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Author Topic: [Deck] URBana Fish  (Read 31514 times)
ErkBek
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« on: April 29, 2006, 09:37:51 pm »

After running IT for 9 straight tournaments, I needed a break. So I built an updated old favorite of mine UR fish, with a black splash for the creature that is being tried in every vintage deck, dark confidant. After a little testing and a lot of brainstorming here is the list I came to

Quote
URBana Fish
Mana 25
5 Moxen
1 Lotus
1 Strip
4 Waste
3 Volcanic
2 Underground Sea
4 Flooded Strand
3 Polluted Delta
2 Island

Creatures 15
4 Gorilla Shaman
4 Ninja
3 Waterfront Bouncer
4 Dark Confidant

Draw/stuff 4
1 Ancestral
1 Time Walk
1 Mystical
1 Curiosity

Disruption 16
4 FoW
3 Chalice
4 Daze
3 Remand
2 Rack and Ruin

SB 15
2 Rack and Ruin
4 Pryoblast
3 Planar Void
3 Fire/Ice
3 Arcane Lab

I've played the deck in 3 tournaments resulting in a split for a mox, a t4 (split with teammate), and 2-1-1 (miss t4). The deck destroys gifts, is slightly favorable against slaver, even/slightly unfavorable vs. stax, slightly unfavorable vs. combo, and slightly unfavorable vs. oath. The maindeck 2 Rack and Ruins along with the mystical tutor significantly help the stax matchup. I've been running 1 curiosity and a 3rd remand, however they can probably be replaced with Duress, Planar Void, Stifles, Jittes, or even Shred Memory depending on metagames and play styles. I personally think remand is awesome in the deck, its time walks 2 and 3, while mystical is the 4th. The Mox monkey and chalice disruption plan is superior to null rod for mana denial in fish largely because you can abuse moxen too. The deck is the best fish deck to date IMO. However, it heavily relies on getting a draw engine online otherwise you play a bunch of bad cards and then you lose. Anyways, here is my SB plan

Gifts
+4 Pyroblast
+3 Planar Void
-2 Rack and/or Ruin
-1 Mystical tutor
-1 Ninja
-1 Remand
-1 Curiosity
-1 Mox (if on the play)
-1 Island (if on the  draw)

Slaver
+4 Pryoblast
-1 Curiosity
-1 Mystical Tutor
-1 Ninja or R&R
-1 Mox (if on the play)
-1 Island (if on the  draw)

U/W Fish
+3 Fire/Ice
+4 Pyroblast
-2 Remand
-3 Chalice
-2 Daze

Grim Long
+3 Planar Void
+3 Arcane Lab
-1 Island
-1 Ninja
-1 Mystical
-1 Daze
-2 Rack and ruin

Oath
-2 Rack and Ruin
+2 Pyroblast

I think the deck is much better than UW fish and should be a consideration to anybody looking to play a rogue aggro control deck. With that said, I'd rather play a broken deck. So I'm returning to IT.

Feel free to post any questions, comments, or suggestions.

-Eric Becker
« Last Edit: May 09, 2006, 04:50:33 pm by kobefan » Logged

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« Reply #1 on: April 30, 2006, 12:10:45 am »

I played against Greg playing this deck, and honestly wasn't overly impressed. I like some of the concepts behind this, but think that it needs work as a whole.

Mox Monkey with chalice is a great combination, and shuts down opposing mana pretty well. That is probably the most 1-sided fish mana denial plan that I have seen. I like the idea a lot.

The colors also seem that they would work well together, make for great customizable slots and meta hate. Plus, the colors make a pretty cool name...


As for the things I think are wrong with this deck, there are a few things.

First of all, I am not personally a big fan of remand or daze in fish. Both are very soft counters and easy to play around. Neither has a very big effect, and they both contradict each other. Daze is an early, free counter, at the cost of a little tempo on your part. Remand however is a counter made purely to generate tempo, and replace itself. They are complete opposites, and serve completely different purposes. I don't think that running both at the same time is a very good idea.

Another thing that bothers me a little bit is the creature base. You are clogged with 2 drops, and have only 1 set of 1 drop guys to enable turn 2 ninja. I would also like to point out that only 1 of your creatures lives through a darkblast, which is seeing more and more play. Also, how good is bouncer really in a deck like this? You don't really have a great draw engine, or a ton of pitchable cards. This leads me to my next point...

You seem to be running a somewhat large (for a fish deck at least) number of potentially dead cards. You also have a kind of weak draw engine, relying heavily on confidant and ninja. Confidant isn't a bad draw engine, but catches lots of hate being a 2/1. Ninja can be slow to ninja in a deck like this, which is bad because of his importance. The lone curiosity also seems like an odd choice, as it might get stuck in hand frequently, especially with so few creatures.


I think that adding in another 1 drop and another ninja, taking out the curiosity and the bouncer could be very good. But what to add is the hard part. For stax, you could try goblin vandal. For a more aggro approach you could try carnophage. My pick though would be flying men, as it has evasion for the ninja.

As for the disruption, I think stifle is pretty damn good. Also, mana leak is, for fish, just as viable as remand, though I have limited testing with remand. Remand would probably stay for testing if I were to play this, it seems like a great tempo card.

I DO also really like your sideboard, it looks like a lot of thought went into it, and looks like it is diverse enough to cover a lot of ground.

These are just some of my thoughts form the little bit of this deck I have seen, everyone may take them for nothing, others might actually consider them. Either way, good look tweaking this and have fun playing more busted piles!

-Grant
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« Reply #2 on: April 30, 2006, 12:26:37 am »

Bouncers are there so you don't get absolutely destroyed by Oath or a Tinkered out DSC.  It should be noted that Eric designed this deck trying to ensure he would never lose to DSC.  Hence the Monkeys, Chalices, Bouncers, and counters.

Quote
Both are very soft counters and easy to play around.

If the opponent is playing around them, that's perfectly fine.  They aren't doing anything while you draw an extra card each turn and beat down for 2-4 damage.

Quote
  I would also like to point out that only 1 of your creatures lives through a darkblast, which is seeing more and more play.

Definitely one of the biggest weaknesses of the deck.  Darkblast really hurts.
« Last Edit: April 30, 2006, 12:31:09 am by Moxlotus » Logged

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« Reply #3 on: April 30, 2006, 02:25:28 am »

I played against Greg playing this deck, and honestly wasn't overly impressed. I like some of the concepts behind this, but think that it needs work as a whole.

You've got to remember that you drew the nuts both games that you played vs. greg.

Quote
As for the things I think are wrong with this deck, there are a few things.

First of all, I am not personally a big fan of remand or daze in fish. Both are very soft counters and easy to play around. Neither has a very big effect, and they both contradict each other. Daze is an early, free counter, at the cost of a little tempo on your part. Remand however is a counter made purely to generate tempo, and replace itself. They are complete opposites, and serve completely different purposes. I don't think that running both at the same time is a very good idea.

Daze is for the early game to resolve your spells, Remand is for the late game. Simple as that. They serve different purposes  and that's why I run them.

Quote
Another thing that bothers me a little bit is the creature base. You are clogged with 2 drops, and have only 1 set of 1 drop guys to enable turn 2 ninja. I would also like to point out that only 1 of your creatures lives through a darkblast, which is seeing more and more play. Also, how good is bouncer really in a deck like this? You don't really have a great draw engine, or a ton of pitchable cards. This leads me to my next point...

I run a full set of moxen to help drop bouncers and confidants on turn 1 so I can ninja them out on turn 2. Darkblast is usually not much of a problem because I run wasteland so they rarely recur it.

Quote
You seem to be running a somewhat large (for a fish deck at least) number of potentially dead cards. You also have a kind of weak draw engine, relying heavily on confidant and ninja. Confidant isn't a bad draw engine, but catches lots of hate being a 2/1. Ninja can be slow to ninja in a deck like this, which is bad because of his importance. The lone curiosity also seems like an odd choice, as it might get stuck in hand frequently, especially with so few creatures.

Fish can run dead cards since you usually draw 2 cards a turn. I've been running the 1 curiosity because I felt that the deck needed a little more draw

Quote
I think that adding in another 1 drop and another ninja, taking out the curiosity and the bouncer could be very good. But what to add is the hard part. For stax, you could try goblin vandal. For a more aggro approach you could try carnophage. My pick though would be flying men, as it has evasion for the ninja.

I tested vandal and cut it for rack and ruins. He was only useful vs. stax in my opening hand. Even when I dropped him turn 1 I still lost a fairly large amount of games. Either stax would A) waste my volcanic B) block with a welder or c) granite shard or tangle my guy out.

I think you are greatly underrating bouncer in here. Bouncer is a house vs. gifts, oath, and aggro. Bouncer never seems good until you are the opponent playing against him. I also think flying man is about the worst 1/1 available to the deck and should never be ran in vintage.


Quote
-Grant

-Eric
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« Reply #4 on: April 30, 2006, 03:03:00 am »

Ok, I admit that I drew the nuts against Greg, but from my teamates tlaking they were beating Rhyno and the other guy playing this pretty easily. Anyways...

I admit that I am probably under-rating bouncer. I played him in WTF, but even then had a somewhat difficult time choosing what to pitch. It might be that I haven't played fish for too long, it might be that my logic is flawed because it is late and I am tired... Bouncer is good, the only thing that worries me with him is the inability to bounce non-creatures, which can matter a lot in certain matchs like stax.

I admitted that I would at least test with remand, because it can produce a lot of tempo quickly. That is good for fish, and remand is a decent time walk. Daze is just a card I have never been sold on in fish, because it can slow you down dramitcally. This may seem like less of an issue with your deck, running full power (no one counts twister...), but I still don't think it is that great of an idea, since you also don't play many 1-drops. Stifle proved to be amazing all day whenever I would play them in fish, and daze always slowed me down way too much.

Goblin Vandal isn't the greatest idea, no. It's late, I'm tired, he sucks. Flying men is another issue altogether. In blue you can't get a much better 1-drop, especailly for an aggressive deck. I may be slightly biased from playing WTF, a more aggro deck, though. The ninja issue isn't as big, because I admit I missed the fact you are running off color moxes as well. That gives you erasonable odds of turn 2 ninja, probably enough in retrospect to not have to add the flying men. I DO stand by the fact that curiosity should either be run in multiples or dropped for the 4th ninja. Curiosity is very easy to stop. With the ninja there is at least a little surprise factor. Plus, the ninja doesn't auto-die to darkblast.

As for running dead cards, I would suggest trying cards that aren't quite as useful in certain matchups, but give you an amount of "reach." That allows you to not only draw multiple answers, but those answers are never completely dead. An example of a great fish reach card is jitte, or possibly SoFI. I prefer the jitte, but either is good, because SoFI cantrips as well, but jitte gives you more options and doesn't have to hit the player.


-Grant
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« Reply #5 on: April 30, 2006, 03:27:10 am »

Goblin Vandal isn't the greatest idea, no. It's late, I'm tired, he sucks. Flying men is another issue altogether. In blue you can't get a much better 1-drop, especailly for an aggressive deck. I may be slightly biased from playing WTF, a more aggro deck, though. The ninja issue isn't as big, because I admit I missed the fact you are running off color moxes as well. That gives you erasonable odds of turn 2 ninja, probably enough in retrospect to not have to add the flying men. I DO stand by the fact that curiosity should either be run in multiples or dropped for the 4th ninja. Curiosity is very easy to stop. With the ninja there is at least a little surprise factor. Plus, the ninja doesn't auto-die to darkblast.

I play 4 Ninja, check out my list. DB isn't as bad as it seems. Counter the first then waste there land or just draw more cards.

As for running dead cards, I would suggest trying cards that aren't quite as useful in certain matchups, but give you an amount of "reach." That allows you to not only draw multiple answers, but those answers are never completely dead. An example of a great fish reach card is jitte, or possibly SoFI. I prefer the jitte, but either is good, because SoFI cantrips as well, but jitte gives you more options and doesn't have to hit the player.

Jitte is very narrow. I played it for a while and it sucked hard. Sword is good, but is tough not to play directly into mana drain. I'm ok with playing a curiosity into drain but not a sword.

-Grant

-Eric
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« Reply #6 on: April 30, 2006, 12:04:31 pm »

Man, whoever gave you the idea must have been insane!  Probobly as sexy as the guy who inspired you to run intution.

hes probobly a sexy beast.
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« Reply #7 on: April 30, 2006, 01:35:43 pm »


Cool deck.  I really like the Shaman Chalice combo, allowing you to run your own acceleration.

How did Duress and Stiffle work out?  It seems like they would be striclty superior choices than Remand.  Was Chains of Mephistophilies considered?



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« Reply #8 on: April 30, 2006, 04:38:58 pm »

we tested becker-fish w these changes

-1 curiosity
-4 daze
+1 remand
+1 bouncer
+1 chalice
+2 REB

this is top tier among fish, but its got none of the scariness behind I.T.
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« Reply #9 on: April 30, 2006, 05:27:12 pm »

I missed the fourth ninja. It was late, I was tired, I hardly ever saw them when I watched the deck being played. Ok, so all four ninja are included, which is good.

I still think daze seems week overall, and adding another remand seems good. Vroman's addition of REBs doesn't sound too bad, and could actually help a lot if you decide to play something like Sword. The fourth chalice seems also to be strong, because it can probably suck to not have that or monkey in your opening grip.

Sword and Jitte still seem solid to me, although I will admit they are sort of hit or miss depending exactly on how you play. They can dig you out of a lot of holes, but can sometimes end up being just as dead as curiosity or R&R, except more expensive.

One thing I would like to inquire about is how exactly to play this deck. Fish can play out very uniquely depending on the build and pilot. This seems like it is designed to be based heavily on gaining more card advantage than your opponent. However, your draw engines are creatures that are easy to chump and get hit with common welder hate.

So my question is, when the card advantage plan fails, then what happens? Do you try to play the control deck, even though you only play 4 hard counters and some creature bounce? Or do you attemp to become the beatdown, dropping as many guys into the red as possible and risking getting 2-for-1ed or more by things like lave dart, d-blast, or pyroclasm?

-Grant

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« Reply #10 on: April 30, 2006, 06:21:23 pm »

The other thing I noticed was the lack of 2 power beaters.  With 15 creatures and no Factories you are already light in this department.  Replacing Flying Men/Faerries with Lions and Hounds in u/w Fish added quite a bit of consistency.  Perhaps something like Carnophage could function here.  Grim Lavamancer is also a consideration. 

+4 Carnophage
+1 CotV
+3 Stiffle/Duress

-1 Shaman
-1 Ninja
-1 Curiosity
-1 RnR
-4 Daze/Remand

What Matchups are improved from some of the u/w versions out there?



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« Reply #11 on: April 30, 2006, 07:14:55 pm »

Why run Waterfront Bouncer when Extract does the same thing without being dead against combo?
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« Reply #12 on: April 30, 2006, 07:19:54 pm »

Bouncers are there so you don't get absolutely destroyed by Oath or a Tinkered out DSC.  It should be noted that Eric designed this deck trying to ensure he would never lose to DSC.  Hence the Monkeys, Chalices, Bouncers, and counters.


Extract doesn't stop the DSK once it's out there (easy to slip it out quickly), nor does it attack for 1 in the meantime.
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« Reply #13 on: April 30, 2006, 07:38:04 pm »

I've always liked Daze, but you guys are probably right, I may be running a few to many. I did like vroman's proposed changes, however Duress may be the way to go instead of Rebs.

The deck struggles when its not drawing lots of cards, however a faster clock will not help. Carnophage is bad largely because he lacks abilities, but also because he makes you find Usea turn 1. I'd rather see a bouncer in my hand in most situations.

I really wouldn't cut a RnR since they are really critical in the stax matchup. RnR always has targets vs. slaver and is decent mana denial vs. gifts.

I'd consider
-2 Daze
-1 Curiosity
+3 Duress
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« Reply #14 on: May 01, 2006, 10:45:53 am »

This deck is completely unplayable in our (non-proxy) meta, with random aggro decks that will give you a pretty hard time.

Did you test vs UW Fish? It looks like a very unfavorable matchup. Shaman doesn´t really do anything, your Chalices are worthless while their Rods are not. They have Swords while you have Bouncers with summoning sickness. They have uncounterable blockers and Stifles for you Ninjas and strip effects.

I don´t understand why Remand is better than Mana Leak. We all know that Fish decks run 60 bad cards, so I´d much rather see their bomb in the graveyard than draw a card myself. And by the time the opponent can pay for its Mana Leak, you are already in a bad shape. In that case Mana Leak is a "lose more" card compared to Remand.

E.g.: how do you feel when you have Remand in the hand, no strip effect on the table and opponent plays a free Massacre?

You´re not running Factories. That means that Massacre/Pyroclasm takes out your complete board. UW Fish at least has its factories that survive those sorcery mass removal spells.

This deck looks like one that wins against good decks and loses vs bad decks.
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« Reply #15 on: May 01, 2006, 11:33:19 am »

Yeah, this deck wrecked me 4-0 (I was playing Gifts).  I deserved it though, because I had taken almost everything anti-Fish out of my sideboard for that tournament.  I also wasn't playing very well.

This deck is much closer in feel to old-school PTW fish than the U/W and WTF lists that have been more popular recently.  It has a very strong draw engine and very cheap creatures.  People forget that what made Fish good was the fact that it had the best draw engine in the format.
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« Reply #16 on: May 01, 2006, 11:49:17 am »

People forget that what made Fish good was the fact that it had the best draw engine in the format.

Are you kidding? Fish has and has had the worst draw engine in the format. If they get behind on card advantage at all they have no good way of recovering. I have played fish since the days of UR. What made UR fish good was that people were playing terrible manabases and no basics, remember 4cc? It had no basics, and strip effects. Fish housed the meta because it destroyed the terrible manabases of tog, 4cc and early control slaver.

Also, coming from one of the few people that has played confidant in a ton of decks, I can say that confidant can actually be a weak draw engine, what makes it strong is the disruption that goes with, and the ability to buy time walks. Confidant can be bad against decks that work to win insanely fast, as you are unable to get the necessary turns to actually get cards off him. So confidant himself is a fragile draw engine, as is and was curiosity. What makes it strong is the disruption package that goes with it.

This is why he's so awesome against stax. He draws you cards for free, so you don't have to play spells, and stax is incredibly slow.

Also, I can't see playing this deck without duress. Duress seems infinitely better than daze, and duress is insanely good in the format right now. Plus you can afford to run  a basic swamp, which makes duress a billion times better.
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« Reply #17 on: May 01, 2006, 12:39:09 pm »

Quote
Fish has and has had the worst draw engine in the format.
circa summer 2004 Fish:
1 Ancestral Recall
4 Standstill
4 Curiosity
1 Library of Alexandria

same era Tog:
1 Ancestral
1 Library of Alexandria
4 Accumulated Knowledge
2 Deep Analysis
3 Intuition
4 Brainstorm

Those two decks were the contenders for title of best draw engine.  Nothing else in the format came close.  Between those two the choice isn't clear entirely clear, but Fish clearly had the more mana efficient engine, frequently generating advantage for 1-2 mana.  Barring an Ancestral it was hard for Hulk to do the same for less than 4-5.  In my experience the Fish/Tog matchup came down to which deck's draw engine clicked first, and more often than not the answer was Fish's.
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« Reply #18 on: May 01, 2006, 12:42:25 pm »

Have you tried testing viashino heretic in place of the maindeck R&Rs and random curiosity??  As a 3 of, it shouldn't be too bad.  It won't die to a turn 1 darkblast, allowing you to go turn 2 ninja.  It has the same functional purpose as R&R, but seems to be great against DSC, stax (a weaker matchup possibly?), stupid platinum angels that buzz around, and random artifact decks/cards you may come across (see ubastax, ubacap, metalworker, etc.)  Just a thought.

How is your aggro matchup??  Planar void seems good for graveyard things (ichorid, madness, etc) but is it better than crypt when you're not running null rods?

Lastly, has lavamancer been tested thoroughly??  He is bomb in the aggro/fish matchups, which I'm not sure how well you do in anyhow...??  Your creature base is decent, the bouncer has always been what lets fish play with the fatness of type one, but as mentioned before, a swamp is probably your worst enemy as it allows tons of blasting all day long.
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« Reply #19 on: May 01, 2006, 12:57:44 pm »

Quote
Fish has and has had the worst draw engine in the format.
circa summer 2004 Fish:
1 Ancestral Recall
4 Standstill
4 Curiosity
1 Library of Alexandria

same era Tog:
1 Ancestral
1 Library of Alexandria
4 Accumulated Knowledge
2 Deep Analysis
3 Intuition
4 Brainstorm

Those two decks were the contenders for title of best draw engine.  Nothing else in the format came close.  Between those two the choice isn't clear entirely clear, but Fish clearly had the more mana efficient engine, frequently generating advantage for 1-2 mana.  Barring an Ancestral it was hard for Hulk to do the same for less than 4-5.  In my experience the Fish/Tog matchup came down to which deck's draw engine clicked first, and more often than not the answer was Fish's.

Just because the engine is cheaper does neat mean it was better. Curiosity and standstill were fragile because they were dependant on other tings. Curiosity required you to keep a creature in play, the eventaul downfall of the deck, and standstill required that you have board advantage, if you didn't you couldn't play it. Meanwhle, other draw engines are not dependant on keeping creatures on the board.

Fish' draw is engine is good if it works, but it's inherently fragile, and dependant on too many factors to be "the best" (as I side, reliant on generating timewalks (curiosity, or bobby).

Again the reason fish won against tog, frivilous to argue but posed nonetheless, is that fish wrecked togs mana base, and it couldnt get the ak engine going because of that.
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« Reply #20 on: May 01, 2006, 01:06:15 pm »

Quote
E.g.: how do you feel when you have Remand in the hand, no strip effect on the table and opponent plays a free Massacre?
 

RTFC.

Quote
It has the same functional purpose as R&R, but seems to be great against DSC, stax (a weaker matchup possibly?), stupid platinum angels that buzz around, and random artifact decks/cards you may come across (see ubastax, ubacap, metalworker, etc.)  Just a thought.
 

As explained by why Vandal was cut, stax would often just waste the volcanic and then you are cut off red mana and can't use its ability.
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« Reply #21 on: May 01, 2006, 01:15:41 pm »

Quote
E.g.: how do you feel when you have Remand in the hand, no strip effect on the table and opponent plays a free Massacre?

Really dumb, because I just got my board wiped out by a deck that plays Conversion.
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PucktheCat
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« Reply #22 on: May 01, 2006, 01:35:33 pm »

Cross: No doubt Fish's engine was dependant on men to get going, but Tog's was dependant on Moxes, which are substantially easier to kill.

The eventual downfall of the deck had nothing to do with Curious creatures being killed and everything to do with Tinker->Colossus, Forbidden Orchard/Oath, and Crucible of Worlds.  I guess there was a health dose of Workshop Aggro in there too, although that's now gone.  What deck plays creature removal?
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ErkBek
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A strong play.

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« Reply #23 on: May 01, 2006, 01:48:00 pm »

This deck is completely unplayable in our (non-proxy) meta, with random aggro decks that will give you a pretty hard time.

Did you test vs UW Fish? It looks like a very unfavorable matchup. Shaman doesn´t really do anything, your Chalices are worthless while their Rods are not. They have Swords while you have Bouncers with summoning sickness. They have uncounterable blockers and Stifles for you Ninjas and strip effects.

You´re not running Factories. That means that Massacre/Pyroclasm takes out your complete board. UW Fish at least has its factories that survive those sorcery mass removal spells.

This deck looks like one that wins against good decks and loses vs bad decks.

Aggro is a very tough matchup. The 3 Fire/Ice along with 4 ReBs really help out the fish mirrors. I don't mean to go all Evenpence here, but I think I'm better than most other aggro and fish players so I use that advantage to win. I'm 2-1 vs. Ichorid and 1-0 vs. UW fish largely because of that. Neither of these matchups have been extensively tested though and are probably unfavorable vs. competent opponents (what competent player runs fish or RG beatz, really?).

Remand > Mana Leak for hitting draw spells like TFK. Remand also makes daze better

Massacre cost 2BB, so that is very tough to play. Clasm is really bad for this deck, try to not overextend, but there is often not much you can do. I keep bouncer untapped frequently if I expect a clasm.
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Vegeta2711
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« Reply #24 on: May 01, 2006, 02:39:32 pm »

I'd love to know how you ever beat CS when you can't ruin like a 3 moxen hand or something stupid.
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That0neguy
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« Reply #25 on: May 01, 2006, 05:18:12 pm »

Well when you can't ruin a 3 moxen hand all you have to do is keep the shaman on the board and eat there moxen as they weld and beat.  Then not play stuff into mana drains and waste a land or 2.  It seems like it would be a really easy matchup.  Ive never actually tested it but thats what my plan would be.  Maby remand a big artifact guy or removal spell.  If they have darkblast I have a feeling the matchup would suck.
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« Reply #26 on: May 01, 2006, 05:38:58 pm »

Glad to see I am no longer the only one posting about this deck...

Anyways, I like the idea of dropping soem dazes and the curiosity for duress, a good fish card that can be useful anytime.

I agree with Eric, for once ( :lol:), that not dying to pyroclasm or massacre isn't too hard. You just can't overextend, and you have to try to play a more controlish route. This deck isn't designed to play aggro super well. This particular build seems to really try to just get card advantage and rely on forcing favorable situations. That means that 3-4 points of power is usually enough to win quickly enough, without playing into mass removal or drain.

CS is, in general, not a terrible match for any fish build. You only need a couple points in the board in the first turn or two, and then just play around drain while beating down. Unless they are playing burning Slaver, which can just win, CS is kind of a slow deck. If you can counter big threats and draw, and keep welder off the table, then the match isn't bad.

Also, I think that for all the attention D-blast gets for totally killing this deck, it could be decent at least in the board. It kills welders, as stax doesn't seem like a great match, it also helps in the mirror, killing aggro dorks, especially if you can drawe multiple cards a turn or at least get a card form Confidant.

-Grant
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Gandalf_The_White_1
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« Reply #27 on: May 01, 2006, 08:05:29 pm »

I think that URB is an intereting direction to take it, but I'm not really sure that it is better than an UWB build would be.

You basically get shaman, fire/ice, REB, and rack and ruin.  U/W fish lets you run meddling mage (over your only red creature, shaman, which I don't really see as that spectacular; mage is IMO far more disruptive not to mention harder to kill), swords to plowshares (better than fire/ice IMO simply because it is cheaper and can hit anything), stormscape apprentice over bouncer (I think it's nice to have another 1-drop that serves pretty much the same purpose against colossus and such.), you can run other artifact hate like serenity or energy flux.  Replace REBs with duresses as you suggested (which I think are much better against combo decks anyways) and I think you would have pretty much the same thing but better.

I also think that rod is just overall superior denial over chalice and monkey; even though the latter are one sided, rod takes out all of their artifact mana with one card (chalice doesn't hit all of it and stuff already on the table isn't affected; often it's only effective if one is on the play, and shaman takes mana to use and lets them still get at least one use out of each piece of mana), as well as shutting off stupid stuff like triskelion.
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Moxlotus
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« Reply #28 on: May 01, 2006, 08:28:58 pm »

I really don't think people fully realize how much this fish deck abuses moxen more than any other ever has.  Notice how many cards have a colorless in them.  The deck even ran academy for a while.
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Pitlord
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« Reply #29 on: May 01, 2006, 09:13:34 pm »

I admit that at first I skimmed over the list because it was late, and I totally missed that you were playing all 5 moxes. I just assumed the satandard on-color. Moxes are a huge boost to fish, and running all 5 becomes an option with chalice/monkey.

Moxlotus is right though, having 2 mana on the first turn with this deck is pretty common, and allows for cheating the curve past the 1-drop slot. Most of the cards can use off colors in their costs as well, making this deck the best non-vial fish deck for cheating mana.
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