NeoFish

[netherspirit]

Fish is obviously a very resilient deck that always manages to adapt as the metagame changes. As such there are lots of versions of it floating about, this is my new one, NeoFish.

Originally I wanted a 5C deck, with high-powered cards from each color, but I found this just made the deck far too random and took away the control aspects. The deck functions in a very similar way to most Fish decks, disrupting their mana base, countering their threats, and dropping weenies to beat down. However, mine has less creatures to beat down with (seven weenies and one big critter), so I have to compensate by slowing them down more and tutoring up threats quickly.

Anyway, here's the deck!

NeoFish:

Mana Base:
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Lotus Petal
4 City of Brass
3 Gemstone Mine
1 Tundra
1 Tropical Island
1 Underground Sea
1 Island
3 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand
1 Strip Mine
4 Wasteland

Creatures:
1 Platinum Angel
4 Meddling Mage
3 Icatian Javelineers

Permission:
4 Force of Will
3 Remand
2 Misdirection

Draw/Tutor:
1 Anestral Recall
4 Brainstorm
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Imperial Seal
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Tinker

Mana Disruption:
3 Root Maze
3 Null Rod

Random Broken:
1 Time Walk
1 Regrowth
1 Balance

Sideboard:
3 Massacre (for Fish)
3 Goblin Welder (for Stax)
4 Leyline of the Void (for Ichorid and other graveyard based decks)
3 Shadow of Doubt (for Combo and HulkFlash)
2 Diabolic Edict (for Oath)

Well there it is! I think a lot of the cards are pretty self explanatory, but I'll explain the less obvious ones.

Platinum Angel - Sometimes the deck is a bit slow and using City of Brass can cause a lot of damage over the period of the game, so Platinum Angel stops me losing.

Tinker - Fetches Platinum Angel!

Root Maze - Screws over artifact mana sources and fetchlands, making it hard for many decks to get anywhere for a while.

Regrowth - I may replace this with Yawgmoth's Will, it's nice being able to bring back a draw or permission card, especially FoW.

Balance - I don't run a lot of creatures and I can drop my hand very quickly, so Balance allows me to destroy their hand and creatures.

My main concern with the deck at the moment is speed, I need faster draw engine. I was thinking of using Dark Confidant but I need the space and I then need to deal with the life loss.

Anyway, constructive criticism (positive or negative) and comments would be appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

netherspirit

[EKM_Ichorid]

Your missing the good disruptive creatures, aka: Jotun Grunt, Aven Mindcensor, Grim Lavamancer, Gorilla Shaman, Magus of the Moon.

[Duncan]

Why do you play massacre without playing a swamp main?

[netherspirit]

Why do you play massacre without playing a swamp main?

I've got the one Underground Sea which I can easily fetch or tutor for.

[Meeee]

Why do you play massacre without playing a swamp main?

I've got the one Underground Sea which I can easily fetch or tutor for.

Actually you don't.

Why remand duress seems way better. You might also want to fit in the other on color moxen or just cut tinker since you have very few cards to tinker away.  You seem to be playing all 5 colors but your not really focused and you certainly aren't getting much value from some of you colors like the welders, which are not going to be that great against stax and you get almost no benfit from them since you have a grand total of 7 artifacts between md and board.

Your sideboard seems to be pretty random things like Shadow of Doubt are really slow in you deck since you only have 3 accelerants so holding up 2 mana means you can't play anything until like turn 3-4.  Massacre seems great against fish and all but what about GAT which is just a broken version of fish and barely even notices massacre (doesnt run plains or care about -2/-2).  Diabolic Edict seems very weak, oath's barely a factor these days unless your playing in a unpowered environment. 

[netherspirit]

Why do you play massacre without playing a swamp main?

I've got the one Underground Sea which I can easily fetch or tutor for.

Actually you don't.

Oops! I missed it on the list, it is in the deck, I'll now add it.

And I chose Remand rather than Duress because it cantrips and can be pitched to Force.

[wethepeople]

Massacre seems great against fish and all but what about GAT which is just a broken version of fish and barely even notices massacre (doesnt run plains or care about -2/-2).  Diabolic Edict seems very weak, oath's barely a factor these days unless your playing in a unpowered environment. 

The above statement is both contradictory to one-another, and contradictory to the facts. GAT is nothing like Fish. At all. The only true correlation that I can see in it is the fact that both decks win using the attack phase, which in no way justifies it's classification as "Fish".

Did Netherspit ever say that he boards in Massacre for GAT? No, he said "Fish". Assuming that he brings it in in this matchup is silly, because no one in their right mind would do this.  So in attempt to look like the smarter person you automatically decide to thrash on a completely unexistant gameplan.

However, you got one thing right. He said that he runs Diabolic Edict for Oath. Which is undoubtingly an understandable inclusion. If he sees Oath, it is the correct move to sideboard it, especially when playing Fish- a deck with a terrible Oath matchup, no?

So if you went as far to analyze those last few slots a little more, you'd realize that maybe, just maybe, he sideboards Diabolic Edict for GAT too, not Massacre.

[Meeee]

I didnt mean to say that GAT and fish were the same deck I was just pointing out that he has board for Fish but next to nothing against GAT, with edict being the only reasonable card to bring in against GAT.  Edict is a reasonable card to bring in but GAT often wins by snowballing card advantage with a dryad on board, which means even if you deal with one dryad its often very easy to replace them, especially if thedeck is under minimal pressure. 

Which brings me to another point this deck has no effective way to put an opponnent under pressure, javelineers are too small to be a real threat and there are only 4 mages.  So while this deck can create a tempo advantage with Remand, Root Maze, Null Rod, and waste effects it has no way to capitalize on the weakness this generates and will often give the opponnent alot of time ot recover.

You also might want to think about addressing the inneffectivness of tinker in this deck you have very few artifacts, simply swtiching lands for moxen is probaly the best way to increase Tinker's reliability, I would recommend swapping out the 3 Gemstones mines for 3 more moxen.

[wethepeople]

I didnt mean to say that GAT and fish were the same deck I was just pointing out that he has board for Fish but next to nothing against GAT, with edict being the only reasonable card to bring in against GAT.  Edict is a reasonable card to bring in but GAT often wins by snowballing card advantage with a dryad on board, which means even if you deal with one dryad its often very easy to replace them, especially if thedeck is under minimal pressure. 

No, you stated that GAT is "just a more broken version of Fish", which is what I replied to, because that isn't even remotely correct. You didn't say that he has a sideboard for Fish, and nothing for GAT. You said that when he tries to bring in Massacre versus GAT, and that it will be irrelevent to the Dryads. Problem is, he never said he brought in Massacre for GAT, which he doesn't.

Keep in mind that in addition to the two Edicts he brings in, he also has four other ways of directly grabbing it. That's essentially six Diabolic Edicts, which is plenty. I am not saying that this matchup is an auto-win, or anything of that sort, but I am implying that he boards just as much as he needs to in a deck like this.

Believe it or not, if you manage to land a Javelineer before the opposing Dryad, you can in fact destroy it. This generally requires you to cast it turn one, on the play, so it has a chance to tap before the Dryad is able to grow. In response to your opponent's first non-green spell and Dryad's ability has triggered, or when they are tapped out, you are given time to tap your Javelineer, and ping it of lethal damage.  This plan is not anything to rely on, however, because if your opponent happens to have a second Instant that they can play in response to Javelineer's activated ability, Dryad will get a counter before the ability resolves, making the one damage irrelevent.

Netherspirit, one huge anti-synergy found in your list is the combo of Root Maze and fetchlands. Casting Maze and then dropping a fetch will prevent your desired land from ever reaching the table for two turns, because Delta will come into play tapped, and then on the following turn, when you break it, the second land will as well.

[netherspirit]

Yeah the anti-synergy of Root Maze and my fetches is rather annoying, but often symetrical, so I don't have too much of an issue with it. However, against a deck with few fetches I'm in a spot of bother.

[wethepeople]

Is it really necessary to run a five-color mana base? If you think about it, you hardly even run that many spells of each color. The most dominant colors appear to be blue, white, and black/green follow with approximately the same number of spells being ran. I am sure that it'd be easier to just make it UWb, or UWg, and use duals accordingly, rather than having such a fragile mana base, and a list to match.

[netherspirit]

I've found each color to be really useful. Although I may only run a few cards of certain colors, those that I do run are very powerful and have quite an impact on the game, so I'm happy keeping the mana base I've got.