I've been a bit down on MoW and tried running without for a while. That was a mistake. As vulnerable as it currently is the power it represents and the ability to swing a match are still critical to our success. That said I'm currently down to 3 copies.
As for Copter... still not sold. When its good its good, but too often it just feels clunky in my hand. In skipping that one for now.
Kira is an auto include for me and Clique does not currently have a place in my 75.
Overall I think our 60 is fine; its the SB that feels incredibly tight. My local meta is packed with Tron, Control (mostly Grixis, lots of Blood Moons for some reason) and Red Decks. I typically have Seas, Relics, Dispels and Ceremonious Rejection.
But online I still want Gut Shot, Negates and maybe ET. I've always preferred having 3-4 of something in SB for consistency, but now I'm starting to think more about 1-2 of's to try and answer the plethora of threats we need to worry about. Im just worried about dilution.
Agreed. Diminish is cute against things like DS, but doesn't deal with a lot of far more problematic threats. Counters Company, Affinity & Storm just to name a few.
Total tangent but that reminds me of the time I was running Circle of Flame and Polymorphist's Jest in standard with Haunted Platemail as my win con. Once people figured out what I was doing it was easy to play around, but that first FNM was glorious as people ran their 1/1's into a fiery oblivion lol Good times!
I've had my share of struggles with control. They can spot removal a few threats, board wipe if you over commit, lock the board down with Gideon/Elspeth and then reload with Sphinxes Rev. I've ground out some games, but I wouldn't exactly call this is a good matchup.
Eldrazi Tron doesn't particularly bother me, although IF you consider that and Affinity to both be a problem then perhaps look at Ceremonious Rejection?
With regards to Counter Company I do have a question.... IF you have a Gut Shot in your opening hand do you immediately pluck off the mana dork to slow them down, or do you hold it up until Vizier hits the board to make sure you have an answer?
1 drop better than Cursecatcher? Not likely
2cmc Lord? lol no!
3cmc Lord that pushed out Reej? probably not
Silvergill isn't going anywhere.
That means in terms of creatures we'd need something strictly better than Harbinger or a better closer than MoW and I doubt either happens. But the real problem is that the sort of tools that Fish needs would break blue (Treasure Cruise!) and force everybody into that color.
So what we actually need to hope for are Tribal spells along the lines of Draconic Roar or Silumgars Scorn. We need conditional counters/removal which upgrade our spell suite but don't break the game for other decks. Possibly a Raise the Alarm or Lingering Souls type card for fish or a playable planeswalker with fish synergies.
Sigh... going on a month now I just cannot get off the struggle buss.
2-3 Modern Competitive League
2-0 vs. Grixis Shadow - not much to say, I play creature and hit them with said creatures. Relic/Dispel are fantastic.
2-1 vs. Counters Company - game I lost I actually got beat in the face with a 5/6 Spell Queller. Gut Shot was huge in game 2 & 3.
0-2 vs. Abzan Company - 3 CoCos was too much G3, finally found Viscera Seer & Finks.
1-2 vs. Esper Control - flooded out *hard* in games 1 & 3. Like 3 creatures all game and 9 lands. Is what it is.
1-2 vs. Dredge - Both games I lost was 1-2 pts of damage away and probably screwed up blocks someplace punting it away.
Lost the die roll all 5 matches. Only 1 Vial hand in 13 games. 2x Tidebinders main did absolutely nothing. Only used Harbingers bounce ability 1 time and never saw it vs. Dredge. I managed to ET a Spell Queller still on the stack and perma-exile my own Spreading Seas. That was super. Smugglers Copter did nothing for me, but I couldn't find creatures to activate it.
On the other hand Relic was fantastic as was Gut Shot. I still like Pognify. Was great in my 1st 2 matches. Had 4x Negate but never had an opportunity to cast any of them. Still seems better than Unified Will right now.
Looks like Tidebinder & Copter are coming out. Will bring back 2x Kira main. Other than that... I dunno. Hard to get a good read with the way my deck has been running. At this point I'm friggin tempted to throw in Serum Visions just to smooth out my draws, even though I know how terrible an idea that is. But I'm pretty frustrated.
Counter Company seems to be hit or miss depending on draws. Gut Shot and Dismember can get you there, but sometimes they go off and not much you can do.
Some people have been testing Pithing Needle.
Dredge I don't have too many problems with. Again, 4 Relics. Harbinger is also nice and their mana can be a little vulnerable, although a lot of people have come off Seas Claim in favor of Gut Shot because of Company decks so its a bit tougher than it used to be.
FishBoys how is merfolks against grixis shadow? I think if the pair is fine i will sleeve it again, thanks
Your mileage may vary, but my record against them is fantastic. Side out Seas and Vials for Relics and Dispels. Keep a high creature count and grind them out similar to traditional bgx decks.
I highly recommend having 4x Relic in board. Between Grixis, Bgx and Storm its well worth it.
Kira is very well positioned, especially with Grixis taking a larger portion of the Shadow pie. Fewer Abrupt Decays to worry about! Of course there is always Bolt, Snap, Bolt... but whatever. That's still 2 for 1 in our favor and against a grindy attrition based deck I'll take that all day long.
So, my LGS has decided to not allow pre-FNM free play anymore (Seems dumb. Don't ask), so I am thinking I may want to try picking up a 1v1 constructed format again. Paired with the terrible premonition I had a while back that either the next Commander set or Iconic Masters is going to finally give us the Lord of Atlantis reprint with new art that some of us have been dying for, I may put Merfolk back together... again... for the third time. >.<
Anyway, my question is, how well does the deck stack up now? I've considered returning to it in the past, but then I remember things like Fatal Push have been made and it makes me die a little inside. The deck lists that I've seen on the past few posts and from popping in every now and then seem to be about the same as when I left...
IMO Fish has consistently been the equivalent of a solid tier 1.5-2 deck for quite a while. It's actual ranking has as much to do with the number of people piloting the deck (ie; popularity) as it does it's potency, which is why you see it move up or move down within the rankings. Despite it's popularity (or lack there of) it remains consistent within the format because there is a lot of room to react to the meta without having to change what is fundamentally the core of the deck.
It is true that with cards like Push, Collective Brutality, Lilly of the Last Hope & Walking Balista that MoW feels a bit more vulnerable than it has in the past. That said, we have the tools to match up reasonable well with decks like Grixis Shadow and our sideboard seems to be actively evolving to deal with the new Counters Company deck which continues to gain popularity.
We still have our bad matchups; Lantern, Affinity, Elves etc., but I think we stack up relatively well against the field. As always, how well you know your deck and how well you pilot it matters as much if not more than what you are actually reaching for. Pick a deck you enjoy and play it well, fish or otherwise.
@Kizzel: I've found that the best answers for Bogles card Echoing Truth and Sea's Claim. E-Truth can strip important enchantments and lead the Bogle into the waiting arms of your blockers, and Claim can cut them off colors and make it hard for them to cast spells.
I've had terrible results with Sea's Claim. They can do an awful lot with out a lot of mana and 1 land drop has them up and running. E-Truth and Spell Pierce are legit, but as I said before this is a pretty poor matchup. If you are cutting cards and have nothing else to bring it I guess it can't hurt, but it's not a plan I would feel particularly good about.
I dont know how good pongify is but one of the uses it had on standard was to "blank" removal so it does have a very similar effect to snag both offensive and defensive. On the other hand it does not 100% clear a blocker so its not great there. Nikachu is playing some tidebinders right now and that was another cool interaction.
when i began this experiment i was running 4 harbinger and 3 Tidebinders. Currently back on the 3/2 split.
OK... I officially give up on the 0 Master of Waves test. My results have been absolutely putrid. I've also been playing like absolute crap and punted a rather large number of games away. Or maybe I've always been terrible and MoW just covered up a lot of my bad play lol. Either way MoW is back. Only 2 for the time being because he does still feel super vulnerable, but the ability to go wide, with some protection, is just too valuable for me to shirk off any longer. I yield!!
As far as Grixis Shadow goes... I actually like the matchup. Right now I'm going -4 Spread Seas, -2 Tidebinder, -1 Vial for +3 Dispel and +4 Relic, although it may be correct to keep the Tidebinders and pitch 2 more Vials. I actually kinda like offering up a Vial to T1 IOK or Thoughtseize because it means they aren't taking Lords, Silvergills or Harbingers and I'm not keeping 1 landers. It's still a bad top deck so 4 is a bit heavy, and KCommand doesn't feel particularly good, but I don't have much else I really wanna bring in for them anyway.
Despite being an attrition matchup they don't really generate card advantage over us and sooner or later they run out of answers. Mostly what I find is that by the time I've baited out all the discards and removal that they've put their life total low enough they are on a pretty short clock and without having to fear Temur Battlerage all the time I am comfortable absorbing a big hit (or two) and winning on the crackback.
It' worth noting that I AM still playing 2 Pongify main and it's friggin fantastic vs. Shadow, Counter Company & Storm decks. It has it's drawbacks, but neither Snag or Dismember can make that same claim. I'm not saying it's definitely the answer, but at this point I will say it merits further testing and I hope 1 or 2 of you are brave enough to give it a whirl and provide your own feedback. Good or bad.
Nikachus latest has some interesting choices, most of which I can get behind.
3x Harbinger & 2x Tidebinder: Definitely on board here. I've been bringing in the Tidebinders for a while now and tried a few different configurations, but the 3/2 split is very reasonable.
4x Negate over Unified Will: Again, mirrors my own experience. Too many situations where UF is being turned off.
4x Gut Shot & 4x Relics in SB: I'm already doing both, although while the Relics are a definite "yes" for me, I'm still deciding between Gut Shot & Sea's Claim. I think that while Sea's are very good, most of the matches where I bring it in are winnable anyway. I miss it most against Jund Shadow & Tron.
But Gut Shot is *very* important against Affinity, Elves and the new Company deck.
2x Smugglers Copter: This is where I start to get a lil iffy. I know Fanatic is on board and I'm not writing it off...but while I like the effect I still struggle with the space it occupies. I'll be watching these results closely.
2x Venser and 2x MoW: I get it. I've been testing out 0-2 MoW for a while because it's feeling a lot more vulnerable lately (Push, Brutality, Balista, Last Hope, etc), but I'm still not sure Venser is where I want to be. Bouncing Verdict or some other stuff is nice...but I still think I'd rather pack in that 4th Reej, Harbinger, Kira, Clique or Spell Pierce. Maybe even maindeck 1-2 Relics seems pretty reasonable atm.
All that said I don't have the success that Nikachu does so wtf do i know lol
Not really related to any of that, but I'm considering bringing back 2 copies of either GQ or TecEdge to board. Not so much because I want the land destruction, but because matches where I'm siding out Vial I miss having extra lands to bring in. Helping against BGx, control & Tron is just icing. Anybody else having similar feelings? FYI this does essentially involve me moving 2 relics to main.
I'd pick up the lands first. They are always relevant regardless of the meta.
Clique is more of a preference. Some prefer Kira. Some don't bother with either. Clique is best in a board-wipe heavy meta (Verdict!) or one where you need to pluck essential combo pieces (Scapeshift!) and big threats you otherwise struggle to answer. The 3/1 flying body is relevant, but in a spot-removal heavy meta I'd recommend Kira anyway with neither being strictly necessary.
And no, Choke is not really a concern. Every once in a great while it will make an appearance (and make me cry) but not enough to really worry about. Blood Moon is a bigger problem, which is why despite all the reasons covered by sibin we still try and keep a relatively balanced 10/10 split in terms of basics/non-basics.
As for Copter... still not sold. When its good its good, but too often it just feels clunky in my hand. In skipping that one for now.
Kira is an auto include for me and Clique does not currently have a place in my 75.
Overall I think our 60 is fine; its the SB that feels incredibly tight. My local meta is packed with Tron, Control (mostly Grixis, lots of Blood Moons for some reason) and Red Decks. I typically have Seas, Relics, Dispels and Ceremonious Rejection.
But online I still want Gut Shot, Negates and maybe ET. I've always preferred having 3-4 of something in SB for consistency, but now I'm starting to think more about 1-2 of's to try and answer the plethora of threats we need to worry about. Im just worried about dilution.
Total tangent but that reminds me of the time I was running Circle of Flame and Polymorphist's Jest in standard with Haunted Platemail as my win con. Once people figured out what I was doing it was easy to play around, but that first FNM was glorious as people ran their 1/1's into a fiery oblivion lol Good times!
Eldrazi Tron doesn't particularly bother me, although IF you consider that and Affinity to both be a problem then perhaps look at Ceremonious Rejection?
With regards to Counter Company I do have a question.... IF you have a Gut Shot in your opening hand do you immediately pluck off the mana dork to slow them down, or do you hold it up until Vizier hits the board to make sure you have an answer?
1 drop better than Cursecatcher? Not likely
2cmc Lord? lol no!
3cmc Lord that pushed out Reej? probably not
Silvergill isn't going anywhere.
That means in terms of creatures we'd need something strictly better than Harbinger or a better closer than MoW and I doubt either happens. But the real problem is that the sort of tools that Fish needs would break blue (Treasure Cruise!) and force everybody into that color.
So what we actually need to hope for are Tribal spells along the lines of Draconic Roar or Silumgars Scorn. We need conditional counters/removal which upgrade our spell suite but don't break the game for other decks. Possibly a Raise the Alarm or Lingering Souls type card for fish or a playable planeswalker with fish synergies.
2-3 Modern Competitive League
2-0 vs. Grixis Shadow - not much to say, I play creature and hit them with said creatures. Relic/Dispel are fantastic.
2-1 vs. Counters Company - game I lost I actually got beat in the face with a 5/6 Spell Queller. Gut Shot was huge in game 2 & 3.
0-2 vs. Abzan Company - 3 CoCos was too much G3, finally found Viscera Seer & Finks.
1-2 vs. Esper Control - flooded out *hard* in games 1 & 3. Like 3 creatures all game and 9 lands. Is what it is.
1-2 vs. Dredge - Both games I lost was 1-2 pts of damage away and probably screwed up blocks someplace punting it away.
Lost the die roll all 5 matches. Only 1 Vial hand in 13 games. 2x Tidebinders main did absolutely nothing. Only used Harbingers bounce ability 1 time and never saw it vs. Dredge. I managed to ET a Spell Queller still on the stack and perma-exile my own Spreading Seas. That was super. Smugglers Copter did nothing for me, but I couldn't find creatures to activate it.
On the other hand Relic was fantastic as was Gut Shot. I still like Pognify. Was great in my 1st 2 matches. Had 4x Negate but never had an opportunity to cast any of them. Still seems better than Unified Will right now.
Looks like Tidebinder & Copter are coming out. Will bring back 2x Kira main. Other than that... I dunno. Hard to get a good read with the way my deck has been running. At this point I'm friggin tempted to throw in Serum Visions just to smooth out my draws, even though I know how terrible an idea that is. But I'm pretty frustrated.
Some people have been testing Pithing Needle.
Dredge I don't have too many problems with. Again, 4 Relics. Harbinger is also nice and their mana can be a little vulnerable, although a lot of people have come off Seas Claim in favor of Gut Shot because of Company decks so its a bit tougher than it used to be.
I highly recommend having 4x Relic in board. Between Grixis, Bgx and Storm its well worth it.
It is true that with cards like Push, Collective Brutality, Lilly of the Last Hope & Walking Balista that MoW feels a bit more vulnerable than it has in the past. That said, we have the tools to match up reasonable well with decks like Grixis Shadow and our sideboard seems to be actively evolving to deal with the new Counters Company deck which continues to gain popularity.
We still have our bad matchups; Lantern, Affinity, Elves etc., but I think we stack up relatively well against the field. As always, how well you know your deck and how well you pilot it matters as much if not more than what you are actually reaching for. Pick a deck you enjoy and play it well, fish or otherwise.
Boggles is a bad matchup, but not one worth worrying about unless you see a lot of it at your LGS.
Seas > Tec atm.
Psionic Blast had some success as a 1 of in somebodies deck like a year ago. I forget who, but it never really took off with the community.
As far as Grixis Shadow goes... I actually like the matchup. Right now I'm going -4 Spread Seas, -2 Tidebinder, -1 Vial for +3 Dispel and +4 Relic, although it may be correct to keep the Tidebinders and pitch 2 more Vials. I actually kinda like offering up a Vial to T1 IOK or Thoughtseize because it means they aren't taking Lords, Silvergills or Harbingers and I'm not keeping 1 landers. It's still a bad top deck so 4 is a bit heavy, and KCommand doesn't feel particularly good, but I don't have much else I really wanna bring in for them anyway.
Despite being an attrition matchup they don't really generate card advantage over us and sooner or later they run out of answers. Mostly what I find is that by the time I've baited out all the discards and removal that they've put their life total low enough they are on a pretty short clock and without having to fear Temur Battlerage all the time I am comfortable absorbing a big hit (or two) and winning on the crackback.
It' worth noting that I AM still playing 2 Pongify main and it's friggin fantastic vs. Shadow, Counter Company & Storm decks. It has it's drawbacks, but neither Snag or Dismember can make that same claim. I'm not saying it's definitely the answer, but at this point I will say it merits further testing and I hope 1 or 2 of you are brave enough to give it a whirl and provide your own feedback. Good or bad.
3x Harbinger & 2x Tidebinder: Definitely on board here. I've been bringing in the Tidebinders for a while now and tried a few different configurations, but the 3/2 split is very reasonable.
4x Negate over Unified Will: Again, mirrors my own experience. Too many situations where UF is being turned off.
4x Gut Shot & 4x Relics in SB: I'm already doing both, although while the Relics are a definite "yes" for me, I'm still deciding between Gut Shot & Sea's Claim. I think that while Sea's are very good, most of the matches where I bring it in are winnable anyway. I miss it most against Jund Shadow & Tron.
But Gut Shot is *very* important against Affinity, Elves and the new Company deck.
2x Smugglers Copter: This is where I start to get a lil iffy. I know Fanatic is on board and I'm not writing it off...but while I like the effect I still struggle with the space it occupies. I'll be watching these results closely.
2x Venser and 2x MoW: I get it. I've been testing out 0-2 MoW for a while because it's feeling a lot more vulnerable lately (Push, Brutality, Balista, Last Hope, etc), but I'm still not sure Venser is where I want to be. Bouncing Verdict or some other stuff is nice...but I still think I'd rather pack in that 4th Reej, Harbinger, Kira, Clique or Spell Pierce. Maybe even maindeck 1-2 Relics seems pretty reasonable atm.
All that said I don't have the success that Nikachu does so wtf do i know lol
Not really related to any of that, but I'm considering bringing back 2 copies of either GQ or TecEdge to board. Not so much because I want the land destruction, but because matches where I'm siding out Vial I miss having extra lands to bring in. Helping against BGx, control & Tron is just icing. Anybody else having similar feelings? FYI this does essentially involve me moving 2 relics to main.
Clique is more of a preference. Some prefer Kira. Some don't bother with either. Clique is best in a board-wipe heavy meta (Verdict!) or one where you need to pluck essential combo pieces (Scapeshift!) and big threats you otherwise struggle to answer. The 3/1 flying body is relevant, but in a spot-removal heavy meta I'd recommend Kira anyway with neither being strictly necessary.
And no, Choke is not really a concern. Every once in a great while it will make an appearance (and make me cry) but not enough to really worry about. Blood Moon is a bigger problem, which is why despite all the reasons covered by sibin we still try and keep a relatively balanced 10/10 split in terms of basics/non-basics.