Have you ever choked on some food that went down the wrong way?
If you have, then you’re aware of one of the human body’s most egregious design flaws: our airways and our food-ways overlap. This goes back several hundred million years to our most distant ancestors, who evolved from aquatic organisms. Fish (well, most fish, I’m sure the zoologists out there will take exception) need to pull water through their mouths for gas exchange to occur at their gills. We don’t need to do this anymore because we have this very clever structure called lungs, but we haven’t gotten rid of all the bits connecting our nose and our mouth.
Somewhat ironically, the main way this artifact of evolution tends to bother us is when we choke on a fishbone. God has a certain sense of irony.
At this point, you’re probably wondering how on earth I’m planning to seamlessly segue into a Magic article…
… By talking about the evolution of Fish, of course.
A lot of people have been asking me on Facebook to share the updates I’ve made to Soulfish over the past couple weeks. Here it is, in all its glory:
Creatures (13)
Lands (20)
Spells (27)
The first change I made, and one I’ve been very happy with, was to straight-up swap the Mana Leaks for Remands. It’s been so long since Remand was legal in Standard I forgot how good the card is. After all, Delver is a tempo deck. Mana Leak is great if you’re simply trying to trade your answers for their threats early in the game, but this deck isn’t trying to do that. It wants to keep their threats off the table for just long enough to do them 20 before they can do the same to you.
I also noticed that I was siding out the expensive spells a ton. Cryptic Command is great, but four is heavy, and Sword of Feast and Famine is rarely really necessary. These became an extra discard spell (one Thoughtseize) and the Vendilion Cliques, which I’ll talk about below.
As a consequence of having four cheap cantrips in the deck, along with losing some of the lategame, the deck was able to trim a land, going down to 23. I also replaced the Mutavault with a Moorland Haunt thanks to the suggestion of one of the commenters on my last article. With thirteen creatures Haunt is not insane or anything, but usually it makes a couple Spirits and is more relevant than a ground-based 2/2.
Let’s get into some of the tough decisions that make this deck what it is.
Geist of Saint Traft vs. Vendilion Clique vs. Lingering Souls
By convention, a Fish deck has efficient small creatures that can win the game on their own when backed up by a counterspell and removal suite. After all, most of the deck is counterspells and removal—compared to other aggro decks, you have very few guys. You don’t want a creature like Stormblood Berserker that doesn’t stand on its own well; you’d much rather be casting Dark Confidant on turn 2.
In theory, then, Geist of Saint Traft is the best three-drop you can be casting. Nothing stands on its own like a Geist. If you have enough disruption to keep opposing creatures off the table, Geist will kill them in three attacks and you don’t even have to worry about removal. Again, in theory, Lingering Souls is the worst of the available options. A three-mana investment to only attack for two on turn 4 when you could be attacking for six? Twin and Storm will have killed you long before your Spirits finally clock them.
So why zero Geist of Saint Traft and four Lingering Souls? Well, unfortunately, Magic games aren’t played in theory. They’re played with an opponent on the other side of the table who’s casting creatures, making you discard cards, countering your spells, and attempting to combo off on turn 4; interacting with you, in other words. Lingering Souls is a fantastic interactive card. It chumps their attackers while bashing them; it beats removal, discard, and counterspells; it trades for two of Affinity’s attackers and comes back for more. Fish rarely plays the classic, pure Fish role where your single Delver or Dark Confidant goes the distance. It can happen, of course, but most real life games are far messier. Your Delver dies or you don’t draw Bob until turn 4, and you don’t have the Remand in time and they resolve Kitchen Finks. Geist is better when things go perfectly, and it’s straight-up a better card against decks like Storm, Twin, and Tron. But Lingering Souls is amazing in any game where things don’t necessarily go as planned—if you’re on the back foot, or you’ve drawn a few too many lands, or your early creatures have died. In a lot of games Geist just ends up trading for half of a Kitchen Finks.
And then there’s Vendilion Clique. By the look of Modern Delver decks, a lot of people have forgotten this card still exists. In a different metagame Geist would be much better, but decks are running light on removal these days. Very few decks run more than four removal spells, and many, such as the combo decks, play none at all. Clique is also easier to cast and evasive, which is huge against the green decks that love to put Tarmogoyfs and Kitchen Finks in the way. Disruption and flash make it shine against the combo decks too. The only place I like Geist over it is against Zoo or the red-based Delver decks that both run Lightning Bolt, Lightning Helix, and Path to Exile, but that’s a small chunk of the metagame. Against Storm, Melira, Twin, Tron, the mirror, Affinity, etc., your 3/1 will likely stick around.
Threads of Disloyalty
This is sure to generate some controversy. Threads of Disloyalty main?! Is that even legal??
Surprisingly yes, and even more surprisingly it’s actually good. Threads is a lot like Smother, but it costs one more and you get to keep the creature. That sounds like a good deal to me! Yes it can’t target three-drops, and yes that does suck against Deceiver Exarch, but more often than not Tarmogoyf, Dark Confidant, Spellskite, Delver of Secrets, Melira, Sylvok Outcast, or even Vault Skirge will be your target of choice. Two-drops are rampant in Modern. It’s mostly the Tarmogoyf/Dark Confidant brothers’ fault. Those guys are always making trouble, getting into fights about who really is the best creature ever printed and thumbing their noses whenever Stoneforge Mystic walks past.
Threads is good against almost every deck in the format. Jund, Zoo, Affinity, Delver, and Melira make up a sizeable chunk of the metagame, and you can even live the dream and steal a Spellskite against Twin. It’s only against Storm that it’s a complete blank. (It’s pretty bad against Tron, too, but occasionally you can swing in an Insectile Aberration and have them animate a Colonnade in your attack step.) I think of it like extra creature removal spells. The deck could reasonably play a Smother or two, but Threads is better almost everywhere that Smother is good so I just run that instead.
The one- and two-ofs (Spell Snare, Thoughtseize)
The four-ofs in this deck are self-explanatory. Delver of Secrets, Dark Confidant, Path to Exile, and Remand are the core of Soulfish. It’s the additional slots that put the cherry on top, so to speak. Spell Snare is still in there as a two-of—we added it back at the very beginning and it’s proven to be just fine. Two is an inclusion with merit. Very good against aggro, strong against Storm and Melira, not particularly impressive against Twin and Tron, but it’ll still snag a Remand or a Signet.
Thoughtseize is in there pretending to be the fifth Inquisition. Casting a discard spell on turn 1 is a huge game, and you always want to have either a discard spell or a Remand. As I said in my last article on the deck, Inquisition is one of my favorite cards. I want to draw them early and often—cheap disruption is how this deck wins games.
The sideboard
This is constantly evolving. The place it’s at is pretty good, though, and these are my current boarding plans:
Storm:
-4 Path to Exile
-2 Threads of Disloyalty
-1 Lingering Souls
+3 Nihil Spellbomb
+2 Thoughtseize
+2 Ethersworn Canonist
(if they’re running Empty the Warrens then also -1 Lingering Souls -1 Cryptic Command +2 Zealous Persecution)
Twin:
-3 Cryptic Command
-2 Lingering Souls
+2 Thoughtseize
+2 Spellskite
+1 Smother
Melira:
+3 Nihil Spellbomb
+2 Zealous Persecution
+2 Thoughtseize
+1 Smother
-3 Cryptic Command
-4 Remand
Cryptic Command is pretty bad across the board against combo. You leave them in against Storm, but only because they’re weak enough to counterspells that you don’t mind paying four mana for one. Lingering Souls is also unimpressive for exactly the reasons it’s worse than Geist against a goldfish: it’s too slow of a clock. You can’t usually take all of them out but you’ll almost always trim a couple.
I’ve yet to find a board plan against Melira that I really like. The matchup isn’t great because they attack you from a ton of different angles. Nihil Spellbomb shuts down their combo, but they can just as easily cast Birthing Pod and bury you in value. Grafdigger’s Cage is the card I really want; it turns off Chord of Calling, Pod, and their entire combo. Unfortunately it shuts down your own Lingering Souls and Snapcaster Mages. I think that’s too high of a price to pay for one specific matchup given you want to be siding it against Storm, Tron, and the Hedron Crab/Vengevine/Skaab Ruinator decks as well.
Tron:
-3 Path to Exile
-2 Threads of Disloyalty
+3 Nihil Spellbomb
+2 Thoughtseize
This is where you wish Nihil Spellbomb was Surgical Extraction. Its main value is shutting down Gifts for Unburial Rites + Iona, Shield of Emeria, and they’re certainly not going to do that if you have a Spellbomb sitting casually in play. Spellbomb is better against Storm, though. It’s also insane against Dredge—Extraction often doesn’t do enough whereas Spellbomb will usually single-handedly win the game, so I think it’s still the right choice.
You leave one Path in because a) you don’t have that much stuff you want to board in and b) it can be very relevant against Colonnade, Wurmcoil, or Elesh.
Jund:
-2 Remand
-1 Vendilion Clique
+2 Spellskite
+1 Threads of Disloyalty
Zoo:
-1 Thoughtseize
-4 Remand
+2 Spellskite
+1 Threads of Disloyalty
+1 Smother
+1 Zealous Persecution
You don’t have a lot to side in for these matchups, but then again, you don’t have a lot to take out either. Lingering Souls shines here, and decks like these are the main reason you play it at all.
Affinity:
-4 Remand
-3 Cryptic Command
+2 Spellskite
+2 Zealous Persecution
+1 Smother
+2 Kataki, War’s Wage
I wasn’t loving the Affinity matchup so I added Kataki to the board in the place of the always-ok-but-never-at-all-exciting Disenchants.
Other Delver decks:
+2 Zealous Persecution
+1 Threads of Disloyalty
-1 Thoughtseize
-2 Vendilion Clique
These matchups tend to go long so I don’t mind siding out a piece of hand disruption that’s terrible to draw late. Here’s where Remand over Mana Leak shines the most. You can counter a Lingering Souls flashback, return your own spell to your hand after an unwelcome Cryptic, or just be able to get value out of it past turn 6. Again, you don’t have much to side in, but you don’t have much to side out either — Vendilion Cliques are still fine, but there’s just nothing I want them over.
Until next time,
Jeremy