The Explosion of Fish

[PucktheCat]

Should Gorilla Shaman make its way back into Drain decks?  Chalice and AEther Vial are tempting targets - both can be neutralized entirely before having any effect on the game, unlike moxen.  It isn't like Gorilla Shaman is bad in other matchups, either.

Leo

[heiner]

I still think fish's clock is soo slow that the primary goal should be to execute your own much more broken game plan. This normally means having enough mana available so you should mainly focus on rescuing your mana base instead of handling their fishes.

Playin 4 basics and 2 gorilla shaman to handle chalice/vial in my gifts dec lets me establish my mana base and go broken on them.  As they only play FOW (keep sure to play around daze) you can easily resolve one of your bombs which fish cannot handle.  Compared to the gifs configuration with only 2 basics and no possibility to handle chalice (which couldn't stand a chance vs fish) the match up is pretty good now. Adding your random brokenness like Behindertenausweis (Tinker-Coloss) and boarding some EE + Pyroclasm should be enough, I think.

[pooispoois]

Well, I think the ocurrence is similar to the Affinity problem in Standard a while ago. Fish is a contender, and if 25% of the field is playing Fish, you can expect 25% of the Top8 to be Fish. This will be true for any deck that can expect to have a 50% or greater winning percentage.
Of course, once effective hate is figured out, Fish will fall back. That's not saying figuring it out will be easy. Perhaps 4CC with Swords to Plowshares will make a comeback?

[Dozer]

I think that a lot of old-school answers to aggro creatures like the ones Fish runs are not present anymore. That is mostly due to changes in the metagame and to the rise of control decks that forego traditional answers in favor of a combo-like kill. Two cards make Fish extremely resistent, and the two are Jitte and Kira. Kira circumvents targeted removal even when it is attached to a permanent -- think The Abyss, which is one of the classic silver bullets but loses to Kira big time. Without Kira, Abyss can actually put quite a dent into Fish's plan. Likewise, Night of Soul's Betrayal shines brightly among the options to combat Fish on the tactical level. Fish is so interesting now because you never really know what you are up against; the daring might even run Masticore if they are sure not to run into Null Rod. Masticore packs quite a punch if you can handle Jitte another way.

Maindeck Disenchant-effects, Damping Matrix, Pithing Needle, good ol' Swords to Plowshares, Pyroclasm/Starstorm/Earthquake, Wrath of God, The Abyss, even Moat, Masticore and Exalted Angel are still out there. Silent Arbiter and Razormane Masticore are present, as well as other off-the-wall solutions. Problem is that the metagame is not Fish against Control; there are other opponents to consider (Stax et al). But creature and artifact kill should be around in higher proportions anyway if you want to try to play control. When was the last time you saw a control deck that featured more than 4-5 maindeck removal spells (not counting Jitte)? And that in an environment where every major deck has something killable. Heck, FCG won a Lotus! It is a good deck, don't read me wrong, but there were times when control decks just laughed the first assault off and locked Goblins out with CoP: Red or Moat. Tell me, what would Mike Zaun have done against Moat? 4-mana spells as silver bullets are back already (in the form of Extraction). It might pay off to look back to them -- Wrath of God is still effective, you know.

Chalice needs to be dealt with, though, as it enables Fish to lock control decks out of their acceleration game. When you have no Moxen, Wrath doesn't look too good (or got Thieved, maybe). Last time I looked, though, any control deck still could out-counter Fish (according to the numbers, that is). Vial distorts that equation to a certain extent. However, my point is that we need to look to classic creature control strategies that have massively declined to beat Fish again. I am not sure how decks that focus on those will fare against the true combo decks, but it is likely that the situation will re-activate the old triangle combo-control-aggro (counting Fish).

Which decks will hold which positions has to be established now. However, it is likely that the distribution will re-shape to something different than the current situation, which has Control vs. Aggro-Control and Combo somewhere in the margins. That is a good thing.

Dozer

[Machinus]

People could just maindeck artifact hate like they should have been doing for a year now. Every deck has key artifacts. Either you are targetting moxes by destroying them (shaman, explosives), preventing them from coming into play (chalice), or targetting threats/disruption like juggernaut, smokestack, jitte, null rod...there are plenty of them. Neo-Fish has now turned and it abusing artifacts instead of hosing them. That means maindeck artifact destruction is good against all decks. Running it also reduces the problem of finding the right answers, since without key artifacts, some decks are reduced to much simpler problems.

[Matt]

If Cursed Scroll's low hand drawback isnt a good fit, you could try Isochron Scepter + F/I. No control decks are running MD ways to kill artifacts, and not even all the Fish decks are running Null Rod now.

No idea if this is any good, just throwing that out there.

[Whatever Works]

Should Gorilla Shaman make its way back into Drain decks?  Chalice and AEther Vial are tempting targets - both can be neutralized entirely before having any effect on the game, unlike moxen.  It isn't like Gorilla Shaman is bad in other matchups, either.

Leo

It already is if you refer to any of the updated CS or SSB lists by either Andy Probasco (Brassman) or Rich Shay (atog lord). It is a great card atm vs. fish, and is good vs. most of the metagame atm as long as you can get it down before chalice for 1 hits (which is a big IF atm).

I find it kinda funny knowing that that an Affinity deck (perhaps mono red or UR) with clamp/cranial plating/jitte would probably destroy the metagame with the complete absense of null rod, less artifact hate (replaced for crap like pyroclasm), and the odvious restriction of 3sphere.

[MuzzonoAmi]

I'm absolutely shocked that Oath hasn't moved to a more anti-Fish configuration, especially in light of the "Waterfront Bouncer ownz j00" phenomenon. Simply boarding in Crater Hellion would absolutely wreck every Fish strategy, and it even kills itself to let you search again for your other creature. People just aren't adapting.

[MrZuccinniHead]

these fish deck are weaker against combo compared to it's predecessors.  It's time to bust out combo summer.

[jcb193]

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.

I've had some success with a Drop of Honey resurrection.....

[amidtownrocker]

these fish deck are weaker against combo compared to it's predecessors. It's time to bust out combo summer.

It depends on which Fish build you are talking about.

The problem is the diversity of Fish. If people bust out combo for the summer, they will WRECK the WTF variant but when paired against a good UW Fish build will have to battle through Counters, Meddling Mages, mana denial, and Null Rod. But then again if there is a format shift to Workshop Aggro, then WTF becomes a stronger choice because Mongrels and Rootwallas can hang around with Juggernauts and Oxidize out of the board helps. Pithing Needle on Welders can be quite strong as well.

As I see it. In a combo heavy metagame, WTF will lose, but in a control/aggro heavy metagame WTF will dominate. On the other hand, UW will fare much better against combo than WTF will but its match against other aggro is usually bad and control is a coin flip.

Its going to be really interesting to see how this metagame shift fans out, and how people adapt to these two decks that are  geared and tuned to acheive victory in two totally different methods but have the inner lying similarity of not going "broken".

(by broken, I am just referring to turn 1 kills or crazy starts with multiple power cards)

So lets see how this Summer goes, my guess is the Fish lists at the end will look totally different. We havent even begun to touch on such cards as Kataki or Pithing Needle. Those two cards could create new variants of Fish. Time can only tell.


Rich Meyst

[Cab]

What about another aggro deck like R/G beatz, which has a good matchup against fish last I checked and pretty good matchups against everything else (Oath is difficult)...

It can hose artifacts (Root Maze, Gorilla Shaman, Artifact Mutation/Naturalize, usually Null Rod), which are key in almost every deck, but chalice for 1 is a problem as a vast majority of the cards are 1cc. It seems like a R/G deck is poised for a coming out on a larger scale than has already occured...?

[amidtownrocker]

Yes, R/G Beatz tears Fish a new one. This has been proven time and time again. The biggest problem is when R/G gets paired agasint any form of combo. R/G is not running much permission and puts up a little fight. Sure Root Maze hurts but most decks will just bounce it EOT or build up a much more solid hand and wait a few turns before going off. And I'm not exactly quite sure how R/G handles Workshop Aggro. I see the match as WSA dropping big threats, like Juggs and Welders, and R/G forced to burn those creatures out leaving not much in there hand and they get into a top decking war with the WSA decks. WSA now runs card draw with TfK and Brainstorms as R/G runs.....yeah. In this field I do believe you will see random R/G Beatz decks tearing it up, but when it comes down to it, it needs perfect pairings to win a tournament. It needs to face Fish Variants ALL day long.

[MuzzonoAmi]

R/G coming on strong is probably more likely than it's being made out to be, because it would only take a few modifications (like running 2-3 Sylvan Libraries ot some other permanent card drawer and/or 4 maindeck REBs, with the other 4 in the board) to give it a fighting chance against WSA and Comb, respectively.

[Mixing Mike]

Right now, with the current fish decks, U/R Fish is a good deck to beat it with.

Think about it, U/R runs Null Rod, and can have an active Lavamancer before they even play a Waterfront Bouncer.

I think it's funny that Null Rod is now a good choice against the deck that used to run it.  I think that statement also says a little something about how messy the metagame is right now.

[amidtownrocker]

The only problem with U/R is its weakness against all the other decks in the format right now. Sure it will do good against U/W Fish decks and such but what happens when it runs into WorkshopAggro or any kinda of Combo deck. Lavamancers also have trouble taking down a Wild Mongrel. Almost any other deck will just find Tinker and beat these U/R Fish decks also.

It is def funny how NullRod wrecks another Fish Deck more than almost any other deck in the format, except for maybe Sensei Sensei.

[Mordred]

First of all, I'm happy to see innovation making Fish decks competetive.  With 5-10 proxy tournaments becoming more common in my area, it's very easy for players with limited card pools to make decks that have a chance.  Most of these decks wind up being close to popular U/W and "WTF" builds.

I suppose it is easy to link the numbers Fish is posting, both in T8 finishes and sheer number of people playing Fish, to an "unstoppable" type of deck.  Personally, it's that line of thinking that leads to ignorance and sometimes 2 round tournaments.

The only thing Fish has going for it, is that so many people are playing it and constantly innovating with it.  If your opponent is playing Control Slaver, you can probably think of roughly 50ish cards he's running...and what his game plan is.  When sitting across a Fish player it's not always clear what cards he's playing, or how he's going to acheive the goal of making your day so rough, he wins with 1-2 drop spells or man-lands.

So how do you beat not just one decklist of Fish, but beat the archetype of Fish?  Innovate.  Make the Fish player do some guessing as to what is comming his way.  Knowing what lands to Waste, what to set chalice at, what to name with Mage, and what to Force, are a Fish players best weapons.  I constantly see good players make bad decisions against Fish for seemingly no reason.

There is however a reason, people seem to unknowingly take an opponent opening turn such as, "Wasteland -> Vial -> Chalice for 0, go," and immediatly think they're going to lose from the tempo difference now on the board.  In doing so they already accept they're playing Fish's game, instead of whatever strategy their deck had to begin with. 

Basically, don't make play mistakes, don't lose perspective, don't plan on beating Fish by simply running "better, more broken cards," and it doesn't hurt to turn fish into a favorable match-up...use the number of people playing fish to your advantage.

[Cab]

Yes, R/G Beatz tears Fish a new one. This has been proven time and time again. The biggest problem is when R/G gets paired agasint any form of combo. R/G is not running much permission and puts up a little fight. Sure Root Maze hurts but most decks will just bounce it EOT or build up a much more solid hand and wait a few turns before going off. And I'm not exactly quite sure how R/G handles Workshop Aggro. I see the match as WSA dropping big threats, like Juggs and Welders, and R/G forced to burn those creatures out leaving not much in there hand and they get into a top decking war with the WSA decks. WSA now runs card draw with TfK and Brainstorms as R/G runs.....yeah. In this field I do believe you will see random R/G Beatz decks tearing it up, but when it comes down to it, it needs perfect pairings to win a tournament. It needs to face Fish Variants ALL day long.

I hope you're joking with that comment because R/G can screw combo if they're running either Null Rod or the Root Maze/Pillar combo. Last I checked, Pillar also ripped combo a new one as all of their spells cost 3 or less except for about a handfull if that. Almost every deck in the format loses to combo decks that go off on turn 1 or 2

WSA is inconsistent, and while running blue card draw it lacks the explosiveness that it once had. Welder, oh no, I Bolt it and it dies or I Lavamancer it on turn 2-3 and it dies. Jugg, oh no, I bolt it or Incinerate it and it does or I artifact mutation it and I'm beating your face each turn.

If R/G ran card draw, they would be
a) stupid, as the deck is beatz, not let's draw a lot of cards and win a counter war
b) lose their slots devoted to useful hate like artifact mutation, root maze, pillar, null rod
c) what good draw is there in R/G, I ask you this Sylvan Library is subpar as has been discussed in the R/G forums. The only useful card I can think of is SOFAI, and that costs too much mana to use, plus there is a lot of artifact hate in Vintage last I checked. Skullclamp is inferior as most of the creatures run have 2-3 toughness, and why would I want to clamp my River Boa or my Lavamancer when I could just be beating instead of drawing more threats and then dying because I didn't get in that extra 3-4 points of damage that I could have if I left those creatures on the board.

R/G does not need perfect pairings to win a tournament. It's underrepresented because people do not think it has the power to contend, even though it does. It basically beats all forms of control, it can beat combo barring the brokenness that any deck bows down to, and it can hang with other aggro decks because of it's speed and utility cards. It's main problematic match is Oath because of the card Oath itself and the deck being aggro that does not pack control in the form of counters.

R/G beatz is not perfect, no deck is perfect. If R/G was represented as much as fish, then R/G would most likely have as many T8 spots as fish just because of sheer numbers, as would any other deck. Fish is doing so well because it is being played so much more than most other decks.

However, RG does need to start playing REBs or Pyroblasts main in my opinion becuase it can shore up the combo, wsa, and gifts match, not to mention many others. However, that would take away from the whole point of the deck, which is beating down. You would now have to sit with 1 red mana open against these decks because they can go off at any time and play their blue spells and/or permanents at any time in the game making this deck slower than it needs to be.

REBs need to be run in the board, not the main because it deters from the purpose of the deck. First turn Root Maze, 2nd-3rd turn pillar will wreck most all combo decks, along with Chalice for 0, which RG does need to run main to make combo a "better" match.

If I lived on the east coast I would take RG to an SCG tournament, but I don't live there and my area doesn't have Vintage tournaments, so I have to travel about 4 hours to play in them.

If you really think RG sucks, then take a good build to a major tournament and see how you do with it after testing.

[MuzzonoAmi]

This actually just hit me now, but I think it's worth at least discussing: Has Fish simply become the logical evolution of Zoo? And  by extension, has the meta finally come full circle with decks like SSB and CS filling the slot that 4cc/Keeper used to fill?

EDIT: The trouble with R/G is that it can't keep up the threats against control once it's played out its hand. Even though the deck is highly redundant, it's still limited to (at best) 1 threat/turn, which doesn't cut it against modern control and combo. Most control decks can just tutor for Tinker->Colossus, which forces you to kill them in 2 turns, which often isn't an option. A good combo player can win through Pillar and Root Maze - those only serve to slow combo down to a managable level and that level can still steamroll a deck that's in topdeck mode without a broken bailout solution a la Yawgmoth's Will. Without incorporating some sort of draw, R/G will continue to be a metagame option to deal with Fish, but won't be able to compete with top-teir control and combo decks, and thus won't be teir 1.

[zulander]

Oath has a maindeck answer to fish, a Mana Drain followed by Ancient Hydra. Or if you just want, you could use the hydra.
However, fish is still a great deck and probably has the advantage before the side. The u/w build of fish is the more optimal one in my opinion. The mana has stability, and the compatability of the two colors is amazing. Oh, don't forget about meddling mages as well, it is the main reason u/w fish is so successful.

[sampling_percus]

The problem is the diversity of Fish. If people bust out combo for the summer, they will WRECK the WTF variant but when paired against a good UW Fish build will have to battle through Counters, Meddling Mages, mana denial, and Null Rod. But then again if there is a format shift to Workshop Aggro, then WTF becomes a stronger choice because Mongrels and Rootwallas can hang around with Juggernauts and Oxidize out of the board helps.

So, could combo not simply prepare a sideboard for U/W fish, and aggro a prepare a board for WTF?

[Shade]

Can someone link me to a current list of UW Fish?  I tried via the search engine, but haven't been able to find any "current" listings with Thief, Bouncer, Vial, etc.  I'm trying to learn as much about the deck as possible but have only been able to find fragments of info here and there; nothing really comprehensive.

[aTn]

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.

Let us not forget the power of the maindeck Echoing Truth against Chalice of the Void. Also, Pyroclasm is not a "fish-use-only" sideboard card ...

[Ufactor]

Has anyone test Plaguebearer?  Let me know how it is.

[Jacob Orlove]

Okay, this thread has run its course. Future discussion should get a new thread.