Hate Fish from SCG Chicago

[AmbivalentDuck]

http://sales.starcitygames.com/deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=14155

The deck uses several "odd" choices such as Stormscape Apprentice and Silver Knight.

Any thoughts on why it was so successful?  Would you bring it to a tourney?

[Prometheon]

I don't agree with the Voidmade Prodigy guys, but Stormscape Apprentice seems like a ****ing beating. He's a 1 mana Whipcorder who pitches to force!

[Liam-K]

I'm not sure if Stormscape Apprentice is better than Waterfront Bouncer, but he is still slick.

[mr_rogers]

I like the apprentice in the deck, but I can't understand why he played Voidmage Prodigy.  There are much better creatures to play in fish, like Cloud of fearies(can't spell).  Overall though this is the first Fish deck I've seen in a while that I would actually play.

[AmbivalentDuck]

Prodigy makes sense, it is essentially an uncounterable counterspell when vial is down.  What I don't get is the True Believers (Turn 2-3? combo should already have won...) and the Silver Knights.  Silver Knights don't give him a better game against Slaver, Stax, or UbaStax.  They're good against Goblins... But Chill is orders of magnitude better.  What am I missing?  Wouldn't Sphere of Resistance be better against combo?  Wouldn't Chill or Absolute Law (depending on why he's using it) be better than Silver Knight?

[Liam-K]

Prodigy is good with Vial but if people don't know what you're up to you could probably also play morph tricks.  It's not popular enough that you'd suspect a face down 2/2 could go UUU, sac: counter.

I guess it's not totally irrelevant that he runs 11 wizards, so prodigy doesn't even have to sac himself always. 

[jcb193]

A way to counter spells when standstill is up?

[AmbivalentDuck]

A way to counter spells when standstill is up?

If they play a spell...Standstill breaks.  Then you let it resolve and counter the offending spell.  Playing it as a morph will still break the Standstill.  It still seems like it's borrowing most of its power from Vial.

[mr_rogers]

Prodigy has its uses, especially with Standstill in play(didn't remember that was in the deck).  But I'd still rather play CoF over the voidmage, especially when he's running ninja of the deep hours.  As for silver knight I am also wondering what e boarded that in against.  Was he really expecting to play that much FCG?  And I also wonder why True believer when he could run Stifle, Orim's Chant, or Abeyance against combo.  Hopefully Paul will write a report with some explanations of his card choices.

[warble]

Thoughts on why it is successful:

It runs Swords to Plowshares and sufficient creature control to survive aggro.
It's spells are cheaper to cast than any control deck's (aside from CS) so it implicitly has a good matchup there.
It's sideboard includes true believer, disenchant and annul, so even if CS takes game 1 it's not going to go the distance...and when you switch true believer with energy flux you say the same about STAX.  Excellent sideboard choice...which is more than key with Fish, it's everything when bombs hit over and over games 2-3
Adequate creature base that isn't succeptable to lava dart, unlike other weenie decks.
No Curiosity means it doesn't rely solely on creatures to win.  This is key in fish, a lot of times you get all your creatures killed and emptied your hand, but without curiosity and more late-game answers with less disruption, the deck can go "the long haul".  This is definitely a NEW take on fish.  Aether vial vs. Null Rod may be an optimal choice for this deck, which scares me.  If fish doesn't need null rod, because of the sideboard mainly I will add, I am not a happy man.

To comment on the choice of silver knight, let's just say it's in the sideboard and not maindeck.  Why would a "game-set-match" creature against goblins be bad again?  There isn't another card blue/white can run that scares goblins as much, especially when you have 4 of them.  Less, maybe it's a bad choice, but if you can board in 4 hate 2/2's it should be more than able to defeat goblins/sligh/etc.

I'd also like to emphasize how well tuned the deck appears.  3 standstill, 3 swords, 3 kataki, 2 island, 1 plains.  This deck has some serious effort put into it.

Edit: To answer the question, no I would not take it to a tournament, I play CS with Gifts and the NEW Imperial Seal tutor as well, and this doesn't tempt me...at all...but it is a great deck.

[jpmeyer]

True Believer stops Gifts Ungiven

[Imsomniac101]

True Believer stops Gifts Ungiven

Just out of curiosity, how does True Believer interact with Gifts? Does it make it so that you can't cast Gifts at all or does it mean that you can play it but it gets countered?

[PipOC]

True Believer stops Gifts Ungiven

Just out of curiosity, how does True Believer interact with Gifts? Does it make it so that you can't cast Gifts at all or does it mean that you can play it but it gets countered?

gifts won't have a legal tagrte so it can't be cast at all.

[AmbivalentDuck]

It fizzles due to no legal targets on resolution if you Vial it in.  That's the key.

Interesting.  So it's actually an innovative take on Fish that uses:
-Aether Vial to win counter wars instead of just avoiding them.  Since it uses creature ABILITIES to win the wars, it creates card advantage.
-Stormscape Apprentice to hedge against Oath while making turn 2 NotDH possible.
-Kataki to make Energy Flux a finisher instead of an inconvenience.

I'm still not getting Silver Knight over Chill.  They block 1 Piledriver, so what?  When I played FCG, I regularly won without needing to attack.  Even though it survives Pyroclasm, it's only a 10 turn clock.  If Pyroclasm and FCG are the concern, Absolute Law still looks better.  You can't afford to wait until turn 3 to Vial out an answer to FCG.  

[VarienTanafres]

http://sales.starcitygames.com/deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=14155

The deck uses several "odd" choices such as Stormscape Apprentice and Silver Knight.

Any thoughts on why it was so successful?  Would you bring it to a tourney?

Rogue = awesome. The person who made this deck has my props. Interesting tweaks they did, I'd try it out at a tourney pending on the metagame.

[Liek]

I'd also like to emphasize how well tuned the deck appears.  3 standstill, 3 swords, 3 kataki, 2 island, 1 plains.  This deck has some serious effort put into it.

Thank you.

The way I went about building this Fish deck followed this idea: my cards are weaker than thiers. So I need cards that are narrow enough to solve problems but broad enough so that they'll always have a use. Every guy has to do something good.

The first thing is that seemingly every Fish deck ever has had Cloud of Faeries in it. I cound never figure out why. They don't do anything. I can't think of a single thing they are good for, except possibly cycling them to find a better card. I tried Worse than Fish for awhile, but Wild Mongrel has a problem in Vintage: attacking for four isn't good enough. Fish needs to play disruptive creatures.

Here are some explanations:

Voidmage Prodigy: Basically an uncounterable (with a Vial) way to counter a spell and not get into a counterwar. Also can be played as a morph.

Stormscape Apprentice: Three things: he costs one, so he curves out the Ninja for the games that don't involve a turn one Vial, he's a Wizard for Voidmage, and he taps opposing threats. Flying Men only does one of those things.

MD Kataki: My Shop matchup wasn't very good. They make a ton of mana and try to go broken, this guy punishes them for over extending.

True Believer: They can't play Gifts or Tendrils. Aether Vial makes him good, I bring him into play when something that targets me is on the stack (Mindslaver, Belcher, Gifts, Tendrils, even Duress.)

Silver Knight: In the first 4 or so tournaments I played in the same thing happened every time: I'd beat everybody but the Goblin players. I'd stop thier Food Chaining, I'd stop thier Recruiters, I'd stop the turn one Lackey, but then I'd just lose to the Piledrivers. The part where it says "Protection from Blue" was the biggest problem. None of my silly Wizards could block it, and they'd always Wasteland my Factory. Chill wasn't good enough, it's only good on turn one, and I need a Mox for that. I only play two...

I know that Goblins isn't too popular, but I hate losing a deciding match against Goblins without a decent board plan.

Annul: Josh Franklin (spelling?) told me that Oath was the deck to beat for Chicago. We discussed the usefulness of Annul against Oath and Stax and I decided to run them. They worked well.

Basic Plains: I always need White mana against decks with Wasteland. I need to cast Swords and Silver Knight against Goblins and Swords and Disenchant and Kataki against Shops. I can't cast white cards if they Waste all of my Tundras.

Zero Umezawa's Jitte: It gets Mana Drained. That's about it, I had to cut it for that reason.

That's all the rambling I can think of right now. If there's any more question about my card choices just let me know. I'm still trying to make this pile better.

Also, why does this go to the newbie forum? I worked hard on this..

[AmbivalentDuck]

It's here mostly because of the way I phrased the initial post.  You should repost the deck in the Open Forum with your analysis.  Your innovations are admirable and I'm sure that the community at large would enjoy reading the reasononing behind them.

[dre4m]

First of all, to Paulie, way to go, man!

Second, you should definately repost your decklist in the open forum so we can discuss many of your developments, particularly your basic plains and Stormscape Apprentices.  I hope that you continue to enjoy success like this with this deck.

Thirdly, I think many of the choices that have been discussed can be explained by either Paul's not possessing the 'better' cards, or his fantastic success with White Weenie in the past, in which he learned how good True Believer and Silver Knight are, plus, lest we forget, Chill doesn't swing for two.

[Liek]

Alright, I'll make a thread in the open forum. Soon. I'm pretty lazy, it might be a couple days...

[J J P]

Really great deck. U/W fish always bothered me because they lacked the synergies original U/R fish had. But this list is full of synergy, Voidmage and Vial get used to their maximum efficiency here

[Disburden]

Alright, I'll make a thread in the open forum. Soon. I'm pretty lazy, it might be a couple days...

Maybe a report too? 

Great job with this deck. I actually like playing Fish even though most people say Fish decks will always suck, I find them fun to play and I like Aether Vial. Thanks for giving me a list to try out!  :lol: