"A (Fish) by any other name..." - Analyzing Synergy in Fish Builds

[Grand Inquisitor]

I noticed a number of threads on TMWA, various stripes of Uxyz Fish, and the 'Man Prison'.  While the cards change dramatically between the different builds, the basic tactics involved are remarkably similar (and familiar).  These decks play cheap disruption followed by cheap creatures (which usually also carry a disruptive ability) and try to buy attack phases with these cards until they can stamp out an opponent.  Since "Fish" seems to be the designation for most of these decks (especially the blue ones), I'm going to use it as an even broader label in this thread and will extend it to include any non-workshop, non-dredge deck that uses a variety (9 or more slots) of attacking creatures for its primary kill condition.

Caveats:

1) Why not workshops or dredge decks? Workshop aggro and Dredge.dec actually plays relatively similar, tactically, to traditional fish decks, however, the card choices -creatures, mana base, sideboards - are so different as to make our discussion too broad.

2) Why 9 or more creature slots? This may seem like an arbitrary number, but it's actually quite selective.  In decks that run 9+ slots devoted to creatures, it's fairly likely that they see one in the first 10 cards or so.  This means that they're equally likely to want to play this card in the first 1-3 turns, which conflicts with another format staple: mana drain.  I can't remember a competitive deck that ran 9+ creatures and mana drain (I'd love for someone to prove me wrong).  This allows us to eliminate not only regular combo control, but also decks like GAT and Bomberman, from our discussion.

The Goal

Now that we understand what types of decks we're talking about I want to go into more detail about the goal of this thread: customization of the archetype.  Fish decks are inherently reactive since they use narrow cards to disrupt the plays of dominant decks long enough to beat down.  The dominant decks change over time and across metagames (the time dynamic is much more subtle in Vintage), and so it makes sense that fish lists have to evolve quite frequently.  This may seem obvious, but it's actually a much more research intensive task than updating 'Bstorm, FoW, Drain, restricted list + 10 cards.dec'.

This is complicated by two things that are related - 1) cards in fish are necessarily underpowered in T1 relative to the dominant decks, 2) because fish decks use cards that are reactive, they don't necessarily have a natural synergy.  Both of these claims are arguable when discussing specific lists, however, as a general characteristic of the archetype they are difficult to refute.  Since we can't force WotC to print better creatures and disruption, the goal of this thread aims to outline which components of the fish archetype have the greatest synergy and how can they be modularized for a given metagame.  What does that mean?  It means seeing what are accepted as useable fish manabases, disruption cards, creatures, etc., for an expected field and which 'sets' of cards work best together.

Sets...of cards?

This is highly semantical, but what we're talking about are things like, 1-drops and Ninja, Brainstorm and fetchlands, chalice and wastelands,...additionally, we're trying to avoid (sometimes obvious) disynergies such as aether vial & null rod, 1-drops and chalice for 1, narrow cards and no hand manipulation, etc.  To strengthen builds further, the goal is also to create synergy between the components of mana base, disruption and creatures.  While this may sound easy and look intuitive (if you look at UW Feinstein Fish, for example), what may be going on in everyone's labs at home, but I don't see discussion about on these boards is how to expand these lists outside of fish's traditional comfort zone.  By this I mean expanding the color combinations, card combinations, mana curves, and sideboard strategies.

This can go in any number of directions, so I'll start this off with one of a number of issues:

Hide/Seek is an extremely versatile card in that fish decks can use it to cover one its largest weaknesses, non-mana board control, and have it not be dead against decks that don't use the board (typicaly combo/control).  However, it's color requirements are high (3 colors) and don't include T1's bread and butter, blue.  How might this card be effectively leveraged in a fish list that can also take advantage of one of the best (fish) cards ever printed, Force of Will?  Further, what other card choices will supplement Hide/Seek?

(I encourage people to take this in a different or broader direction)

[AmbivalentDuck]

I know this goes dead against your theme, but I don't think synergy is a primary concern in most Fish builds and modularity beyond playsets of a single card is likely rare. 

I recently brought SS to Becker's mox tourney and did reasonably well.  I think you'd find a fair amount of agreement that SS is probably the most synergistic fish deck (after Polynomial P's new monster), and I think the synergy in it actually matters (whereas it almost does *not* in TWMA or standard UW).

The "synergies" are:

Duress+Extirpate
-Knowing the opponent's hand greatly increases your ability to time and abuse Extirpate.

Erayo+low CC cards
-Flipped Erayo>>non-flipped Erayo.  SS is punishing in that missing an opportunity to flip Erayo is often a game loss as you've wasted resources casting a vanilla 1/1.  Many of the games I've lost are directly attributable to missing a chance to flip Erayo.

Erayo+Dimir Cutpurse
-Having flipped Erayo and an active Cutpurse is game even without the cute interaction, you can ignore this synergy.

Wasteland+Extirpate
-Color screw is cute.  It's a synergy that comes up.

Brainstorm+Dark Confidant
-No damage >> damage, huge gain in selection over either one alone.

Time Walk+Creatures that have a per turn effect other than damage
-Time Walk is infinitely better with Confidant or Cutpurse on the table as it does a lot more than just being a cantrip Lightning Bolt.  Double cantrip Shock for 1U would get restricted pretty quickly.

0 CC mana sources + Cutpurse/Confidant/Erayo
-Card advantage turns into tempo much more readily if it begins early.

The modularity here isn't great.  Erayo and Cutpurse are the only combo that consistently shows up intact.  The high Mox count is more a trademark of SS, and actually one of the deck's primary "synergies."

[Grand Inquisitor]

I know this goes dead against your theme, but I don't think synergy is a primary concern in most Fish builds

...and what I'm saying is that I'm not convinced this is inherent in the archetype so much as that people are either lazy or have blinders on about what cards are and aren't allowed in fish.  I'm more than willing to listen to evidence of this, but your example, SS, shows how synergy can be so powerful.

The modularity here isn't great

Uh, perhaps I did a poor job of explaining what I mean by modularity.  I'm talking about the ability to maintain certain cohorts of cards that are synergistic while switching out others that are traditional to the archetype in order to either improve it's overall performance, or adapt to the metagame.  For example, could SS find room for Arcane Lab to establish a hard lock, or might it splash colors in order to find better answers to EtW?  What is core-critical to the deck, or at least, what is continuing to work in the meta and what is not?

[AmbivalentDuck]

Oh.  Well...the easiest thing to address that you mentioned was EtW.  I'm firmly convinced that some combination of Engineered Explosives (cute synergy with Erayo) and Echoing Truth is suitable for dealing with EtW.

Arcane Lab is *very* narrow.  It has to be played after Erayo flips (or to flip Erayo) and probably costs a whole turn's tempo.  Mostly combo decks will bounce it, and it effectively negates the card advantage from both Confidant and Cutpurse.

  If I'm understanding correctly, what you're asking is..."What should *ever* come out and what can you replace it with that might be more synergistic?"

I think there are about...8 open slots. I'll just pop out my list below since that makes discussion easier. The Stifles and Jitte are pretty much fixed though, as fetchlands/storm and Fish are a part of every foreseeable meta.  You *could* touch them, though.  The 4 Extirpate are a relatively new metagamed addition.  You could pull them for pretty much anything.  Though, I could only foresee changing them to Jotun Grunts, Withered Wretches, or something very similar.  The slots need to be directed against the opponent's graveyard...

SS post-t8 at Urbana

Creatures
  4 Dark Confidant
  4 Dimir Cutpurse
  3 Erayo, Soratami Ascendant

Spells
  4 Force of Will
  1 Ancestral Recall
  1 Black Lotus
  1 Demonic Tutor
  1 Mox Emerald
  1 Mox Jet
  1 Mox Pearl
  1 Mox Ruby
  1 Mox Sapphire
  1 Umezawa's Jitte
  1 Echoing Truth
  1 Engineered Explosives
  4 Brainstorm
  4 Extirpate
  3 Stifle
  1 Lotus Petal
  1 Time Walk
  4 Duress
  1 Vampiric Tutor

Lands
  1 Strip Mine
  4 Underground Sea
  1 Swamp
  1 Flooded Strand
  3 Polluted Delta
  4 Wasteland
  2 Island

SB
  3 Threads of Disloyalty
  1 Umezawa's Jitte
  2 Echoing Truth
  1 Engineered Explosives
  4 Leyline of the Void
  3 Energy Flux
  1 Darkblast

[Polynomial P]

Grand Inquisitor, I am glad you started this thread because it is something that has been on my mind for some time. Its as good of a time as any to post my thoughts on synergy in fish. If you look at the early incarnations of fish you have to realize that there were many synergistic interactions. Take the Marc Perez list from an early SCG:

Marc Perez
3rd place, 2004-07-17 SCG.com Power Nine Tournament Richmond
4 Volcanic Island
4 Mishra's Factory
4 Wasteland
3 Flooded Strand
2 Polluted Delta
2 Faerie Conclave
2 Island
1 Library of Alexandria
1 Strip Mine
3 Null Rod
1 Mox Sapphire
4 Grim Lavamancer
4 Cloud of Faeries
4 Spiketail Hatchling
2 Voidmage Prodigy
1 Gorilla Shaman
4 Force of Will
4 Standstill
4 Curiosity
2 Daze
1 Misdirection
1 Stifle
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk

The deck has a defined strategy: Use cheap creatures to apply beats, disrupt the opponent with marginal effects, draw a lot of cards so that the marginal effects are, well, effective. This was the true tempo deck of vintage and there are relatively few cards that seem out of place. Cloud of faeries is vanilla, but free. Every other creature in the deck does multiple things to force interaction from the opponent. So many cards in the deck are “weak and underpowered”, but with a draw engine consisting of 4 Curiosity, 4 Standstill, 1 Recall, enough disruption will be drawn through the course of the game to put the opponent under enough pressure. This cohesive, if not synergistic, deck strategy won Marc several pieces of power. The synergy in this deck is: Card draw + cheap creatures/disruption. Of course, the metagame has changed a lot since then and with the rise in combo and control with combo finishes, standstill and curiosity are way too slow to be viable.

Compare that list to its modern day descendant: UW Fish.

Dave Fenstein's list here:
http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=31331.0

Gone is the card advantage. Gone is the synergy. It runs a draw package of: 1 Ancestral Recall.

Think about that. No, brainstorm is not a draw spell. There are 5 vanilla creatures in the deck that serve no purpose but to apply pressure, while the deck draws one card at a time. There is a similar counterspell package, but the deck is unable to outdraw any opponent in the format. There isn’t even a cohesive strategy in the deck: Does it play mana denial? Does it play control? Is it the aggro deck (and if so, is it fast enough for the environment)? The deck does attack a lot of areas, ie grave, what spells can be played, artifact mana, but there is a definite lack of direction and synergy to the deck.

Another deck that is a direct line descendant of Marc Perez’s fish is URBana fish. (Early list is here: http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=28184.0)

This deck is much closer to the original fish list than UW fish. The draw package is huge: 4 dark confidant, 4 Ninja, 3 Remand, 1 Recall, and even a curiosity! It has the typical marginal disruption cards, like remand and daze, but with a robust enough draw package to see many pieces of disruption during the game. The strategy is, again, to out tempo the opponent. It draws enough cards and constricts the mana enough to get in that 20 damage. A couple of the cards are metagame dependent, but the synergy of the deck is there. Nothing really seems out of place.

I will now discuss my first non-blue fish deck: Dawn of the Dead. Nicolae Antes had the first incarnation of the deck and we came up with this successful list: http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=27434.0

The synergies of this deck were amazing:
Bazaar + Squee, Bazaar + LFTL, Bazaar + Dark confidant
Zombie infestation + Squee, ZI + LFTL
All these synergies meant that the underpowered disruption package would be just enough to get through 20 damage. At the time, the metagame consisted of fish and stax, with a small amount of slaver and gifts. This deck hammered the metagame. Even with all the synergy in the world, the deck could not adapt to a changing metagame that included the rise of combo. Again, there were definitely metagame choices in the deck, but the overwhelming synergies were enough to power through to a few tournament victories. I feel that this deck was initially the pinnacle in deck synergies for fish, but synergy alone is not enough…you have to choose the right synergies. In fact, too much of the deck was a bad draw if you didn’t have the other half of the combo. (Opening a hand of werebear, squee, squee, mox, land, duress, rod is a mulligan to five. Even if you mull there is a good chance you don’t see two cards that go well together.)

While it has gone through several incarnations in the hands of Dan Yarrington, TMWA is one of the first mainstays of non-blue fish. This is one of the most recent lists: http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=31935.0

This latest list focuses on two things: Hand disruption and silver bullets. I think this is a risky proposition in Vintage as so many topdecks by an opponent can spell disaster for this strategy. Fortunately, with that amount of hand disruption, it should be able to protect the silver bullets it tutors up. I think it lacks the synergy of U/R or URBana fish as the card choices are all objectively “good” for a fish deck, but I feel that the deck lacks a cohesive direction.

My latest creation is PMITA man-prison, which shares a high percentage of cards with TMWA. I will post my list here:

4 Dark Confidant
3 Gorilla Shaman
3 Jotun Grunt
4 Grim Lavamancer

4 Duress
4 Hide//Seek
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Sphere of Resistance
2 Swords to Plowshares

4 Bazaar

24 mana

Here are the obvious synergies that I would like point out:
Shaman + Sphere + Chalice + nothing costing over 2 + Wasteland/Strip
Bazaar + Confidant
Bazaar + Grunt
Bazaar + Lavamancer

As far as the non-obvious synergies go, Hide//Seek + Mana denial + STP. This allows me to force my opponent to win through the condition of my choice, especially in the gifts and slaver matchups.

Dead Cards + Bazaar. This is the most important synergy of the deck. Every one of the decks I mentioned above will accumulate cards that are dead as the game goes on. Excess lands, STP vs combo, Hide vs Fish, Duress vs Stax, Moxen shut off by null rod or chalice, etc etc etc. The ability to 3 cycle dead cards to produce 1 relevant threat a turn allows this deck to survive late in the game. Bazaar also gives the ability to dig for answers, which brings me to my last synergy: Bazaar + 3- and 4-ofs.

PMITA has a well defined strategy, especially against combo and control decks: Attack the mana base. Apply beats. This is a tempo deck similar to original UR fish, in that it plays so many cheap threats that Sphere of resistance and chalice have almost no effect on me (or even on my “draw/filter engine”) while systematically slowing down my opponents development to a crawl. All the creatures fulfill multiple roles too, which allowed me to address the problematic matchups for this deck.

I suppose the cards that are not entirely synergistic are STP, grim lavamancer, and duress (which is too strong to not run in a deck without force). STP and grim lavamancer do serve a role in the weak matchups though (Stax and Fish) as board control.

Clearly this deck was designed to beat up on combo and gifts and the deck has about 4 spots that can be metagamed to address fish or stax (lavamancer 4, sphere 1-4, hide//seek 4) and my maindeck will sometimes include 3 STP or 3 heretics depending on the metagame.

In the building of this deck I greatly weighed in on the synergies that were available to me (including Divining top + Confidant + Bazaar), and cut those that didn’t really make a difference. I think that everything left in the deck is of core importance, with the exception of the metagame spots discussed above. I think that this list is the new standard for synergies in a fish deck, but has yet to prove that it is a contender at a highly competitive event.

[silvernail]

People use the term fish pretty loosely these days. In my opinion fish decks 1) have to be base blue, 2) have to run mana denial in 8-12 slots, usually being stifle, null rod and wasteland or some older versions used Blood Moons and 3) back up their mana denial slots with 8-12 counterspells, most of which are 'free' pitch counters.

The primary goal of a 'true' fish deck is mana denial, wiht counter back up just  long enough to stunt your ability to deal with its creatures.

While the list you posted does have some of the potential components of a fish deck, I cannot see randomly calling it a fish deck.

I think we need a new moniker for decks that use different resource denial aspects than what I've listed for a 'fish' deck. Perhaps it's just me being picky, but I've always hated that anything using some kind of resource denial and creature beat down typically gets called fish, but that's because fish decks to me are what I outlined above.

The main reason for my pickyness is simply because the original fish deck did exactly that - it had mana denial, counters, and creatures.

This particular list centers more on card advantage by discard / card drawing, than mana denial / counter magic, which makes it less of a fish deck in my opinion and more of a black deck with blue for back up card advantage.

[nataz]

Take the Marc Perez list from an early SCG:

Oh PTW, how you shaped vintage forever. <3.

Seriously though, if people want to delve into what fish is/isn't they might find it useful to go search the archives for Marc's old posts on fish. I know his original thread on GayR is there, as well as possibly some of his earlier mono-blue discussions.

I can remember back when people were just decideding that wasteland should be incorperated in Marc's post Gencon side event sucess (island walkers + curiosity, standstill + manlands, null rod + wasteland). This translated into a reliance on Null rod (and a move away from pure island walkers), and then eventualy morphed into GayR with utility creatures (kai + grim, grim + curiosity, standstill + manlands, null rod + wasteland) that thrived in a meta-game of CS and Germbus.

Following GayR you have the old Meandeck UW vial + chalice lists (Chalice + Vial, rootwater + anything, Brainstorm instead of Standstill, ninja + vial, wasteland + chalice), which is basicaly taking GayR (utility creatures + mana denial) and subing chalice for rod, allowing vial. Ditto on Jacobs more aggresive *and greedy* G/U lists, a.k.a WTF (vial + mongrel + boa, vial + MM and an unstable mana base, mongrel + rootwalla, rootwalla + ninja!, vial + ninja, wasteland + chalice)

Quickly after that we see a rise in UW rod fish (rod + mage + grunt), and now an exploration of new colors (hide/seek + duress).

I can't remember a competitive deck that ran 9+ creatures and mana drain (I'd love for someone to prove me wrong).

EBA?

Meddling Mage, Exaulted, and Negator?

 

[wethepeople]

What is core-critical to the deck, or at least, what is continuing to work in the meta and what is not? [In Sullivan Solution]

Now, I personally did not create the deck itself, but I have consistently been playing both SS, and similar decks varying of just a few cards for quite some time.

To answer your question, I will use TK's SS list  that he used at SCG, in Rochester New York.

The deck was a Rogue metagamed deck for the time, that did very well each time that he piloted it. Many say that it gained it's success primarily because of those who played it were all-around better players than their opponents, although that is not always the case.

As AD went over earlier, there are a few variable slots, about 7-8. One of which that I am currently unsatisfied with is the bounce selections. Rushing River, and Chain of Vapor were originally used, but lists created post-Time Spiral should probably be different, most-importantly to be able to handle Empty the Warrens. Those two bounce spells were apparently chosen to evade Chalice of the Void at two, but more often than not I see Chalice @ one hit the board, as opposed to two.

Darkblast was one of those cards that was there to improve the unenjoyable aggro matchup, but I personally think that it is too narrow to be worth played. UW Fish has been cutting down on Swords to Plowshares slots for similar reasons, and Darkblast is generally even worse than STP, so it should go also. The only cards that it really hits are Dark Confidants, Lions, and occasionally Goblin Welder, elsewhere it is dead.

Hymn to Tourach, and Shadow of Doubt are both strong cards, but both being a 1'of lack consistency. In my last list, I cut them to try and make room for Extirpates. Prior to Planar Chaos, I used Trickbind.

The current decks that I would personally consider when optimizing the list are Gifts, Combo, and Fish variants. Both the Combo, and Gifts matchups are already great, and I win them just about all of the time. However, Fish, a deck that I face often as well, if a matchup that I dread to face, and have an overall hard-time winning without a great amount of re-enforcements brought in from the sideboard games two and three.

A card that I surprisingly LOVE in my sideboard for Aggro is Circu, Dimir Lobotomist. Decks similar to UW Fish with Lions, Hounds, and Mages run nearly all 3-4'ofs, and those particular decks are the worst for this deck. However, due to the deck's strive for consistency, Circu's strength is increased, because it will generate more dead cards shut off throughout the game. Circu being a 2/3 is already strong as it is, because the only creature with a great enough attack to over-power it is Jotun Grunt.

I do still use a combonation of Diabolic Edicts, Darkblasts, and Engineered Explosives in the sideboard to fight aggro, though Circu is one of my all-time favorites. Overall, my sideboard devotes a good 8-9 slots strictly for Fish. (with the exception of EE, which doubles-up to fight ETW.)

Excellent post, I really like where this thread is going.

[Grand Inquisitor]

EBA?

Yeah, I considered this, but even as the metagame moved away from classic (Keeper, Hulk, TnT) and more towards modern (Storm, Gifts, Stax), even its originators found that it wanted to either play more dedicated control, or to tap down for creatures while backing up with pitch counters.  That being said, an EBA list with a full set of drains and (exactly) nine creatures managed to get into the top 20 of Waterbury.  Perhaps not bullet proof, I think this qualification does a good job of drawing a line in the sand between the decks I'm talking about, and those that abuse drain.  Another discussion on how EBA is able to mitigate this tension and still have success could be interesting.

People use the term fish pretty loosely these days. In my opinion fish decks 1) have to be base blue, 2) have to run mana denial in 8-12 slots, usually being stifle, null rod and wasteland or some older versions used Blood Moons and 3) back up their mana denial slots with 8-12 counterspells, most of which are 'free' pitch counters.

The primary goal of a 'true' fish deck is mana denial, wiht counter back up just  long enough to stunt your ability to deal with its creatures.

We're mostly in agreement here, particularly with fish's primary goal.  However, I've broadened your "mana denial" to all types of "disruption", and I've dropped what I think is an outdated need for blue to be a requirement.  At the end of the day, I've already set the framework for this discussion.  If you want to start a debate about what fish is or isn't, start your own thread.

I don't think synergy is a primary concern in most Fish builds

I know I responded to this before, but PolyP made me revisit some things.  Since Fish's goal (at least against combo and control) is to create a soft-lock until it can deal 20, the synergy between its cards are paramount to its success.  I think the example of Hide/Seek allowing PMITA to steer its opponent into its other lock parts is very illustrative.

Of course, the metagame has changed a lot since then and with the rise in combo and control with combo finishes, standstill and curiosity are way too slow to be viable.

UW Fish...Gone is the card advantage. Gone is the synergy. It runs a draw package of: 1 Ancestral Recall.

Dead Cards + Bazaar. This is the most important synergy of the deck...

So here are all the tensions I wanted to bring up, all spelled out: the need for tight synergy among components, the need for components to fit the metagame, and the need to filter dead cards in a matchup (or within a game during the early/mid/late).

Using PMITA and SS as examples, here's how I'd oranize the lists for comparison:

Mana Disruption (15)
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Sphere of Resistance
1 Strip Mine
3 Wasteland
3 Gorilla Shaman

Board Disruption (13)
4 Hide//Seek
2 Swords to Plowshares
4 Grim Lavamancer
3 Jotun Grunt

Hand/Library/Stack Disruption (8)
4 Duress
4 Hide/Seek

Card Filtering (8)
4 Bazaar
4 Dark Confidant

...and then compare with SS...

Mana Disruption (9)
1 Strip Mine
4 Wasteland
4 Stifle

Board Disruption (5)
1 Darkblast
1 Echoing Truth
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Rushing River
1 Chain of Vapor


Hand/Library/Stack Disruption (19)
4 Dimir Cutpurse
3 Erayo, Soratami Ascendant
4 Force of Will
4 Stifle
4 Duress

Card Filtering (16)
4 Dark Confidant
4 Dimir Cutpurse
1 Ancestral Recall
4 Brainstorm
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor

Broken (1)
1 Time Walk

Looking at the decks this way we see something really obvious: the emphasis on mana disruption and board control in PMITA is traded for spell disruption (hand, stack, library) and card filtering in SS.  These decks use two different tactics to enact the same strategy.

If we take this piece of information, and then we notice that PMITA's mana disruption is largely artifact based (susceptible to bounce), that SS can do very little to control things once it hits the board (surviving on a bounce toolbox, that half of PMITA's card filtering is uncounterable, that SS's manabase is much more stable, etc. we can start to see how components of each deck contribute to strengths and weaknesses in certain matchups.  From here, we can try to tease apart these lists and look through our binders to see what might fill gaps.  This example is difficult, because Hide/Seek is such a color-intensive card that the idea of, for example, splashing blue in PMITA to cover certain weaknesses may not work.  However, splashing red in SS for better board control (lavamancer) and mana denial (shaman) may create a breakthrough.

I think this type of thought process is much more fruitful in the long run, than realizing darkblast isn't working and that EtW is a real threat, and still trying to retool SS.

[TopSecret]

Hide/Seek is an extremely versatile card in that fish decks can use it to cover one its largest weaknesses, non-mana board control, and have it not be dead against decks that don't use the board (typicaly combo/control).  However, it's color requirements are high (3 colors) and don't include T1's bread and butter, blue.  How might this card be effectively leveraged in a fish list that can also take advantage of one of the best (fish) cards ever printed, Force of Will?  Further, what other card choices will supplement Hide/Seek?

     Hide/Seek is excellent for filling in holes in a 'fish' deck's disruption package,
and often complementing to different forms of resource denial.

     Hide/Seek can be complemented by:

1) Meddling Mage: Once a specific spell is named, either a singleton out to Meddling Mage can be Seeked,
   or a singleton bomb can be targeted to limit win conditions. Additionally,
Hide/Seek can counter Mirage tutors that would otherwise fetch answers to the Mage.

2) Wasteland, and other Mana Denial: Casting Hide on a Mox can act as a two mana LD spell.

     Hide/Seek is also much better if the metagame is crowded with Tinker-Colossus,
one slot win conditions, Mirage tutors, large artifacts, or enchantments (Dragon/Oath).

     It is difficult to impliment both Hide/Seek and Force of Will in a 'fish' deck,
and fully justify either's inclusion. Fully utilizing three colors to support Hide/Seek presents
problems for the blue card count. Simliarly, having a high blue card count raises the question
of whether or not the multiple non-blue colors are really worth the inclusion.

     Personally, I believe the best answer to the question depends on the given metagame.
Like Hide/Seek, the degree of Force of Will's effectiveness is metagame based.
Force of Will is lacking against decks with a slow clock, a lot of targeted disruption, and less all in plays.
This includes TMWA, Landstill, and many 'fish' lists.
Also, Force of Will loses some of its efficiency in a metagame filled with Red Blasts and Duresses.

     In a metagame filled with Stax, Oath, and Combo-Control
I think that both of these cards would be very effective.
However, the balance issue in the deck building process still remains.

     This is a metagame deck that top 8'd at the Nov-11th-'06
Myriad Games tourney, utilizing Hide/Seek, no Force of Will, and blue cards:

6th Place: Andrew Fox with 5 Color Fish aka EWA "Everything Wins Again"

1x  Daze
1x  Spell Snare
1x  Memory Lapse
1x  Disrupt
2x  Fire and Ice
1x  Gorilla Shaman
3x  Hide and Seek
1x  Ninja of the Deep Hours
3x  Meddling Mage
4x  Dark Confidant
3x  Jotun Grunt
1x  Children of Korlis
1x  Pyroblast
1x  Sylvan Safekeeper
1x  Call of the  Herd
1x  Demonic Consultation
1x  Duress
1x  Seal of Removal
4x  Swords to Plowshares
2x  Brainstorm
1x  Curiosity
1x  Time Walk
1x  Ancestral Recall
1x  Mox Jet
1x  Mox Pearl
1x  Mox Sapphire
1x  Mox Ruby
1x  Mox Emerald
4x  City of Brass
2x  Mishra's Factory
1x  Taiga
1x  Plains
1x  Island
1x  Swamp
2x  Bloodstained Mire
2x  Flooded Strand
1x  Plateau
1x  Underground Sea
1x  Scrubland
1x  Volcanic Island

Sideboard:
1x  Flametongue Kavu
1x  Pyrokinesis
1x  Darkblast
1x  Gifts Ungiven
1x  Spell Snare
1x  Meddling Mage
3x  Pyrostatic Pillar
1x  Hide and Seek
1x  Artifact Mutation
4x  Serenity

     The link to the TO report is here: http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=31018.0
If you examine the metagame of that tourney, you will see that Force of Will was excluded for the
reasons outlined above.

     Also, the above list has very little focused synergy and 'sets' of cards.
This could also be attributed to the metagame, which lacked a dominant deck,
but still presented a general influx in creature centered strategies.

     To compliment discussion,
here is a thread that discussed a deck utilizing both Force of Will and Hide/Seek: http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=29983.0

[wethepeople]

Splashing red into Sullivan Solution would bring it near to URBana Fish. This however is in no way a bad thing, because some of the cards that red has to offer are strong for the designated Control, Combo, and Aggro metagame.

Becker's thread on URBana.

EBA has been a deck that I have always been interested in. At both this past Waterbury (Stratford) as well as the previous one, there were 2-3 different EBA lists found in the top 16 range. The deck seems to be getting further and further from really utilizing Mana Drain, I have noticed, and more-so similar to standard UW Fish decks with a black splash. For some reason I never see much discussion here on TMD of the deck, despite it's prominent tournament results.

Mana denial certainly is not the primary goal Fish has to offer. Quite frankly, I do not believe that the mana denial game plan is at it's peak right now. Gifts, along with most-all builds of Tendrils-combo have adapted to some extent to avoid being locked out from their mana base. Multiple basic lands are played in a majority of the lists, so Wasteland become weaker. However, I have noticed that even more fetchlands are played, so in return, cards like Stifle, Trickbind gain the ability to capitalize on such decks.

However, one card that still does follow the mana denial theme, but is fairly different than it's surroundings is Sphere of Resistance. It can very well lock players completely out of the game, but I more-commonly see it slowing your opponent to the point where you have far too much of an advantage over the board to lose. Versus Long, and other Storm-combo SoR makes the matchup much stronger, and when teamed with the other lock components Fish has to offer, it will win you the game more often than not.

Aside from mana denial there are still cards like Chalice of the Void, Erayo (when flipped), and Duress. All of which are cards that will effect your opponent in different ways, though, in most cases, it will result in similar outcomes.

Sullivan Solution attacks hand with cards like Duress, Hymn, and Dimir Cutpurse. Followed by Erayo, creating a difficult lock to get out of by depriving them of cards to "bait" Erayo, and still be able to cast their prefered spell. In addition, SS uses a more-minor mana denial theme consisting of Wastelands, and Stifle, and they also improve the "Erayo lock".

EDIT (TopSecret replied while I was typing):

Hide/Seek is an extremely versatile card in that fish decks can use it to cover one its largest weaknesses, non-mana board control, and have it not be dead against decks that don't use the board (typicaly combo/control).  However, it's color requirements are high (3 colors) and don't include T1's bread and butter, blue.  How might this card be effectively leveraged in a fish list that can also take advantage of one of the best (fish) cards ever printed, Force of Will?  Further, what other card choices will supplement Hide/Seek?

     Hide/Seek is excellent for filling in holes in a 'fish' deck's disruption package,
and often complementing to different forms of resource denial.

     Hide/Seek can be complemented by:

1) Meddling Mage: Once a specific spell is named, either a singleton out to Meddling Mage can be Seeked,
   or a singleton bomb can be targeted to limit win conditions. Additionally,
Hide/Seek can counter Mirage tutors that would otherwise fetch answers to the Mage.

Similar tactics were used in Dnine's 4c Hide/Seek Fish. It used a standard UWb creature base of Grunts, Mages, and Dark Confidant, followed by Hide/Seek. Hide/Seek was primarily used for Seek, to steal one of the opponent's win condition. Often times Darksteel Colossus would be removed to shut off both Tinker, and put a serious damper on their Tendrils of Agony route, due to the additional 11 life points. Meddling Mage was there to shut down any remaining win condition that would come as a threat.

[Polynomial P]

Splashing red into Sullivan Solution would bring it near to URBana Fish. This however is in no way a bad thing, because some of the cards that red has to offer are strong for the designated Control, Combo, and Aggro metagame.

I think that Urbana Fish is the best blue based fish deck available and it has not been accepted by anyone outside of Eric Becker. I think it could use some more board control elements, like some lavamancers in the MD or SB. You'd probably only need a few since there is such a powerful draw engine in the deck you will likely see one during the natural course of the game. Mixing SS with some Urbana Elements could prove powerful.

I also think it is important for fish decks to focus their strategy. I am afraid this discussion may lead down the road to "Lets add mana denial to SS. Now the deck does everything!" But it wont do anything well enough to win. For example: In PMITA, do you need FOW if you are going to constrain their mana so they cant play spells? In SS, do you need to constrict mana if you prevent them from resolving any important spells?

I think that every fish deck should ask: 1) What is my Strategy? 2) Is that strategy good enough to win? 3) How does each card contribute to that goal? 4) What are the major weaknesses in my strategy (and can I address them)?

I think that question 2 is the most important question and question 3 could be reworded as "What are the synergies between the cards in this deck?"...ie the point of this thread.

On Hide//Seek

Hide//Seek is an ok card, but the reason it is playable is because is triply modal. Extract alone is not good enough to see play. Disenchant does not make it into the MD in any current vintage deck. Together, in Hide//Seek, it is playable...but only if you can reliably cast either half. I really cant see putting this into a U-based fish deck, though. You put too much strain on the mana base in a deck that probably has a strategy that doesnt need, or want, Hide//seek. It fits into PMITA solely because i can channel my opponent into winning through my disruption and is not dead against other decks (like Stax).

I am curious about what people think about UWB fish. (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgevent/vintage06/welcome)

Is this the right build? Would a better strategy/synergy fit these colors?

[wethepeople]

Paul Nicolo's UWb Fish list from the '06 Champs is greatly outdated. I personally think Aether Vial Fish is no longer viable, primarily because so many decks are running Null Rod, since metagames are so greatly inhabited by UW Fish.

Apprentices and Prodigies seem terrible to me, even with Aether Vial. The best creature I can think of with Aether Vial is probably Children of Korlis, followed by True Believer, although, I still am no fan of VialFish.

I do think URBana is a very strong blue-based Fish deck, although, I wouldn't make the assumption that it is the best, because all Fish builds are strong in their own specific metagame for their own reasons.

I started a thread on URBana discussing one of my builds that did in fact use Grim Lavamancer to imrpove board control. Standard URB builds created by Becker used both Gorilla Shaman, and Chalice of the Void. Personally, I don't really see this being necessary because they tend to become overkill. Shaman's ability does nothing when used with CotV, and it could probably be replaced by something like Grim Lavamancer, a 1cc creature with a similar ability.

A card that I have been working with A LOT lately is Trinket Mage. I could see it being playable in URBana because of its full set of Moxen, Chalices, and room could be made for the remaing toolbelt.

[Liek]

Paul Nicolo's UWb Fish list from the '06 Champs is greatly outdated. I personally think Aether Vial Fish is no longer viable, primarily because so many decks are running Null Rod, since metagames are so greatly inhabited by UW Fish.

Apprentices and Prodigies seem terrible to me, even with Aether Vial. The best creature I can think of with Aether Vial is probably Children of Korlis, followed by True Believer, although, I still am no fan of VialFish.

Aether Vials catches splash damage from people's Null Rods. Great. Null Rod turns off Artifact mana. This isn't news.

The best creature to Vial into play is Meddling Mage.

Children of Korlis isn't playable, the strategy of "I'll let my combo opponent generate enough Storm and Mana to Tendrils me for lethal, then I'll do something cute to beat it" isn't even remotely viable. They make a bunch of mana and have a high Storm count. You have Children of Korlis. They play Empty the Warrens.

[Moxlotus]

Just to be clear, Children of Korlis is absolutely awful.  I have won far more games than I have lost when Children is in play.  Chain of Vapor, Tendrils for 40, 2 Tendrils, a huge Desire, Yawgmoth's Will, ETW all work great to not care about that shitter.  If you want to win games, don't play children

[silvernail]

So why exactly havent people stolen anti goblin tech from legacy and used Engineered Plagues ? Yes they can be bounced, but thats one more spell your opponent has to resolve to win.

[AmbivalentDuck]

Because it's nearly useless in every other matchup, and they can just win with Tendrils since you've given them a whole mid-game turn to do as they please (and 3 mana since they likely Drained it).

Engineered Explosives and Echoing Truth are considerably less narrow and are both very likely to find their way into *many* decks.

[wethepeople]

So why exactly havent people stolen anti goblin tech from legacy and used Engineered Plagues ? Yes they can be bounced, but thats one more spell your opponent has to resolve to win.

I think you may have mis-posted this in the wrong thread, and intended for it to be in the "Workshop's Answers to ETW" thread.

But, the fact that it can be bounced is everything, because it won't bother your opponent to wait an addiitonal turn or two to go off. These decks run so many Tutors that it isn't difficult much at all to get a hold of a bounce spell.

Also, it is narrow, and won't be the best in the Fish matchup, whereas the other selctions are. The mana requirements are difficult, and unlike Slice and Dice, Spray, and Tabernacle, it can easily be countered. (as well as give your opp a good amount of Drain mana while you're at it.)

The reason E-Plague is so good in Legacy, versus Goblins, is that the standard Goblins build has no real way of getting rid of black enchantments, so it is difficult for them to get around, unlike versus a deck like Gifts with an insane draw engine, and wide-range of answers.

[silvernail]

Well you could try Nausea or Infest instead, but they are specifically answers to goblins, though infest might be ok vs fish as well. At least those cant be bounced.

There arent many cards that kill hordes of ceatures, that happen to be great against other decks as well.

[AmbivalentDuck]

The list is pretty long, actually.  Though, Fish is almost myopically interested in the ones that can also affect enchantments (Oath of Druids) and large artifact creatures (DSC, Trike, and Sundering Titan).  It's completely off-topic, though.

SS would definitely prefer to Stifle or Duress EtW than to try to deal with the tokens once they're in play.  Engineered Explosives and Echoing Truth both have extensive utility beyond combating a single kill condition in a very open meta.

[wethepeople]

Well you could try Nausea or Infest instead, but they are specifically answers to goblins, though infest might be ok vs fish as well. At least those cant be bounced.

There arent many cards that kill hordes of ceatures, that happen to be great against other decks as well.

Echoing Decay works in similiarity to handle both Tokens, and a wide-range of creatures common in Vintage. The reason that I think the enchantments like Engineered Plague is not best is that after you cast it, your opponent will just wait to have a golden win condition, along with the necessary bounce to get by Plague. Whereas with EE, or Etruth, you can cast it after they have used all of their resouces, and it will be a much greater loss.

In my Sullivan Solution sideboard, I use A LOT of slots dedicated to the aggro matchup. Those include Diabolic Edict, Darkblast, and Circu. However, what cards do others use to increase that matchup?

[Harlequin]

I also used Circu against aggro/fish.  He is great because hes a 2/3 -and- punishes decks that strive for consistancy. 

I also have used Old Man of the Sea, Old man is nice... but it was a different meta back then (pre-Joten, pre-black-in-TMWA).  I see alot of players running Threads of Disloyalty.  Also SoFI is even more a bomb then Jitte in my oppinion. 

[AmbivalentDuck]

Since the topic has somehow moved to how a creature-based deck should fight a creature-based win condition...

Is the Fish vs. Fish mirror decided by Wakefield or card advantage?  When it's just armies of 2/2s, clearly card advantage.  When one person runs Jotun grunt, but not the other, Wakefield matters a bit more.  So...what about cards like Juzam Djinn, Hunted Horror (not ridiculously unreasonable with Echoing Truth and Engineered Explosives maindeck), Threads of Disloyalty, Circu, Old Man, etc?

[TopSecret]

     Both of these factors matter, it just depends on the board position.

Card advantage is usually more relevant in the late game,
while 'Wakefiled' is often better in the early game,
because of the mana involved to play multiple cards.

     Grunt is a 4/4 for two mana.
     Two True Believers cost four mana.

Both parties trade in combat, but one costs two more, and one more card.
If you have more cards than the Grunt player, this may be a sound trade.

     Burning cards on Force of Will and Grunts in the early game is good if you end the game early,
but if you can't kill the opponent quick enough, the card disadvantage can catch up to you in the late game.

[Grand Inquisitor]

Is the Fish vs. Fish mirror decided by Wakefield or card advantage?

Unless you're able to pull some amazing tempo out of time walk, lotus, or strips, it usually comes down to card advantage.  This is provided you're running removal to take care of trump cards like grunt or old man.  I usually side out FoW in the fish mirror, btw.  What do people think on that?

[nataz]

Gunts are good because they force a 2x trade. Kataki, not always run in the main, is great to come in from the sideboard simply as a warm body. Ditto on any other creatures you have.

Grim Lavamancer was the nut high in the UR fish mirror, and I suspect the same is true with jitte now.

I would SB out FOW as long as I had my own jitte's to bring in. Otherwise I think you need an anti-trump in FOW, Null Rod, etc., to deal with it.

Im not sure exactly what you mean when you talk about "Wakefield". If you are talking about warm bodies and being able to make good attacks, then yes. If you are talking about SB in large creatures, I would say no because of STP and jitte. If you are talking about SB in green creatures, then def no :-p.

Old man isn't as good now with Grunt and Jitte around, and threads seems plain worse then Jitte + extra creatures also. Basicaly, Jitte is insane in the aggro v. aggro match, but well, duh. Evasion might also go up with Jitte also, ala the old MD UW fish lists with cloud and rootwater.

[Kieranwolf]

Grim Lavamancer was the nut high in the UR fish mirror, and I suspect the same is true with jitte now.

I would SB out FOW as long as I had my own jitte's to bring in. Otherwise I think you need an anti-trump in FOW, Null Rod, etc., to deal with it.

Im not sure exactly what you mean when you talk about "Wakefield". If you are talking about warm bodies and being able to make good attacks, then yes. If you are talking about SB in large creatures, I would say no because of STP and jitte. If you are talking about SB in green creatures, then def no :-p.

Old man isn't as good now with Grunt and Jitte around, and threads seems plain worse then Jitte + extra creatures also. Basicaly, Jitte is insane in the aggro v. aggro match, but well, duh. Evasion might also go up with Jitte also, ala the old MD UW fish lists with cloud and rootwater.

Seconded. Aggro vs. Aggro comes down to a battle between Jitte strategy vs. anti-Jitte strategy. Not to mention that Jitte just happens to be its own kill card. When both decks side in Jitte, card advantage matters more. However, if only one deck plans to fight against Jitte, that deck will almost invariably do better.

Successful use of Jitte trumps all of the other strategies mentioned here with ease.