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    Noble Fish


    Noble Fish

    Table of Contents
    • I. The Name and Legacy Origin
    • II. The Deck
    • III. The Plan
    • IV. The Cards
    • V. The Match Ups
    • VI. The Sideboarding
    • VII. The Results


    I. The Name

    The name "Noble Fish" originates from vintage. Where Mike Noble came up with a Bant colored "Fish" deck that uses small disruptive creatures to beatdown and disrupt the opponents gameplan. This deck featured no actual merfolk, but it did feature 4 Noble Hierarchs.

    In one of my streams I decided that I wanted to build a Legacy deck to utilize Edric, Spymaster of Trest because the ability of drawing cards when you deal damage is inherently powerful and it shouldn't be too hard to abuse such an ability. More on how I build the deck in the section IV. The Cards. It was pointed out in that stream that the deck was similar to the vintage deck "Noble Fish" and also similar to the Vintage deck "BUG Fish" that took 1st in the Bazaar of Moxen 8 and that actually played 1 copy of Edric, Spymaster of Trest. So it seemed obvious to name the deck "Noble Fish".

    II. The Deck

    The original decklist as played to a record of 14-2 through 4 daily events on Magic Online

    Lands (20):

    4x Flooded Strand
    4x Misty Rainforest
    4x Wasteland
    3x Tundra
    2x Tropical Island
    1x Savannah
    1x Forest
    1x Island

    Creatures (21):

    4x Judge's Familiar
    4x Noble Hierarch
    4x Stoneforge Mystic
    3x Edric, Spymaster of Trest
    2x Looter il-Kor
    2x True-Name Nemesis
    2x Mother of Runes

    Non-creature spells (19):

    4x Brainstorm
    4x Swords to Plowshares
    4x Force of Will
    4x Daze
    1x Umezawa's Jitte
    1x Sword of Fire and Ice
    1x Batterskull

    Sideboard:

    3x Envelop
    2x Spell Pierce
    2x Enlightened Tutor
    2x Rest in Peace
    1x Ethersworn Canonist
    1x Grafdigger's Cage
    1x Manriki-Gusari
    1x Pithing Needle
    1x Relic of Progenitus
    1x Arcane Laboratory


    III. The Plan

    You're looking to play a tempo game. Like a Delver deck you're looking to pressure your opponent enough early that they are forced to play into your soft counterspells, unlike a Delver deck you're not looking to pressure your opponents life total early, instead you're applying pressure on the card advantage axis. You're threatening to bury your opponent in card advantage, be it with raw card advantage engines Edric, Spymaster of Trest and/or Sword of Fire and Ice or a different kind of card advantage, with Umezawa's Jitte counters. So you get ahead early with acceleration in the form of Noble Hierarch or simply just play cheaper threats than the opponent. Then find your spot to land Edric, Spymaster of Trest and take over the game from there. The extra cards drawn from Edric, Spymaster of Trest allows you to overpower and bury your opponent with cheap threats, soft counterspells and removal.

    IV. The Cards

    4 Judge's Familiar

    So this guy has won 2x Pro tours already, albeit in a slightly less powerful format this guy is to be taken seriously. What this card offers is that it provides cheap disruption, setting your opponent back a turn on instants and sorceries is already decent. It flies, helping us get through with Jitte and Sword of Fire and Ice which can be hard against certain decks like Elves and Death and Taxes. The evasion also means that once Edric, Spymaster of Trest is on the board this guy is going to be drawing an extra card a turn.

    All these arguments might seem weak when you look at the actual card: 1/1 flyer for 1 that sacs to counter an insant or sorcery unless its controller pays 1. So lets look at an important example of where this guy can potentially win the game.

    Your turn 1 play is Judge's Familiar, opponent goes land + Delver. It's your turn 2 now you can resolve any spell through 1 Daze or 1 Force of Will. Resolving a game winning Stoneforge Mystic is a common way to take advantage of this.

    Judge's Familiar means that if your opponent ever taps out all his free counterspells are essentially dead and you're free to do whatever you want, and not tapping out is usually not something a common legacy deck can afford to if it's to keep track with your board development.

    Against dredge Judge's Familiar is basically a hard counter to whatever they're casting. This is most obviously true against manaless dredge, but with 4x Wastelands and LED dredge playing Gemstone Mine, it'll be a hard counter vs. them most of the time as well. When you consider that Judge's Familiar sacrifices as part of the cost, it means that you always have an out to Bridge from Below and you get to remove all the Bridge from Below in response to a Dread Return before the Zombie Tokens would enter play, resulting in 0 Zombies for the dredge player.

    These are some examples of Judge's Familiar being truly great, and this is examples where only the sacrifice ability was relevant! Add to it that it carries Jitte and draws cards with Edric and we have a very solid role player for the deck.

    The only downsides with Judge's Familiar is the obvious anti-synergy between Daze and Judge's Familiar. If your opponent is already playing around the Familiar, the daze you have in hand is not going to be good. That being said, most of the time this will make your opponent play their creatures/enchantments/artifacts into daze instead. But the anti-synergy is still there and it is significant.

    Looter il-Kor

    This might seem like an odd include but it is there for many of the same reasons as the Judge's Familiar, mainly that it carries equipment so well. In many match ups Looter il-Kor will be a 2 mana True-Name Nemesis that also draws you a card when it connects. In legacy the quality of your cards depends so much on the match up that a continuous loot effect will provide a great advantage in very short time. This is also just extremely powerful with Edric. Your opponent has to deal with this threat or the virtual card advantage is going to overwhelm them.

    Edric, Spymaster of Trest

    This is the build around card of this deck. If Edric, Spymaster of Trest ever sticks, you're going to be so far ahead that there's no coming back for your opponent. The early plays of Mother of Runes, Judge's Familiar, Looter il-Kor means that you'll be drawing cards immediately after this guy hits the board. Is Edric, Spymaster of Trest brickwalled by a Tarmogoyf? Well your opponent can't attack with that tarmogoyf or we'll start drawing extra cards and our deck has no shortage of ways to beat a Tarmogoyf.

    Why is this card not in the deck?

    Tarmogoyf

    Tarmogoyf is a vanilla beater. It's an efficient beater, but it has no real synergy with what the rest of the deck is trying to do. When you also consider that we want to be a good Rest in Peace deck, there's just no way that Tarmogoyf makes the cut.

    Knight of the Reliquary

    For much of the same reason I don't want Tarmogoyf, I don't want Knight of the Reliquary either.

    Ponder

    Ponder is great at finding the card you need in a specific situation, it increases the consistency of your deck (except if you start cutting lands for it) and it helps flipping Delvers. But playing cantrips is a huge tempo loss for a deck looking to curve out as much as this deck is. We also have no delvers to flip so we don't have to play a large amount of instants/sorceries to allow the Delver to flip. Ponder is still a card that can be included but it will decrease the power level of the deck.

    Green Sun's Zenith

    I don't have the necessary green creatures to actually be running Green Sun's Zenith. I have a green mana dork, and Green Sun's Zenith would let me find my card draw engine, but it doesn't find a creature to actually get through with. Coupled with the fact that it's also an expensive spell to run in a 20 land deck, it's rarely going to be very good. The deck is trying to be extremely mana efficient, and you want to keep extra lands in hand for brainstorm or to discard to Looter il-Kor.

    Jace, the Mind Sculptor

    Jace, the Mind Sculptor is hard to deal with for removal heavy decks, it's a finisher and it's a card draw engine. You can definitely sideboard Jace, the Mind Sculptor against decks that's going to overload on -1/-1 effects, but with 20 lands it is not easy to cast.

    Benevolent Bodyguard

    Even though it might not seem like it, because I'm playing cards like Judge's Familiar, I want my cards to be individually powerful. Benevolent Bodyguard is in most cases better than Mother of Runes with Edric, Spymaster of Trest but Mother of Runes is better alone, as it can hold back a batterskull, force through Jitte, and protect a turn 2 Stoneforge Mystic.

    Why not cut Noble Hierarch for Deathrite Shaman and Edric for Dark Confidant?

    Noble Hierarch is more consistent at what it does than Deathrite Shaman, it also makes it so that we win the Germ vs. Germ fight, the exalted is in general very relevant. We also want to be a very effective Rest in Peace deck, and Noble Hierarch supports that plan better. Dark Confidant is very suspect in a deck with five 5 CMC cards. Dark Confidant also does not draw cards the turn it comes into play making it not-at-all suitable as a surprise blowout play. The clock this deck typically represents is also very slow, so Dark Confidant would cause unreasonable large amounts of life loss in this deck.

    V. The Match Ups

    VS. Delver Decks

    Your role varies depending on you're on the play or draw, and depending on which kind of hand you have. Usually you come out of the gate approximately equally fast, but you're looking to play the control role. Remove their creatures and then establish a threat with an equipment like a Germ with a Batterskull, or a True-Name Nemesis with an Umezawa's Jitte. Generally speaking RUG Delver is more aggressive than you, BUG Delver is about the same, and Patriot Delver is slower than you. Against Patriot you want to overload their removal and make them deal with each threat on their own, usually by having equipment in play. If you can trade some damage for some cards with a Judge's familiar and an Edric, Spymaster of Trest holding back/racing a Tarmogoyf don't be afraid to do that. The card advantage will help you find a Rest in Peace or a Swords to Plowshares for the Tarmogoyf. Or even chump blockers to help keep the card advantage flowing while you maintain a healthy life total.

    VS. Elves

    You play the removal game until you can get Umezawa's Jitte online. This match up resembles the Death and Taxes vs. Elves match up except that you now have cheap counterspells which puts you over the top and turn you into an actual favourite in this match up. Mother of Runes helps keep your Edric, Spymaster of Trest alive post board and also lets you hit through Qurion Ranger + Dryad Arbor and Wirewood Symbiote + any elf so don't board it out! Board out Daze instead and replace it with Grafdigger's Cage and Ethersworn Canonist.

    vs. Death & Taxes

    ... Coming Soon

    UWR Miracles

    ... Coming Soon

    Omnitell

    Play out your creatures and hope for the best. Emphasize drawing as many cards as possible in the shortest amount of time, to dig for your Daze/Force of Wills and Judge's Familiar.

    Grixis Control

    ... Coming Soon


    VI. The Sideboarding

    Sideboards will change over time depending on the meta game, and even the main deck will change. So it will not be possible to give exact sideboard guides, but here's some general guidelines.

    Try not to sideboard out too many creatures. The deck is synergy based, which means that there's individually weak cards that are fantastic together. Versus fair decks such as delver and D&T you want to sideboard out your Counterspells if you have enough sideboard cards to bring in. Start by cutting Daze.

    Versus most combo decks Mother of runes seem lackluster, but it protects your haymakers (such as Ethersworn Canonist) from Abrupt Decay and Pyroclasm. So most often you want to sideboard out your most expensive creatures, such as True-Name Nemesis and a few copies of Edric, Spymaster of Trest. And the obvious cards such as Swords to Plowshares and Umezawa's Jitte goes to the sideboard as well, vs. the combo decks.

    VII. The Results

    Being a relatively new deck in legacy and played only by a few people. This deck does not have many results as of yet.

    9th at SCG New Jersey
    Last edited by Bahra; 06-24-2015 at 03:29 PM.

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