Stephen's Forgetful Fish Page
I like building decks; sometimes I get carried away. This was one of those times. Below, you'll find a variety of Forgetful Fish-adjacent decks, some closer to Nick Floyd's original vision than others.
In essence, Forgetful Fish is a shared deck format, where players fight to manipulate the top of the deck while trying to kill each other with a weird creature from the dawn of magic. It has been getting really popular of late, following a video by Rhystic Studies, and even has tournaments now! It's a great game for two players, and it helps that the art is by one of my favourite artists, Drew Tucker, who has been adding a bit of class to Magic illustration since the first sets back in 1993! The Dandân shows a gigantic fish lurking below the surface of a lake, perfect for a game with hidden depths.
When assembling these decks, I've used both Nick Floyd's original document and Callahan Jones' thoughtful analysis as inspiration, before blithely ignoring them and running off with the ball. Some basic constraints I have followed:
- The only source of damage is a 4 power creature. You can track the number of hits (5 hits = 20 damage) with a single six sided die per player. It is the only non-land permanent in the deck.
- All the decks are mono-blue. This is not one of Nick's constraints but playing Forgetful Fish feels quintessentially blue to me, and I don't want to dilute that.
- All cards are present in multiples of two, to help players plan and reduce cognitive load.
On to the Elephant in the room, searching your deck. The searching player can count the shared deck and work out exactly what is in their opponent's hand; and
that's
very
blue
indeed.
It does, however, slow the game down. Rather than cut these cards, my rule is that when a player searches the library, their opponent immediately reveals their hand. This removes the need to count and saves a lot of time if players are serious about their Forgetful Fish.
... the dendan, which is the biggest of all fish and the fellest of our foes. Its bulk is greater than that of any beast of the land, and were it to meet a camel or an elephant, it would swallow it at one mouthful... "Abdullah the Fisherman and Abdullah the Merman", The Book of One Thousand and One Nights, John Payne translation.
Old Frame Forgetful Fish
In this mono-blue build, all cards are black border old-frame versions. It's not quite a Premodern build since I'm taking advantage of the nostalgia old frame reprints from later sets. I've also emphasised the water theme as much as possible in the card art.
Whitewater Fish
All cards are white bordered; this I play this version unsleeved and carry it around in my pocket wrapped in an elastic band :). The limited card pool makes this build a little slower, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Again, I've emphasised the water theme in the card art where possible.
Caviar
This deck is based around Biolume Egg, a 0/4 defender which comes back as a 4/4 serpent only when sacrificed. The challenge here is that there aren't a lot of blue cards which let you sacrifice things; and of those, the Casualty mechanism is useless because you need a creature with power >= 1 sob! I've removed a lot of the bounce effects from this version, since the challenge of cracking your eggs is enough that you don't want them to just go straight back to your hand afterwards. Given the whole 'biolume' thing, I've aimed for cards with glowing blue art where possible.
Suicide Squad
A deck built around Brackwater Elemental - a card that dies after attacking or blocking. The support cards in this build revolve around keeping the blasted thing alive :)
Dead Fish
The fish have been replaced with Demilich, who likes a nice big graveyard to plunder :). As a result, cards are going to end up in the graveyard faster and the game is likely to end much sooner. I've tried to make art choices which emphasise the horror motifs as befits a floating skull, but not at the expense of game play.
Fish Fingers and Custard
This is the least Forgetful fish-y deck of all. A Doctor who-themed build built around the suspend mechanism and time travel. Enjoy!
Sushi
This is a Swedish 93/94 build. As a result there's no Memory Lapse and without the topdeck shenanigans it plays out more like oldschool than Dandan; but there are sill some interesting interactions and the possibility of big complicated stacks. I'll be taking it along to the next Brothers of Fire event.
Coelocanth
This is a Forgetful Fish build using only early cards legal in the Alpha to Alliances format. Despite the small card pool, Memory Lapse and Dandan are both present; the only thing really missing here are Foreshadow/Predict shenanigans.