some decks have is boarding the wrong hate. If you pyroclasm against a WTF player they laugh and pump their Mongrel to keep it alive, but if you Pyroclasm against a board full of Mages then you gained your card advantage. Fish decks have evolved immensley since the days of Mancers and Clouds. Now they tend to run creatures that offer more disruption and have bigger bodies. No longer are sideboard choices like Lava Dart as effective because of the printing of Ninja of the Deep Hours. Before your Lava Dart would take out a Cloud or Mancer with a Curiosity or two on it and you would get big card advantage. Now your Darts don't give you as much advantage. FTK no longer is as great because of the addition of better removal in the form of Swords To Plowshares. Yet another problem with the current metagame is the variety of Fish. Chalice Fish and Rod Fish are two totally different decks and you need to play them and against them differently. Where one has a good matchup, the other has a bad one. Where Pyroclasm wrecks on, the other it isn't as bad. So because of this sometimes you have the wrong hate.

As I see it, the sudden rise of Fish is definetly beneficial to the format. It allows new players to get into the format and play a deck that actually has a decent shot at winning some Power so they can play some of the more broken decks in the format. There will be no one shot kill for this problem. Workshop Aggro will rise and try to stop it all but then Control and Combo decks will rise again and knock off the WSA. Its a cruel cycle that will repeat itself again and again. Every so often Wizards will print cheap effecient creatures that when combined with other cheap efficent creatures and the correct disruption will be a consitent pile of 60 cards.

On a side note, as a Fish player I am often looked at as making a bad deck choice. I am often told by GI, "Don't play fish because it can't go broken." But I never listen because the numbers I, and others, have put up have been pretty damn consistent. He has valid reason for saying this, everyone loves to go broken on turn 1, but I would much rather play a deck that plays consistently the same and can consistently handle other decks normal to semi-broken hands. Yes, Fish will lose to god hands from other decks but so would any other deck I choose to play. Just because a deck doesn't have an "I Win" hand does not mean it can't be a consistent contender.

Well this is just my two cents for now.

Rich Meyst

[Mark_Story]

I don't think that aether vial is bad, but it's what you have to remove in order to play aether vial.  The removal of null rod can be key in a number of matches.  Aether vial makes room to bust out tricks under a standstill, and drop extra men each turn. 

I don't think that aether vial is being used in fish the same way it is being used in extended goblins (where it is insane).  In extended goblins, it is allowing players to drop hasty uncounterable piledrivers headed for the red zone.  Effectively doulbing or tripling the goblin's available mana.  And although you could say that in fish it allows you to leave mana open to do what ? daze? play standstill?  Good plays but not what I would consider savage. 

I think the other problem with aether vial in U/W fish is that you lose rod.  Rod is essential to slowing an opponent down and stopping busted artifacts, so that your little men have time to lay the beats.  Fish has always been about creating small tempo advantages, that culminate into a game win.  I don't see Aether vial adding to this goal.  It allows you to beat faster, but disrupt more?  I don't see how it does this

I don't think fish will ever truely go away.  Little men will always be printed, and they will have cool abilites, that cause other decks trouble.  It's all those little men, that allow fish to overcome most any obstacle.  Oath was a problem, it isn't if you have a bouncer and swords, or even a jitte.  Old man got you down, Kira fixes that.  The flexibility of fish is what makes it so strong.  Decks like oath and slaver, have a fairly locked main deck, and can only metagame so much with the 5-6 slots they have. 

[Rico Suave]

I was speaking about how aggro decks can't run acceleration because of they have to rely on disruption instead of power. The term "workshop aggro" doesn't really fit into this model because it runs so many cards that stax also runs, like welders, lock components, crucible/strip, similar draw engines, and of course workshop itself, which is huge acceleration. So it is sort of an exception to this rule, but it really is very similar to stax decks. In the current environment I don't think fish/wtf/shit is the top deck, and there are several drain based decks which make up a larger, and in my opinion more threatening, percentage of the metagame. So that's how I get that stax is better. Anyway, they are different decks and in less fish infested environments it will be harder for juggs to place highly.

What you said earlier was far from an "exception" because you made it pretty clear that one cannot be better than the other.

Also, last I knew many Stax decks were not playing Welder, or even a draw engine.  

Anyway, whether Workshop is fueling out disruption or beatdown doesn't change the fact that it is fueling those things before Mana Drain is online.  Workshop itself is good against Mana Drain, not what comes off the Workshop.  

[Machinus]

I was speaking about how aggro decks can't run acceleration because of they have to rely on disruption instead of power. The term "workshop aggro" doesn't really fit into this model because it runs so many cards that stax also runs, like welders, lock components, crucible/strip, similar draw engines, and of course workshop itself, which is huge acceleration. So it is sort of an exception to this rule, but it really is very similar to stax decks. In the current environment I don't think fish/wtf/shit is the top deck, and there are several drain based decks which make up a larger, and in my opinion more threatening, percentage of the metagame. So that's how I get that stax is better. Anyway, they are different decks and in less fish infested environments it will be harder for juggs to place highly.

What you said earlier was far from an "exception" because you made it pretty clear that one cannot be better than the other.

Also, last I knew many Stax decks were not playing Welder, or even a draw engine.  

Anyway, whether Workshop is fueling out disruption or beatdown doesn't change the fact that it is fueling those things before Mana Drain is online.  Workshop itself is good against Mana Drain, not what comes off the Workshop.  

I'm not really sure what you mean here. Workshop-based aggro decks are definitely an exception to the standard of aggro and aggro-control decks in vintage. All the other archetypes have to rely on alternate methods of mana acceleration (vial, lackey, madness) and can rarely run the most broken cards in the format like will, tinker, welder, etc. They have to sacrifice early AND late game brokenness for consistency in disruption, pressure, and damage. Workshop aggro has huge early game pressure and acceleration thanks to workshop and lots of artifact acceleration. This is indeed an alternate method of going aggro, and when Trinisphere was legal it was really, really good. Unfortunately I think that in such a mana drain oriented environment, where Oath, Gifts, Slaver, Sensei, and Tog can make up moderate to large portions of any given tournament, and combo also has a good chance of doing well depending on the player and the hate, relying on the attack step can often be the wrong move. Oath has blockers; Gifts takes all the turns for itself; Slaver welds away your attackers; Sensei comboes out; Tog wishes for rack and ruin.

I am not trying to downplay your performance at Rochester, and the second place deck at Richmond was also very good. I would guess that a lot of your success comes from experience with the deck style, and there was a more favorable environment for the deck this past weekend. I just think that the inconsistency of workshop decks themselves combined with the "strategic superiority" of drain based control gives it less of a chance for success than stax decks.

With regards to what I mean by stax, there are several builds but two major types right now, and those are those with welder and those without. Multicolor stax builds like Cron's at Syracuse are becoming more popular due to their success against drain decks, but there are still a lot of people running welders, and it hasn't become any less powerful than it was 6 months ago. The card is damn good and a good deckbuilder can definitely build a strong stax deck around them for the current environment.

[Rico Suave]

I'm not really sure what you mean here. Workshop-based aggro decks are definitely an exception to the standard of aggro and aggro-control decks in vintage. All the other archetypes have to rely on alternate methods of mana acceleration (vial, lackey, madness) and can rarely run the most broken cards in the format like will, tinker, welder, etc. They have to sacrifice early AND late game brokenness for consistency in disruption, pressure, and damage. Workshop aggro has huge early game pressure and acceleration thanks to workshop and lots of artifact acceleration. This is indeed an alternate method of going aggro, and when Trinisphere was legal it was really, really good. Unfortunately I think that in such a mana drain oriented environment, where Oath, Gifts, Slaver, Sensei, and Tog can make up moderate to large portions of any given tournament, and combo also has a good chance of doing well depending on the player and the hate, relying on the attack step can often be the wrong move. Oath has blockers; Gifts takes all the turns for itself; Slaver welds away your attackers; Sensei comboes out; Tog wishes for rack and ruin.

I am not trying to downplay your performance at Rochester, and the second place deck at Richmond was also very good. I would guess that a lot of your success comes from experience with the deck style, and there was a more favorable environment for the deck this past weekend. I just think that the inconsistency of workshop decks themselves combined with the "strategic superiority" of drain based control gives it less of a chance for success than stax decks.

With regards to what I mean by stax, there are several builds but two major types right now, and those are those with welder and those without. Multicolor stax builds like Cron's at Syracuse are becoming more popular due to their success against drain decks, but there are still a lot of people running welders, and it hasn't become any less powerful than it was 6 months ago. The card is damn good and a good deckbuilder can definitely build a strong stax deck around them for the current environment.

I was merely responding to your statement: "workshop aggro is inferior to stax" which is a very bold statement.  I was not talking about other decks.

I don't mind even if you do downplay Rochester because identical lists placed in Syracuse and Minnesota, across multiple metagames.  Even in Rochester, I don't see what the metagame had to do with anything because I saw 1 Fish deck and 3 Drain decks.  Mike in Syracuse beat TPS, Control Slaver, Tog, AND Oath. 

Of course a strong player can build a Stax deck with or without Welder and do well, but that's not the point.  The issue is whether or not they would do better with Stax or Workshop Aggro.

[jazzykat]

It was stated before but I would like to echo it: competitive cheap decks are good for the format because it brings in new players.

On a side note, even though playing against fish is annoying I think it is fun and I believe it is also interactive by any one's definition.

[BigMac]

I think the rise of fish (again) is good for several reasons.

The first is off course the new players it will attract to vintage.

Secondly it forces players to come up with solutions for these new decks which will force people to be innovative.

Thirdly the name fish now envellops a good number of good working decks with different critters. This is what makes it so difficult to play against. You have no idea how this fishplayer will kill you. General idea is the same but the many different critters mean many different solutions to problems.

Lastly, its an aggro deck, people love aggro decks, and people like to beat aggro decks. It changes vintage to the point that the attack step actually becomes viable again.

[Gumby]

I think the rise of fish (again) is good for several reasons.

The first is off course the new players it will attract to vintage.

Fish has brought back some of our older "budget" players and younger kids to our local scene. The older budget players left because our scene over time forgot what the attack step was, and they couldn't compete any longer with their favorite semi-casual deck. The younger kids could never really top 8 because all they could afford was (bad) goblins, elves or other weenie decks that could never compete in the scene. Fish has leveled the playing field, it can be played unpowered in an powered environment and do well and best of all, it's a very cheap deck. Yesterday afternoon, I helped a younger guy build it, at our local store and I think he may have spent less $30 on it! Best of all he's going to play in our proxy tournament this weekend with it, and he's always refused to play in our tourney's because he thought he couldn't compete!

[Sh00bic]

I think, as stupid as it may sound, that the new fish are getting more and more wounrable to combo. Perhaps Dragon is the answer?

[Smmenen]

As of late I have played nothing but Fish. I have been testing a lot of different ideas and builds. From UW to WTF to even BirdShit, and I must say the most potent build is the UW. I have yet to make great results from it but it has been very very consistent. I have gotten my a pretty optimal build down. I managed a 5-2 record in the most recent Richmond, with my only two loses coming to the eventual Winner (FoodChainGoblins) and eventual runner-up (WorkshopAggroVariant). Recently in Rochester I finished 6-2, once again missing the top 8 with my only losses coming to eventual winner, (his pyroclasms wrecked me game 3) and a Round1 loss to a FCG player. In the second P9 Tournament in Syracuse, I dropped at 4-2 with my losses coming to a MonoBlue deck with 4 OLD MAN MAIN! and a Bomberman deck that went on to T8. These results are far from very impressive but they have taught me a lot about the deck and how it interacts with the current metagame. As stated before, most decks cannot run cards main that wreck Fish because they weaken other matchups so most of the time Fish has a good chance to take game 1. Other decks in the metagame then proceed to sideboard good answers to Fish. The problem here is that the Fish deck usually is up a game.

Another problem some decks have is boarding the wrong hate. If you pyroclasm against a WTF player they laugh and pump their Mongrel to keep it alive, but if you Pyroclasm against a board full of Mages then you gained your card advantage. Fish decks have evolved immensley since the days of Mancers and Clouds. Now they tend to run creatures that offer more disruption and have bigger bodies. No longer are sideboard choices like Lava Dart as effective because of the printing of Ninja of the Deep Hours. Before your Lava Dart would take out a Cloud or Mancer with a Curiosity or two on it and you would get big card advantage. Now your Darts don't give you as much advantage. FTK no longer is as great because of the addition of better removal in the form of Swords To Plowshares. Yet another problem with the current metagame is the variety of Fish. Chalice Fish and Rod Fish are two totally different decks and you need to play them and against them differently. Where one has a good matchup, the other has a bad one. Where Pyroclasm wrecks on, the other it isn't as bad. So because of this sometimes you have the wrong hate.

As I see it, the sudden rise of Fish is definetly beneficial to the format. It allows new players to get into the format and play a deck that actually has a decent shot at winning some Power so they can play some of the more broken decks in the format. There will be no one shot kill for this problem. Workshop Aggro will rise and try to stop it all but then Control and Combo decks will rise again and knock off the WSA. Its a cruel cycle that will repeat itself again and again. Every so often Wizards will print cheap effecient creatures that when combined with other cheap efficent creatures and the correct disruption will be a consitent pile of 60 cards.

On a side note, as a Fish player I am often looked at as making a bad deck choice. I am often told by GI, "Don't play fish because it can't go broken." But I never listen because the numbers I, and others, have put up have been pretty damn consistent. He has valid reason for saying this, everyone loves to go broken on turn 1, but I would much rather play a deck that plays consistently the same and can consistently handle other decks normal to semi-broken hands. Yes, Fish will lose to god hands from other decks but so would any other deck I choose to play. Just because a deck doesn't have an "I Win" hand does not mean it can't be a consistent contender.

Well this is just my two cents for now.

Rich Meyst

I think this entire post is very educational.  Thank you.

I am just wondering where the format is going to go next.  Combo is clearly just horrible right now.  The notion of playing Meandeath or TPS makes me want to wretch when you think about how fast the mana drain decks are and combine that with the Workshop disruption and the Fish decks.  And then if Fish is beating up Workshop aggro and the Drain decks with little problem, what does that leave?

JP and others have tried 4 old men in decks and they got creamed. 

I think it's probably healthy for the format too - in that at least it is a good "gateway" deck to get people to invest in some staples like FOW and dual lands.  But I also wonder if this is a temporary phenomena - like it was last year - or whether the budget factor and the constant and strong evolution suggest that we are at the beginning of a long, long period of Fish domination in the format.  I wouldn't believe that if it weren't for the fact that Savoirs gives so much to Fish and the fact that Fis has SO many new and potent weapons/options that it can constantly evolve to deal with any threat in the metagame.

Let me put it this way:

The Vial/Chalice Fish innovation by my team was a watershed in the evolution of this deck.  If this development had come last November, I am pretty sure that the whole metagame would have been different and Fish would have been winning ALOT more in the face of 3Spheres.  Turn one Vial Chalice makes 3sphere a completely irrellvant play on the draw.  It is just insane. You follow up with Wasteland and its all over for the Workshop player. 

[amidtownrocker]

We have no idea where this format can go next. Thats the great thing about Vintage, pure unpredictability. In my opinion you will see lots of playes over hate these Fish decks out and the Fish decks will learn to evolve, just like they have for a long time. The advantage to a Fish player is their card pool to evolve is huge and is only growing with each set put out by Wizards. Fish runs bad cards that are combined with other bad cards to make a good deck. How often does something come along that just fits into a Workshop deck, or into a Combo deck, not nearly as much as something comes along for Fish. I think we will see more and more players pick up their Workshop Aggro Variants and test them against Fish variants and they will crush them, but come tournament time, some player, some team, somewhere will find a new evolution to Fish that can handle the hate, or find new hate for other hate. Its going to be an on going battle from here on out until there is a deck that Fish cannot handle. And when that happens, a new Fish deck will pop up.

As mentioned above, the problem with Fish is the variety. No build is the same, no build has the same hosers and threats so sideboarding isnt always as easy. These things will only increase as Wizards print small creatures that have effective abilities.

By no means am I saying Fish is going to dominate forever because obviously no deck can. But what I am saying is Fish is here and it is here to stay. It will always be around, and when you think you have it all figure out, it'll pop out in front of you in a new suit, and you will just have to learn to adjust.

This is why the game of Magic is so great, and why Vintage is so great. Decks, ideas, and gameplans are constantly changing and constantly evolving. How would you like a format where Drain decks always beat Workshops, where Workshops always beat Fish, and where Fish always beat Drain decks? That sounds like a pretty dull format to me. Vintage is so great because of the shifting metagame. It forces us, as Magic players, to innovate, to learn, and to evolve.

Rich Meyst

[KrA0nS]

As long as Trinisphere is staying restricted Fish will be making the Top 8's all over the world, the deck is very good when pioleted right and is one of te cheapest decks to make.  Fish can get better because it evolves so much with the meta, as soon as the decks around it change then it's time for Fish to change and it is always for the better.  Rootwater Thief is great in the deck getting te main kill cards and useing Tinker-DC just makes it that much better, nope, Fish is going to be around for a long while unless someone can come up with a better varient and name it Steak or something.

[Revvik]

As long as they're not running Null Rods, Cursed Scroll seems like a pretty serious Fish slayer.

So is Nev's Disk, or - if you can ramp up the mana for it - Akroma's Vengeance  .
Obviously, I've been tinkering with U/W Landstill.  Played it for most of this year, in fact, and it has an amazing record against "annoying" decks like U/W Fish, Bird Shit, and etc.
Haven't tried it against the new Worse Than Fish, the faster clock might make the difference.

But it has all the tools you need - a solid manabase, manlands of your own (possibly even more than they do), Crucible of Worlds, efficient spot removal, and excellent board sweepers.