From 1997: "The biggest drawback to the fish deck remains the same: No-one ever respects a merfolk victory."
This is a great, I've been wanting a proper rebuttal when people go "*Real* fish ain't merfolks!". The practically-zero-merfolk "fish" lists stole the name from us!
It's kind of shocking how a vanilla 1/1 for 1 used to actually be playable. Creatures were really THAT BAD back then.
Some play 2 main, more typical is 1 main 1 side. The one in the main is just because it's randomly really good and at worst decent, as well as being able to get fetched by copying an opposing stoneforge mystic. As of late I've dropped it entirely because I've been a bit unsatisfied by how slow it is.
Welcome to Ye Olde School! Your bullet points pretty much nail the important parts - cavern and phantasmal image are crucial pieces of the deck.
Yeaaaah I've been slowly working on a new primer, it's not good that the primers are so out of date. It'll happen.. sometime..
In terms of more specific sideboard advice, I'd recommend 1-2 more grave hate pieces and 2 copies of a counter like Swan Song. Tidal Warrior works better maindeck rather than sideboard, since it helps us actually have an effective curve and not just say "land, go" on turn1 most of the time.
I've been generally dissatisfied with Manriki-Gusari, pretty similarly to how Silvergill described.
- It's often too slow to make a difference if you have to fetch it with Stoneforge Image (they got a hit in with the equipped dude already)
- You kind of need a TNN to carry it properly or risk getting blown out by removal
- Attacking with the dude that's carrying it can be too risky, so you're wasting damage every turn they *don't* throw down an equipment
If you've decided to play Rod like I have, I tend to feel like it's better to commit harder on Rod and just skip the Manriki, though if you *really* need to it's not that unreasonable to play both. If you don't have Rod, though, Manriki is mandatory. Another option is to just completely ignore equipment, but that's a meta call most aren't willing to take. As much as I love singing the praises of Null Rod, the actual #1 card of the matchup is Dismember.
I've been winning against D&T decently often enough on MODO, but it's hard to tell whether it's because of my Anti-D&T package, opponent's lack of play skill, or just plain getting lucky. I dunno, I'm gonna go with that third option..
Copy effects copy the exact text of the card itself being copied. Modifiers like pumps, counters, is-an-island, is-a-creature are not copied. So, when copying a mutavault, the image comes into play as a noncreature land as that's what's written on the card itself. Applied to stage-depths, when stage copies DD-island, it still gets all of the actual card text of DD *anyway* despite the modification on DD to not have card text. Then stage proceeds to become marit lage. However, you *can* island-ify stage to force them to make marit lage at an awkward timing, which is great if you can follow it up with a Jace bounce or Image copy. Now, if they have anything to point at our lage, we still just die, sometimes you just have to hope they don't have it and it can buy enough time for TNN to do work or to find Echoing Truth/Jace.
TLDR Tidal Warrior does nothing to stage-depths combo. Still great in the matchup overall.
Your experiences with chalice just doesn't match up with mine at all. It's been continuing to win me plenty of games nearly by itself and when I shaved down to 3 I pretty much immediately regretted it. Especially with Fatal Push BUG decks running around everywhere, it's been better than ever.. The Misdirection I have in my board has been fantastic as well, particularly against the (not full 4) decays that are accompanying the pushes. I think you're hurting a lot from not having 2 Wastelands and 1-2 Dazes in your list. Harbinger continues to not impress.
This might be the most disastrous data leak in the history of computing. MTGS sits behind CloudFlare, so any private data, particularly passwords, should be assumed compromised. Good password hygiene would is to not use a password for MTGS that you super-especially care about getting compromised, but people don't generally practice password hygiene.
With 1 cursecatcher double force I would have snap kept that 7 in G3 even though there was only 1 land. Interaction is the primary priority, killing the opponent is tertiary at best.
- Vendilion Clique has been overperforming for me in Modern and I'm thinking of transposing it to my Legacy deck. My knee-jerk reaction is to take out Tidal Warrior for a pair of the faeries, but TW has performed for me well in the past too. Which is better in the current meta?
I've never been much a fan of clique.. I don't really think it adds anything to any part of our game that I'm actually worried about. YMMV, though, of course.
- How has Chalice of the Void been as of late? I've been getting mixed opinions from my fellow Fish-friends playing Legacy.
Chalice is still a ridiculous card and just wins too many games almost by itself.
- One of my toughest match-ups has always been DnT, which seems to follow me everywhere I go. Karakas looks at first glance like a good option against it (to bounce Thalia for example). Does anyone have experience with it?
Karakas doesn't do anything particularly relevant in the matchup. We primarily die to sword-of-win and flickerwisp-vial blowouts, not to thalia. Up your dismember and null rod counts. Tidal Warrior is super good too.
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This is a great, I've been wanting a proper rebuttal when people go "*Real* fish ain't merfolks!". The practically-zero-merfolk "fish" lists stole the name from us!
It's kind of shocking how a vanilla 1/1 for 1 used to actually be playable. Creatures were really THAT BAD back then.
Yeaaaah I've been slowly working on a new primer, it's not good that the primers are so out of date. It'll happen.. sometime..
In terms of more specific sideboard advice, I'd recommend 1-2 more grave hate pieces and 2 copies of a counter like Swan Song. Tidal Warrior works better maindeck rather than sideboard, since it helps us actually have an effective curve and not just say "land, go" on turn1 most of the time.
- It's often too slow to make a difference if you have to fetch it with Stoneforge Image (they got a hit in with the equipped dude already)
- You kind of need a TNN to carry it properly or risk getting blown out by removal
- Attacking with the dude that's carrying it can be too risky, so you're wasting damage every turn they *don't* throw down an equipment
If you've decided to play Rod like I have, I tend to feel like it's better to commit harder on Rod and just skip the Manriki, though if you *really* need to it's not that unreasonable to play both. If you don't have Rod, though, Manriki is mandatory. Another option is to just completely ignore equipment, but that's a meta call most aren't willing to take. As much as I love singing the praises of Null Rod, the actual #1 card of the matchup is Dismember.
I've been winning against D&T decently often enough on MODO, but it's hard to tell whether it's because of my Anti-D&T package, opponent's lack of play skill, or just plain getting lucky. I dunno, I'm gonna go with that third option..
TLDR Tidal Warrior does nothing to stage-depths combo. Still great in the matchup overall.
This might be the most disastrous data leak in the history of computing. MTGS sits behind CloudFlare, so any private data, particularly passwords, should be assumed compromised. Good password hygiene would is to not use a password for MTGS that you super-especially care about getting compromised, but people don't generally practice password hygiene.
I've never been much a fan of clique.. I don't really think it adds anything to any part of our game that I'm actually worried about. YMMV, though, of course.
Chalice is still a ridiculous card and just wins too many games almost by itself.
Karakas doesn't do anything particularly relevant in the matchup. We primarily die to sword-of-win and flickerwisp-vial blowouts, not to thalia. Up your dismember and null rod counts. Tidal Warrior is super good too.