It's time to innovate Fish

[magus888]

As many have said in the past, “Fish is not a deck, it’s an idea�. Fish’s main principle is to disrupt your opponent and then kill him/her with small but efficient creatures. The idea looks good on paper but when you test it in the field it all of a sudden becomes rubbish. The fundamental flaw in Fish is that doesn’t really take advantage of anything. It comes out strong but then begins to fail mid to late game. The reason this happens is Fish’s disruption only slows down an opponent not stop what he/she is trying to do. Fish also lacks a powerful draw engine, making it stall out.

The case of Null Rod and Chalice

I see everyone arguing over Null Rod and Chalice and which one is a better card choice. You may want to curse me out and stop reading, but I must inform you that neither is optimal for Fish. Why? If Stax and Oath are running them, then Fish can’t run them. If Null Rod and Chalice are part of the opposing decks game plan, and they can use them more affectively than Fish(which they can), then the inclusion of those cards becomes suboptimal. Open your eyes people, Stax and Oath are most of the today’s metagame. With that said there needs to be a card that can fill one of the major slots in Fish. I believe the best choice is Phyrexian Furnace and Pithing Needle. Lets see what this does:

Furnace/Needle
1.Destroys anything with welders
2.Wastes away Stax’s Wasteland/Strip and Crucible combo.
3.Laughs at Tinker/Gift Combo
4.Takes away Yawgmoth Will’s game winning power
5.Removes Oath’s creatures if they pitched one to TFK, and can remove Gaea’s Blessing when it hits the yard.
6.Says no to Bazaars
7.Shuts down Fetch Lands
8.Deals with pesky Vials
9.Stops Belcher

I do believe this is enough to warrant their inclusion. Unlike Null Rod and Chalice they shut things down, not prolong your impending doom. They also aren’t dead draws when you happen upon multiples.

The second problem I stated was Fish’s lack of strength and a potent draw engine. With Chalice and Null Rod out of the way it makes Fish capable of running more Moxen. More free mana allows Fish to be much more explosive and play higher CC spells. What do all these extra artifacts and mana spell? You guessed it, Thirst for Knowledge!

The inclusion of TFK got me thinking. If we’re pitching cards then why not run Threshold creatures and Basking Rootwalla. With Rootwalla and Threshold hungry creatues, adding Mongrel seemed like a no-brainer. Mongrel and TFK allow the inclusion of a few Deep Analysis for extra card drawing.     

Well without further ado I present to you my creation:

Thirsthold

Artifacts:
5Moxen
1Lotus
3Phyrexian Furnace
2Pithing Needle

Creatures:
4Mongrel
4Rootwalla
3Mongoose
3Werebear

Instants:
4Brainstorm
4Force of Will
4TFK
1Stifle
1Gush
1Ancestral Recall

Sorceries:
2Deep Analysis
1Walk

Nonbasic Lands:
3Flooded Strand
2Polluted Delta
4Tropical Island
4Wasteland
1Strip

Basic Lands:
3Island

Sideboard: (Depends on local metagame but here’s an example)
3Waterfront Bouncer
3Naturalize
3Oxidize
2Needle
2Stifle
2Misdirection

For those of you who may be skeptical about the Oath matchup, the sideboard should be a little comforting. I don’t believe the Oath hate is overboard, because in most cases I find such things like Waterfront Bouncer useful in other matchups like Tinker/ Colossus.

So there it is. I hope the list looks interesting and you can spend time to make any suggestions.

[Moxlotus]

How do you have the mana to cast things like Analysis and TFK.  Shouldn't that be being spent on dropping guys onto the table?  Also you are using wastes, so you delay the card drawers even longer.  It will take a long time to cast TFK to madness your guys into play.

Also, why no Vial?

[magus888]

First off, TFK is played after I drop my guys on the table, giving them threshhold. The creatures in my starting hand (usually 2) are dropped by 2nd turn, and even 1st with a good hand. Third turn is when I usually play TFK. I've noticed 3rd turn is when previous builds lost all their "umph". Deep Analysis is most often played late game to refill my hand. Like Madness decks, I play Analysis from the yard 99% of the time. On to your question about vial. I've found that vials take up a slot that could be used for creatures. Other builds run Vial because they don't always have the available mana to drop all their creatures. As in the case of Meddling Mage. UW is usually hard to come buy when running strip affects and Factories. I do miss dropping my guys at instant speed, but that is the sacrifice you make for tempo. And if they want to counter one of my guys let them, that's just one less counter they have to use against my more important threats.     

You'll probably have to playtest the deck for yourself to see what the hell I'm talking about. Having Playtested the deck for weeks, I've found it just works.

[andrewpate]

Other builds run Vial because they don't always have the available mana to drop all their creatures. As in the case of Meddling Mage. UW is usually hard to come buy when running strip affects and Factories. I do miss dropping my guys at instant speed, but that is the sacrifice you make for tempo. And if they want to counter one of my guys let them, that's just one less counter they have to use against my more important threats.

You could not possibly have missed the point of AEther Vial any more.  Color fixing, instant speed, and uncounterability are all extremely subsidiary reasons to run Vial.  You sacrifice Vial to gain tempo?  Tempo is not having extra creatures (which, by the way, isn't what you should be cutting for Vial anyway...  exactly how few creatures were you actually running when you tested with Vials?), tempo is dropping what you have early.  The purpose of AEther Vial is to go turn 1:  Tropical Island, AEther Vial; turn 2:  Island, Wild Mongrel, Basking Rootwalla, Nimble Mongoose; turn 3:  Fetch-->Trop, Thirst for Knowledge, Brainstorm, Werebear.  Your deck is absolutely incapable of this sort of tempo except with Black Lotus.

A few other comments:

--Why the one untutorable maindeck Stifle?  Maindeck Stifle is really a metagame call, and it's either there or it isn't.  If you see it as being trash often enough that you only want to run one of them, just relegate it to the sideboard entirely.

--I think that you need more than 2 copies of Pithing Needle in the maindeck if you aren't going to run Null Rod.  Phyrexian Furnace really isn't that fantastic except against a few decks (Gifts, Dragon).  If Needle is your gameplan against everything packing Goblin Welder, then you need 3 or 4 copies because, as you say, there are a lot of Welders out there.  Remember that without Null Rod, you aren't hosing artifact mana any more, so you need to be ready for Workshop decks.  This build isn't.

--I must agree with Moxlotus:  your draw engine seems weak.  TFK and Deep Analysis costs piles of mana that your deck just isn't ready to produce.  12 draw spells to 14 creatures seems like an odd ratio anyway, and when only 5 of those draw spells cost less than 3 mana (well, I guess you can count Gush, but I find that pretty terrible in the deck for its own reasons, namely TEMPO).

Essentially, you're going to have to convince me why this is better than straight U/G Madness, which is bad.  That deck has more fat, more countermagic, and better draw.  I don't understand why I would play this when with that much Power I could be playing Slaver.

[[FtN|FH] Negator]

I'm not sure  if TFK is the right draw engine for this deck but assuming that a 3 cc Spell is the right Choice:
Why not try Compulsive Research?
The benefit: You run much more lands than artifacts. The big disadvantage Compulsive Research normaly has, it's only a sorcery not an instant, is no disadvantage for you. Like you said you are going to cast it after you played your other spells from hand. So you have nothing else that you could cast(e.g. mana drain) in this turn. This is a big difference to the "normal" control decks that run TFK.

[Duncan]

Furnace/Needle

3.Laughs at Tinker/Gift Combo
 

i do not see how these two cards stop tinker :O

[magus888]

Furnace/Needle

3.Laughs at Tinker/Gift Combo
 

i do not see how these two cards stop tinker :O

They Gift, you choose tinker to go to the yard, and you sac Furnace and remove tinker from the game. 

[AmbivalentDuck]

Rather than applying a good/bad test, a better/worse test may be useful.

How is this deck *better* than the U/B Fish builds that have been circulating?

Other "Mox Fish" builds can do "broken" things like dropping a first turn Dark Confidant, Kataki, or Rootwater Thief.  On the other hand, your greatest ability to abuse your moxen seems to involve a turn 1 Wild Mongrel.  So whereas Confidant can outdraw control, Kataki can severely slow Stax, and Thief can dissect many decks, you can kill your opponent in 5 turns instead of 6.

I'm not shooting you down, I'm asking a question: what can this deck do that's broken?  What makes it better than Food Chain Goblins with Tormod's Crypt?

[MoxMonkey]

The deck looks interesting but thinking it as Fish is the wrong idea. This looks like a hybrid of Madness and Bird Shit.  I think it could do well but I think you needa rethink your stratagy.  I would try to bring this more in a madness view and Gifts doesn't need to Gifts for Tinker so your plan about using Furnace just lost to good Gifts players.  They will Gifts for Tutors or flat out broken spells like Ancestral Walk Thirst a second Gifts or 4 Lands to thin out their deck.  Furnace doesn't stop Tinker it stops Gifts from being casted for the easy pile to win with.

[jpmeyer]

Furnace/Needle

3.Laughs at Tinker/Gift Combo
 

i do not see how these two cards stop tinker :O

They Gift, you choose tinker to go to the yard, and you sac Furnace and remove tinker from the game. 

Or they Mystical Tutor for Tinker and cast it.

[xrobx]

Quote from: Duncan on Today at 07:47:01 AM
Quote from: magus888 on Today at 05:40:38 AM

Furnace/Needle

3.Laughs at Tinker/Gift Combo
 


i do not see how these two cards stop tinker :O


They Gift, you choose tinker to go to the yard, and you sac Furnace and remove tinker from the game. 


Or they Mystical Tutor for Tinker and cast it.

Even better, if it is strictly gifts (not oathgifts) we're speaking, they WILL simply cast tinker.  They will get it, and cast it.  First, they will likely build up their hand for the counter war/CA, and search it out, then cast it.  Any gifts player that sees furnace on the field and gifts' for tinker is retarded.  That's like playing Ancestral with a chalice at 1 on the board.

Aside from all of this, you have only 4 counterspells. 4.  This is absolutely terrible.  Sure, it's good if you make it up in other forms of disruption, but there are very few present here.  All together, your "fish" build has 11 disruption cards; only 4 of which are instants that actually guarentee disruption, the other 7 are lame examples of selective disruption.  I'm not saying needle/furnace is bad, I'm simply saying that is insufficient disruption.  Also, stifle is too conditional to warrant a spot in this deck.  It should be something like cunning wish.

Just some food for thought; my fish runs 20-22 disruption cards, and 8-10 cards that constitute a draw engine.  Comparitively, you have 11 disruption and 13 to draw. 

Playing creatures that interact nicely with the graveyard hardly warrants the deck to be called fish.  It also has awful tempo.

[J J P]

First of all, if all what you are facing is Oath and Stax you should not play Fish, I believe. Second, unless your meta is very control-heavy: why play Fish if you have access to all Moxen and Lotus?

[magus888]

why play Fish if you have access to all Moxen and Lotus?

I myself play Chalice Oath, but I'm just trying to bring some new ideas to a dying archtype.

[Juggernaut GO]

greyscale crocodile and curiosity, nuff said

[Dante]

why play Fish if you have access to all Moxen and Lotus?

I myself play Chalice Oath, but I'm just trying to bring some new ideas to a dying archtype.

I would hardly call it "dying".  An innovative build made top 8 at SCG Chicago and there is the thread about the U/b version with Dark Confidant that ended up 11th.  Both of these are new builds that used previously unused cards to achieve good results.  But notice the amount of disruption in both of them rather than medium-size beats.  Cards like Meddling Mage, Withered Wretch, True Believer, that card that taps creates, etc is what you need.  What you have just doesn't cut it vs decks that comprise a large part of the field (Gifts, Oath).

[Vegeta2711]

Here's how to 'innovate' Fish. Look at 1.x, steal the tech from builds that are doing well, play said tech here.

Short list of cards.
LFTL
Duress / Cabal Therapy
Dark Confidant
Kataki, War's Wage
Suppression Field
More maindeck metagame answers

[Moriarty]

As many have said in the past, “Fish is not a deck, it’s an idea�. Fish’s main principle is to disrupt your opponent and then kill him/her with small but efficient creatures. The idea looks good on paper but when you test it in the field it all of a sudden becomes rubbish. The fundamental flaw in Fish is that doesn’t really take advantage of anything. It comes out strong but then begins to fail mid to late game. The reason this happens is Fish’s disruption only slows down an opponent not stop what he/she is trying to do. Fish also lacks a powerful draw engine, making it stall out.

To be fair, I think your deck looks good.

But it has nothing to do with Fish.

If Fish is an idea then you got the wrong idea somehow. Fish is not equal to aggro-control. Fish does not run small but efficient creatures (in terms of power). Fish runs tiny creatures (ineffective in terms of power) that have either a disruptive function, or a utility function, typically as part of the deck's draw engine. Yes, Fish does have a draw engine, it is one of the defining features of Fish that it is aggro-control with a draw engine, often a strong one even by T1 measures. Fish does not come out strong in the beginning. It comes out weak, stalls the game over many turns, and finishes strong. There is a very good article on Fish here
http://www.themanadrain.com/forums/index.php?topic=25595.0

Please call your deck something else.

[TopSecret]

greyscale crocodile and curiosity, nuff said

     Good God man!!! Don't leak my secret tech!!!



     First off, I like the concept of your deck. I tried a U/g threshold/ madness deck before. The deck can be very good in general, especially for players on a budget. The use of the moxes can also be avoided to an extent. I’m sure your deck has been well tuned, but I will offer my input in hopes that it will give you ideas for improvement. I am no expert, so take my advice with a grain of salt.

     Firstly, TFK seems somewhat cumbersome. This is simply for the fact that it requires a turn of tapping out to play it, thus slowing your creature production. Also, it costs three mana.

     When playing aggro-control decks, I’ve found that it is only possible to beat and/or outrace Workshop and Manadrain decks by putting out a constant flow of creatures. For this reason, I believe your draw spells should supplement creature output and consistency, instead of being full turn commitments. By removing TFK and replacing it with cheaper draw/discard/threshold enhancers, you might be able to increase your ability to create a quick clock. You might even be able to cut back on your mana sources, which are numerous.

     You could always add in Mental Notes. They are very good with Brainstorm supplemented with Deep Analysis. Also, they help you get/maintain threshold.

     Secondly, I think you need to run more cheap counterspells. You should have at least 8-12. The counters stop threats you can’t deal with, which are numerous. Also, they give you the time you need to beat down your opponent.

     Daze is good, as it stop threats in the early game while you lay down creatures.

     Circular Logic is also very good. So good in fact, that I remodeled my deck to fit them in. However, I can understand if adding in more madness outlets is a bit of a stretch, as it may change the direction you want the deck to go in.

     Good luck with the deck.

[MoxMonkey]

Nothing against you TopSecret and Juggernaut but thats my Tech since the Preview of Ravinca cards was out we had him in Sengir Fish.  So My tech. 

Anyway fish is all about synergy, cheap efficient counters, and those always cool metagame cards.  Vegeta gave a nice list of different creatures but what you really want is some good cheap draw.  Curiosity's are nice and so are Brainstorms and or Telling Times.  You don't want to have to Leave 3 mana open to cast a draw spell which a lot of the time isn't going to gain card advantage for you.  If you want to use a threshold based deck I would suggest going to the bird shit thread and see what they have going.

I agree more counters are needed because the format may have slowed down but kills have speed up a lot.  Slaver use to take a few turns after a will to truly kill you but now it kills during a will.  Gifts will cast a quick Tinker for DSC or Gifts for the DSC walking.  Daze and or Logic or a combination of both should help you maintain the board.

I really like the random 1 of's in decks like fish cause you see them when you need them from my testing.  This doesn't sound right but in so many games vs my Sengir fish build it tends to give you the 1 misdirection when I have ancestral.  Maybe its the player but Its been really nice. 

Dark Confident may be good but should be tested.  Kataki, War's Wage is very good if Stax is played in your metagame.

[J J P]

why play Fish if you have access to all Moxen and Lotus?

I myself play Chalice Oath, but I'm just trying to bring some new ideas to a dying archtype.

Fish is not dying. It can be viable but that depends highly on the metagame. Plus, the deck itself always needs to be built for a specific metagame. Just look at the Fish decks that make T8, these are nearly always builds that differ from standard Fish netdecks.

[Liek]

I'm going to rant about why I don't like Fish decks like these. I'll try to keep it peaceful.

If your plan is to not play Vial, Chalice, Kataki, or Rod in favor of Needles and Furnaces, why are you playing so few? Fish needs to play down its disruption on the first turn to win. Why would a Fish deck want to cast Thirst for Knowledge on the first turn? The only thing you could draw off this that would matter would be a Force of Will. Fish's cards are all weak, playing straight up draw spells isn't worth doing, since the other decks will outdraw you and will be drawing signifcantly better cards all the time.

Fish doesn't want to "draw" cards through a typical card draw spell, but synergistic card drawing elements like Ninja or Standstill are ideal for Fish. Instead of looking for bulk cards, they "dig" for what should be the final punch, the Force of Will that should seal the game after your early disruption.

Your creatures need to be better (more disruptive, I mean.) You have to make your opponent care about what you are doing. Your creatures won't bother them at all, even if they are in threshold mode. Sure, Wild Mongrel hits for a good amount if are willing to part with your cards, but Oath will be very happy with you if you play down a 2 mana 2/2. They won't even need an Orchard to beat you. Creatures like Meddling Mage and Kataki, War's Wage will bother your opponents. Sure, they don't hit as hard as a thresholded Mongoose or Bear. But the Bear and Mongrel and such don't stop your opponent from Tinkering a Colosus or ramping their Smokestack or Belching your face or Yawg Willing into oblivion.

What I'm trying to say is that Fish wins through fast disruption, not fat men. You can't outdraw anybody, you can't beat them through card quality, and you most certainly cannot win a long game. Your guys don't need to be 4/4s to kill them, 2/2s with disruptive abilities are far better.

[Imsomniac101]

The fundamental flaw with  Fish as a deck imo is that it plays way too many creatures.

Creatures suck because:
a) they take too long to win
b) are relatively mana intensive for the effect they give you
c) cannot be cast during your opponent's turn

this is the reason why Fish is seen as a bad deck. Too many creatures. Not enough effective disruption. Slow clock.

[Liek]

But the creatures can be part of the disruption package. Meddling Mage, Kataki, Voidmage Prodigy, and other such creatures can complement the other disruptive elements of the deck.

And with Aether Vial creatures can be put into play during your opponent's turn (your point "c") at instant speed while getting around Mana Drain.

[J J P]

this is the reason why Fish is seen as a bad deck. Too many creatures. Not enough effective disruption. Slow clock.

I must contradict, Fish initially could work because it did not follow the rules of Vintage decks and abused the fact that others did:

- Good decks don't rely on creatures. As a result there is not very much creature hate and people tend to underestimate harmless creatures.
- Good decks use artifacts. Artifacts are hated. They have quite a few dead cards against decks not packing lots of artifacts.
- Good decks use life points as a resource because life does not matter against the fast clocks of good decks. Against a slow clock life matters.
- Good decks use Moxen.
- Good decks make efficient use of their mana.

If you look at what Fish was when it started it was good because it took advantage of how good decks work (in other words: Fish was good because it was a bad deck). Nowdays the situation of course is completly different and quite a few of the things that made Fish good don't apply to the good decks of today. I believe some kind of a Fish deck can work even today, but most lists somewhat emerged from the original U/R version. And the complete concept of that list does not apply to the current metagame.

Maybe people should rethink what 'Fish' stands for. Fish should not be a blue and creature based deck built around the skeleton of a rogue deck from 2003 but just the idea to build a budget deck that abuses the gaps of dominant strategies. So to build a deck worthy the name Fish you would need to find the gaps in the good decks of 2005 and then get a list together from scratch. However, IMHO the metagame is more diverse and undefined now than it was back in 2003, making the task much harder to acomplish.

[Imsomniac101]

My post was probably too short for you to interpret it the way i meant it to be.

Fish is a bad deck because its cards are inefficient. Come on, Cloud of Faeries is just a wasted slot. And we all know that Spiketail Hatchling is ineffiecent use of mana.

IMO the way for Fish to go is down the path that Birdshit and WuTang have gone. Not just copying the tech, but the concept that you should be getting the most out of the cards in your deck and the amount of space in your deck. ie card efficiency.

The problem with too many creatures is that you cannot disrupt your opponent as effectively, or as quickly.

Also, you should concentrate on disrupting your opponent first before looking at beats.

[J J P]

Fish is a bad deck because its cards are inefficient. Come on, Cloud of Faeries is just a wasted slot. And we all know that Spiketail Hatchling is ineffiecent use of mana.

In GayRed-Fish these cards were great and very efficient. You can't look at them without looking at the rest of the deck. First of all both are bodies for curiosity. Cloud of Faeries enables more consistant Standstill on turn 2. When opponents are used to using mana efficiently and their Moxen are shut of Spiketail Hatchling's ability can turn it into an uncounterable counterspell. Also don't forget that their fragility makes them likely to fill your graveyard with ammunition for Grim Lavamancer. Last but not least they are more or less unblockable attackers in the meta of 2003.

Cloud of Faeries and Spiketail Hatchling are crap on their own, but in GayRed-Fish they fulfilled many roles. Just like you demand - in the context of the deck they were used in - they are efficient use of slots. But in another build they will likely bad.

[Wikoogle]

how about a black splash.

black has a bunch of awesome utility creatures(withered wretch), the best card drawing creature ever made, and some other goodies from ravinca.

it also has some great fatties like phyrexian negator that are perfect in this environment where most of the creatures are welders and burn isn't anywhere to be found.

also duress is awesome

and if you include the tinker, dsc minicombo to deal with aggro and randomness, black will give you three great tutors to get it out consistently.

i think that would all make the deck much more competitive.