[Deck] Fetchland Tendrils

[Doishy]

I suppose it makes more sense to answer these in reverse order. To clarify, I run 17 lands, and I didn't want Badlands to be an 18th. Compared to you, it sounds like you shifted a land out for a Petal. I can see why you might want a Badlands over Volcanic, as Lake of the Dead gives you an incentive to run more Swamps, but I was looking for a third red source, so if I went for something like Wish > Pulverize, I could pull another red source for a Wish/Act on Impulse.

Actually I would remove Lake immediately if playing with R again s it wouldn't be a concern. A lot of people on wishlists are on 3-4 Petals and 15-16 lands. The deck has such a tight mana base that with the extra Petal fixing you could (and I have) just run a single R source however for the purposes of resiliency (and Pulverise) this is not optimal. I like one Volc and one Badlands because you then can fetch USea into Badlands for say T1 Cantrip / Discard, T2 BW for T3 Doomsday off of lands.

I'm not sure that Pulverize is the best choice, but it does seem like a distinctively different option given that it can cost zero mana, so you don't have to wait a turn after Wishing for it. I'm not sure how many slots to devote to artifact locks like Lands/Eldrazi, so I was thinking I'd want the Wish target to be the most decisive, to take game 1s and also reduce the burden on the sidedeck, as might then only need 0-2 Hurkyl's or red artifact sweepers. Just out of interest though, what is the bonus to playing By Force over Meltdown? As far as I can tell, By Force is better against some Trinisphere situations, but less good against multiple Chalices, which is the artifact held in common by a lot of lock piece decks. Since the second lock piece can be Thorn or Trinisphere, I figure it might be more effective across all scenarios to play Meltdown.

By Force X = 1 kills chalice on one. By Force X = 2 kills chalice on 1 and on 2. Unless they have really upscaled it seems good to hit a lot of things. Pulverise I see as something where you don't cast it the turn you wish for it. You cast it the turn you are going off as the land loss is huge otherwise. You also have to be careful as often in matchups you want to dump as much artifact mana down fast so it does not get locked out by chalice = 0 so destroying all artifacts can be a double edged blade.

My main concern was about how AoI fits with pass-the-turn piles, but do all the blue cantrips really de-emphasize those plays that much? Part of the appeal of this deck, in my opinion, was that against other combo decks or BU(x) decks, you can run full attrition into a pass-the-turn pile that negates discard. For example, with careful land plays and cantrip use, you can use discard to snipe BU(x) deck's counters and slam a doomsday, effectively blanking their discard because you'll have lands for the mana and can simply topdeck into your win the next turn. Gambling against their topdecked counters seems way better than trying to work through Seize/Hymn eating away your spare cantrips or requiring you to discard those while you also have to, at some point, beat the counterspells. Since Grixis/4C are so popular, I figure this would be a legitimate concern, but I haven't tested enough to know how good/bad the matchups are.

Having read this paragraph a few times I'm a tad confused as to what point/(s) you are getting at, any chance you could rephrase it somehow? (Sorry!)
From what I have seen from Gold_rook's streams the best PTT pile is simply something like DD with two lands out, fetch in hand. Stack [AoI - LM - LED - GP - R dual]. Draw AoI, play and fetch land. Cast AoI, win. It doesn't seem to hamper the PTT plan in any real form.

That's why I'd be concerned about the Lab-Man-pass pile costing more and costing red, which comes off non-basic lands (though, with 3 red lands, I could more easily draw one naturally, which lets me conserve a red against non-hymn discard spells). It's also worth noting, though, that against Storm/Reanimator/SnS, your nonbasics wouldn't get challenged (and you can play AoI off Blood Moon anyway) and they have neither removal or damage to challenge a pile of AoI, LED, Probe, Probe, Lab Man, which wins the game for 2R anyway. I do like the idea of MB/SB AoI, it's just hard to let go of IU entirely, I'll know for sure as I test against the BUG/Grixis/4C lists.

Yeah, I couldn't let go of IU hence why I am on my current listy