[Deck] Yohan and Friends

[Complete_Jank]

Ok, I've wanted to make a deck with this Johan Grunt (I call him Yohan).

So today here at work I set out to try and come up with a competitive deck.

The deck is not completely designed to have to have him in play to win, but rather he is just one of the new players in on a team of already known All-stars.

Average Mana cost per card is 1.21

15 Creatures
4 Johan Grunt
4 Mettling Mage
4 Dark Confident
3 Mishra's Factory

8 Removal
3 Swords to Plowshares
3 Darkblast
2 Engineered Explosives

9 Counter
3 Stifle
2 Pithing Needle
4 Force of Will

9 Draw
3 Deep Analysis
3 Mental Note
3 Brainstorm

19 Land not including Mishra's
3 Poluted Delta
3 Flooded Strand
4 Underground Sea
4 Tundra
1 Plains
1 Swamp
3 Island


I will play test this deck this weekend, and try a few changes.

Other cards I am looking at: Chain of Vapor, Wasteland instead of Mishra's, Golgari Thug, Stinkweed Imp, Can Valor make an appearance?

Match ups look well with Threshold not doing well. Against Goblins you have 9 first turn answers for Lacky, and 24 if you go first. Solidarity you have Mettling Mages, and SB could bring Duress and Cabal Therapy, as well as some other tricks.

More to come, and any input is welcomed.

[TheDarkshineKnight]

It's spelled Johan, not Yohan.

[Complete_Jank]

It's spelled Johan, not Yohan.

Corrected, I didn't really know since I've called him Yohan since I first saw the card.

[kicks_422]

Isn't it Jotun Grunt? Meddling Mage? Dark Confidant... :confused:

Anyway... It looks OK... But why play this over EBA?... only 3 Brainstorm and 3 StP?... Why 3 Deep Analysis?... And your suggestions of Stinkweed, Valor, etc... Aren't they kind of non-synergistic with the Grunt?...

[TheDarkshineKnight]

Isn't it Jotun Grunt? Meddling Mage? Dark Confidant... :confused:

Anyway... It looks OK... But why play this over EBA?... only 3 Brainstorm and 3 StP?... Why 3 Deep Analysis?... And your suggestions of Stinkweed, Valor, etc... Aren't they kind of non-synergistic with the Grunt?...

Not really. Stinky gets pumped by discarding cards, so if worse comes to worse you can always eat your own graveyard.

[kicks_422]

I know... But if all those dredge cards are in your graveyard with a Grunt in play, Grunt would be eating them, right?...

And how does Stinky get pumped?...

[xsockmonkeyx]

Its an interesting idea but it looks a little rough.

First things first. 4 Grunts is 1 too many (IMO) even for a deck based around him, and 3 Brainstorm is 1 too few for any deck that is going to run it (IMO).

Im concerned with the focus of this deck. I feel it is trying to accomplish many things well instead of trying accomplishing a few things great. What it has in versitility it is lacking in raw power. Thats ok in Eureka.dec but you dont have the same fluidity and ability to find answers in a deck without cards like Survival and Burning wish. My advise is to take the ideas in the deck that you feel are the strongest, accentuate them, and then dump everything else.

Also your only running 4 hard counters. If your holding a Fow in your hand you might hesitate to use it because its your only counterspell and you may not draw another one. When I play control/controlish type decks I want to have the confidence that I could potentially take care of threats later on regardless of what I do right now. I dont like to have to second guess myself by running too few answers.

One last thing. Mental note has to go. Running a card in your deck because it helps to pay upkeep of another card is suboptimal IMO. You could probably play more fetches and cantrips as those card stand on their own and just happen to help pay upkeep.

[freakish777]

I'm pretty sure he means Putrid Imp and not Stinkweed.

Keep Mental Note around, it dumps DA randomly (or if you BStormed it back). Also Therapy seems like a good sideboard card with synergy with Grunt (oh, I'm not paying his upkeep next turn, I'll just sac him after attacking for 4). Though I would go down to 2 Darkblasts and up to 4 Brainstorms.

[Hanni]

I'm confused why people keep posting UWb Fish decks when there are already other threads for it on this forum.

I've been working on my version for about 10 months. My version is here:
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4046

There is another version that runs more cantrips. It can be found here:
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4092

There's another version that runs Wizards but no Grunts, so I won't link it.

I'm not trying to come off offensively in any way, I just simply wanted to point out that other versions of this same deck concept exist and I think that keeping it all together will help the deck grow rather than someone posting a new thread about the same deck week after week.

From personal testing and feedback of others as well, 2-3 Jotun Grunt has become an established amount... I run 3, and it works perfectly for me.

Why 3 Swords to Plowshares? Make these a 4-of.

4 Force of Will, 3 Stifle, and 2 Pithing Needle are your counters? This is blue based control, you should at least run 4 Force of Will and 3 Daze... I personally run a 4/3/2 split of Force/Daze/Counterspell.

Why are you running a 3/3/3 split on card draw? Figure out what works the best and make those 4-of's, have 3's of everything makes the deck seem unfocused. I don't really see the point of Deep Analysis... this isn't Madness. I don't see the point of Mental Note either, this isn't Threshold. I realize that Jotun Grunt can be somewhat similar to Threshold but that doesn't mean you should run sub-par cantrip. I run 4 Brainstorm and 4 Serum Vision in my list and those are the best cantrips in the format (at least in my opinion).

I think Umezawa's Jitte adds alot to Fish.

I also think the deck performs ideally with a landbase similar to Gro (since this deck functions, and is built, very similarly to it). 17-18 lands works well.

There isn't really a whole lot for me to say, just check out some of the links that I posted for ideas. Either link should give you a sort of direction for fine-tuning UWb Fish. For a more extensive amount of information about UWb Fish, I have a thread on TMD with alot of content:
http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=29779.0

UWb Fish is starting to attract alot more people now... when I first posted it, the deck was nowhere and I didn't think it was going to gain alot of popularlity but I guess it did. Albeit my original version wasn't amazing, I've done alot of modding and tweaking to it and I think it looks rather good now.

[xsockmonkeyx]

I'm confused why people keep posting UWb Fish decks when there are already other threads for it on this forum.



Yes, there are like 5 threads for 3 color fish all UWB and with 75%+ of the same card pool. Hanni's list is the most developed (and best IMO) but Roopey's shows promise too.