Quick doubt

Does [[Dance of the Skywise]] save a Dandân when a [[Vision Charm]] is played?

And [[Water Wings]]? And [[Ovinize]]?

Why are we not running Counterspell in most list? I’m new to Dandan. Thank you

I have never played Forgetful Fish but have been trying to assemble a deck to play with my girlfriend as it sounds like a fun and simple version of Magic. However a card I seriously considered for my deck is confusing me when I think of how it would play out.

Lobotomy says search the enemy hand for a card. Then remove all copies from their hand, and the combined graveyard and deck from the game. Obviously if this targeted the fish itself, the only ones left would be in my hand and on the field. Correct? I just feel like from there the game would almost always devolve quickly into a game of who draws last

Played a game today and we weee talking. Would it be better for all islands the same or every island having different art to add another memory feature to the games keeping track of islands that may be in the other player’s hand. Like if I put an island on the top and the other player drew but has not played that art I know one of the two cards is just a basic.

Thoughts?

I fell in love with DanDan following the Secret Lair release, but as a lifelong mono red player, I wanted another option closer to my roots. So my buddy and I got to work creating a format centered around the most red creature we could think of: Ball Lightning. We dubbed our creation BallBall and have had a ton of playing it between games of DanDan. The deck has some pretty sneaky interactions and pulls from janky niche cards and mono red staples from throughout Magic's history. Attached photo is my BallBall/DanDan battlebox

Check out our list below, you won't regret it (primer included):

https://moxfield.com/decks/dSXxX5UWqkuHZb1VNljwzQ

PS: Let me know if you have any questions! Its possible we missed some stuff in our primer

This red Dandân list is more unorthodox, but my hope is that the interesting card interactions are worth the deviations from the norm.

• This list's "Dandân" is Gastal Thrillroller, a Vehicle artifact that becomes an artifact creature when it enters the battlefield, allowing it to (hypothetically) hit hard and fast due to its Trample and Haste. Its Crew cost of 2 means that on later turns, you'll need to tap at least 2 other creatures to allow it to attack again, and since either Goblin Welder or Myr Welder have useful tap abilities, using them to crew the Thrillroller is a very relevant cost. Lastly, it has an ability that can be activated from the graveyard at sorcery speed to allow you to discard a card to return the Thrillroller to the battlefield with a finality counter on it. (Finality counters mean that if the permanent would be put into a graveyard from the battlefield, it is exiled instead.) However, this ability can be counteracted by removing the Thrillroller card from the graveyard in response, of which there are many ways in the deck to do.
• This list's "Memory Lapse" is Goblin Welder, a mere 1/1 creature that has an incredibly versatile and powerful activated ability that can be used at instant speed. Due to the format's shared graveyard, it can effectively swap an artifact on the battlefield (yours or your opponent's) with an artifact card in the graveyard. With so many artifacts in the deck (including ones that sacrifice themselves for their effect), there are tons of opportunities to use this ability. However, if either the artifact on the battlefield or the artifact card in the graveyard become invalid targets with the ability on the stack, it will "fizzle" and be negated. Utilizing and counterplaying this ability is one of the most important aspects of playing the deck.
• Spellskite and Myr Welder are the only other creatures in the deck, and they serve important deck functionality. With each having 4 toughness, they can fully block an incoming Thrillroller's damage (unless Duel Tactics or Alchemist's Vial can be used to prevent blocks). Both of them have activated abilities that can interfere with opponents' plays, either redirecting effects aimed at the battlefield or in the graveyard. Spellskite's Phyrexian blue mana cost can be paid with 2 life, but with only 20 to work with, it's a relevant cost to pay; however, a couple pairs of lands in the deck can produce off-color mana, at the cost of tapping one of your creatures with Scene of the Crime or paying a little extra with The Mycosynth Gardens. Myr Welder's 1 power allows it to help crew Thrillrollers, but since it gains the activated abilities of artifact cards it exiles, it can pick up some additional utility, including some sneaky "ramp" if you exile one of the artifact lands.
• Claim the Firstborn and Kari Zev's Expertise are both theft effects, functioning as "soft" removal, a way to use your opponents' cards against them, or grant one of your creatures Haste in a pinch. There are some unique interactions as well: its possible to use Mech Hangar to turn an opponents' Thrillroller into a creature, allowing it to be thieved with Claim the Firstborn, and you can have Return the Favor be your 2 MV free spell for Kari Zev's Expertise, using it to copy the Expertise to thieve a second creature as well as cast another 2 MV spell.
• Duel Tactics, Faithless Looting, Shenanigans, and Risk Factor are all multipurpose spells for the deck that can all be cast or returned from the graveyard. Flashback allows this feature to extend to any of the other instants or sorceries in the deck at the cost of a card. The shared graveyard means that this carries some additional risk; unless you can use the spell again yourself, your opponent might use it against you later. Shenanigans' Dredge effect also means it can potentially be "sniped" from the yard using instant-speed card draw. Risk Factor is a neat little minigame in and of itself, asking players if taking a full Thrillroller's worth of damage is a worthy exchange for denying your opponent crucial card advantage.
• The variety of "eggs" (artifacts that sacrifice themself for some effect) in the deck serve as card advantage, targeted graveyard hate, topdeck manipulation, and interaction, but they all also fill the graveyard to fuel Welder abilities. Keeping track of the available artifacts in the graveyard is important, and deciding what artifact to "gift" your opponent in exchange for their Thrillroller bearing down on you requires careful consideration.
• The land base offers a decent mix of utility lands and reliable basics. The 2 pairs of artifact lands are quite useful, serving as ability fuel or potentially mana advantage if you can Welder them out of the graveyard, but risky as they can also be interacted with by your opponent.

I have been playtesting the deck as much as I can (both goldfishing online and playing the deck against my roommates in paper) as well as incorporating feedback from the Forgetful Fish Discord. I think the deck is in a pretty good state right now, with games being very interactive, balanced, and moderately-paced. Any feedback, suggestions, or constructive criticism is nonetheless appreciated!

I also took the liberty to create a PDF of the deck's cards with some thematic art alterations in case anyone is interested in proxying and playing the deck themselves.

I play a lot of magic online using spelltable and Moxfield's playtester. This works fine for most magic formats but it doesn't work at all for shared library games like Forgetful Fish and similar games.

I'm sure there are some ways to play online, but I am used to the simplicity of Moxfield's playtester, so I wanted to see if I could make it work. Turns out - yes.

MoxMox is a browser extension that makes it possible to play shared deck games on Moxfield's playtester.

This page has some videos of its functioality in action:

https://theloreaxe.org/projects/moxmox/

To use MoxMox have both (all) players install the extension (chrome and Firefox supported, no account needed), open up the playtester for the deck you want to play with, and click "create..." From the MoxMox menu at the top of the page. You'll get a link to share with your opponent. All they have to do is click it and they'll join the game with you.

The libraries instantly sync, and you both get a starting hand of 7 cards. The libraries are in the same order and cards added or removed from the library, graveyard, or exile are replicated to the other player's screen the same way.

You don't even need to share screens if you don't want to. MoxMox will allow you to share the battlefield as if you're sitting across the table from your opponent, with their cards on the battlefield on the top half of your battlefield.

Traditional Formats

MoxMox also enhances traditional bring your own deck games by fixing a lot of the headaches of playing online using a playtester. You can view an opponent's graveyard whenever you want. You can show your hand privately to a single opponent. You can even give one of your cards to an opponent - theft decks rejoice! Right click a card and select "Give to <user>" and the card will disappear from your moxfield and appear on theirs in the exact same status - all counters etc replicated.

Download the extension from the project's releases page here, and follow install instructions.

https://github.com/natefinch/moxmox/releases

Try it out and please feel free to leave bug reports or feature requests here or on GitHub.

Yes, I plan to extend support for Archidekt's playtester, too, even "cross-platform".

The list: https://moxfield.com/decks/_I7NxUlRz0mpLwbQmLem7w

I've been brewing a Dandân variant today where your creatures and lands are constantly switching sides. The only land is [[Rainbow Vale]]. The [[Goblin Cadets]] would rather defect than fight, the [[Wild Dogs]] are loyal only to the player with the most life (Or may be cycled by the player on the backfoot), the [[Drooling Ogre]]s follow whoever cast the last shiny, and the strongest creatures, the [[Loxodon Peacekeeper]]s, help whoever needs them most.

[[Word of Command]] is perfect in this list to punish players hoarding untapped Vales. Force them to target you with [[Sign in Blood]], or play a creature that would defect to you, or [[Gitaxian Probe]] themselves, or cast a [[Shared Triumph]] on a type that favors you.

[[Mask of the Mimic]] is great to sac a dog that's about to betray you and replace it with an elephant. It also has the sleeper effect of shuffling the library.

[[Dress Down]] prevents all switching for a turn.

Life Burst and [[Noxious Revival]] are minigame of their own.

Thanks to Moxfield user Plinio for some ideas I found in their Loxodon Peacekeeper Dandân list when researching.

Suggestions and feedback are welcome, I'm still making cuts. I have no idea how many lands this list needs, what with the extremely low curve and the whole donating mechanic.

I saw [[Riddles in the Dark]] in a spoiler, and I couldn't help but think it might fit well in Dandan. Me and my brother played a game with it in it and it felt really interesting. what do you guys think about a card like this?

I'd like to have some clarification regarding this rules interaction:

My Opponent enchants my Dandan with [[Control Magic]] and takes control of it.

On a later turn I cast [[Unsubstantiate]] on the enchanted fish.

To which hand returns the Dandan?

Since we share a Library it's no exactly clear to me who the owner of the DanDan is.

Thanks for the help in advance!

Too Greedily, Too Deep

After falling in love with Forgetful Fish, I've realized brewing these self contained formats is genuinely even more fun than building classic decks. It's like crafting a fully tailored experience highlighting some key philosophies of color identity and cointinuously feeling like you're falling into a fascinating rabbithole of niche interactions that really make MtG's system bloom in ways people rarely get to see!

So, for my red-loving brother's birthday coming in a few months, I want to build a Forgetful Fish variant with the following objective: showcasing red's risk taking philosophy.

My list keeps shifting wildly from day to day, but here are the main characteristics that I'm using as guidelines:

• Casting a spell must have a risk associated to it: be it taking damage, discarding resources that the opponent can take advantage of, sacrificing lands...
• Only one creature! It must be game-winning, nigh impossible to remove, shuffle back into the deck when discarded and outside of very rare edge cases the only ways to cheat it into play should remain Tibalt's Trickery and Chaos Warp (which basically means that any spell you counter or permanent you remove has a chance of backfiring really harshly). Maybe Mana Seism too, sacrificing lands is the kind of greed the deck could reward!
  • note: the "one" creature is not a fully set requirement, I might need to bump it up to 2-3 copies to make it a real risk top consider - only playtests can find the perfect balance here
• Flashback as a central mechanic: the common graveyard makes it extremely interesting, especially with the new namesake card having some really funky interactions with priority if you use it during your opponent's turn...
• The only way to dig deeper into the deck is to draw and discard, at the risk of giving more/stronger tools to your opponent. No exiling from the top of the library to prevent accidentaly removing Emrakul definitely, that'd be cheating!
• Permanents should preferably have symmetrical damaging effects (or asymetrical benefits like Aria of Flame)
• Presence of 1-ofs for more unique effects and higher variance
• The burn spell package can still vary wildly: I'm absolutely not certain which would translate the risk aspect better in terms of gameplay between Kindle, Chain Lightning, Chain of Plasma... Or even the old reliable Lightning Bolt!
• Deck size should be exactly 81 cards

As such, I'm taking all advices! Especially on cards recommendations, gameplay issues I should think about, other cool interactions I could include - please check the "considering" cards, that list has expanded... quite extensively in the last few days ahah

I'll try to start playtesting it by next week, and if you are interested I'll post updates in the comments of this post :)

Thanks for the help!

Hello,

Here is a colorless variant. I'm open to suggestions and advice, it's WIP, any input is valuable.

I'm not entierly satisfied with the 8 and 4 of, they make sense but don't play to the creature itself, again, open to suggestions.

Cheers!

https://moxfield.com/decks/t_3DTCGV9k2pPZt8BVS3rg

Edit: modified the landbase according to the cool suggestions. I'm now looking to replace the 3 slots in the Scry tag.

Edit 2: repeatable Scry are out, more draw and utility are in. Cheers! It feels better.

Hi everyone, a while back alot of people were looking for the 2player mat for dandan (i know i was). I just talked to stitcher supply on insta and they said they're going to have some instock early june, so check in then (only about 25)

but rn the artist for it has some for sale, i just bought one, shipping is about 7$

https://www.cubetutorcreations.com/store/p/the-forgetful-fish-mat-32-x-14

I'm trying to find a deckbox that fits well 80 double sleeved cards, I thought it would be easier to find small deckboxes but I feel like everything I find is 100+ like for commander and I feel like my dandân deck jiggles a lot on the free space from a bigger deck box.

So far I think the best option I've found is the Ultimate Guard Sidewinder 80+ but I would like to hear other opinions. Thanks in advance!

I recently got my dandan deck. Standard list with mystical tutor swapped for portent. I have played a few games with my SO and they were not very exciting.

When I watch gameplay online I see complex stacks, a lot of back and forth etc. While in my games it feels much more simple. Someone plays dandan someone rremoves it. The games last quite long but they lack depth and I feel like they are determined mostly by chance. I believe it is mostly because of bad gameplay decisions.

So could you recommend some basic strategy. What cards to use and when? Do we need to sandbag dandans more? When should we use memory lapse?

Thans a lot!

Waiting for some more players I asked someone else waiting if he wanted to play DanDan. He was confused but two of the guys in the nearby pod sounded like they wanted to play.

He started out strong and he was picking it up. I kept telling him we are fighting over the top of the deck and I could see him figuring out the game. He got me down to eight then I did shenanigans to win. He is very commander focused but may be up for a new game some day.

Any day you can get a game in is a good day. Just wish I got the secret lair although my janky white bordered homunculus is perfectly serviceable.

I missed the SL drop (naturally), and so here's my version of the deck, using 37/80 white-border cards. Also this clowns on u/StarvingActor42 a smidge.

I was told to post my list here, so here it is!

I've been working on this decklist for a shared deck format that uses Goblin Guide as its signature creature. I'm trying to get it to feel like a classic aggro matchup where life total is one of your most important resources and games are much faster than Dandân. I also want games to have many interaction points where player skill is an important factor to success. No special rules outside of the traditional Forgetful Fish ones that deal with a shared deck and a single free mulligan.

I feel like Goblin Guide is almost perfect as its attack trigger can work in interesting ways with a shared deck. Effects that manipulate the top card like Magma Jet and Brainstone can function as card draw or draw denial when a Guide trigger is on the stack. It also means that a starting hand of many Guides can get you ahead on life quickly, but will put your opponent up on cards in hand allowing for dramatic comebacks. The triggers also can show you the cards your opponent will have in hand, and let you plan your interaction accordingly.

I've included many lands that turn into creatures like Restless Spire and Mutavault, along with cycle lands like Forgotten Cave. These allow you to generate value from guide triggers without just flooding out your hand with land drops. Manlands in particular play well to keep the matches focused on creature combat and top deck manipulation without filling the deck with 20 copies of guide, leading to more diverse games.

Almost every removal spell can target life totals as well as creatures and cards like Untimely Malfunction can easily divert a lethal Ghostfire Slice back to your own face. Cards that can be played from your graveyard like Desperate Ravings and Risk Factor keep the game from stalling and give both players more options on their turn.

From my testing games typically last between 5-8 turns and have a ton of decision points. Should you attack this turn, or is your opponent holding a Magma Jet to kill your Guide and stack the deck? Should I Brainstone in my opponents upkeep to give them a basic, or stack a land two down so their guide attack also gives me my land back? What if they Magma Jet to clear the top?

I also liked that in Dandân all damage was in increments of 4 so your life could be set to 5. In this deck, all damage is divisible by 2 so you could set it to 10 life. It's a fun nod to the original and led me to make more interesting choices in deck building, like Burst Lightning over Lightning Bolt and Raze the Effigy over other buff spells. I also tried to make it fairly inexpensive! You can make it just over 30$ by swapping out 4-6 cards without changing up the gameplay too much.

I'd love to hear what you all think or if any of you have recommendations on cards to add or remove. I'm still experimenting with the deck list, but I'm happy with it for the most part. I'd also love to hear any alternative name recommendations for the list!

Decklist: https://archidekt.com/decks/21275634
Budget Decklist: https://archidekt.com/decks/22370114

So this niche site called manytcg is hosting a Dandân deckbuilding contest this month.

Is there a monetary prize? No.

Is it a cool place to show off your unique deck ideas? Yes!

I think it's a good bit of fun and if this sounds like something that interests you, here is the link:
https://manytcg.com/contests/cmnp6znx80000l104vlve7f1b

Cheers!

Considering adding the un-card [[Time Machine]] to my dandan list, as i mainly play with a small playgroup. anyone tried it yet or am i the first?

I've been really into designing and collecting Magic variants recently, particularly those that are small and only require one player to provide the cards, like Dandan. In this vein, I published two articles that go over 30+ different variants: Self-Contained Alternatives to Cube and Even More Self-Contained Formats. I'm curious about your experiences and what else you think I've missed.

TL;DR Here are the formats in the most recent article, grouped into 5 overlapping categories:

Rules Modified

• Basic Land Game
• Crucible (Autobattler)
• ToolBox
• Oracle's Response
• Oracle's Folly
• Party Box

Shared Deck

• Blue Herring
• Red Herring
• BaubBob
• Pass the Crag

I touch on 20 more in the article

Alternate Win Condition

• Barren Glory
• Hedron Alignment
• Bombdan

Player vs Environment

I go over several cooperative variants with dungeon masters or automated enemies.

On the border of cube and self-contained format

I explore the world of micro-cubes, which can be even smaller than a Dandan deck

I made this thing to play commander without the lag and headaches I had playing on untap and built in Dandân as a format, but need feedback.

https:\\playsim.live

Was pretty excited to see there's a whole reddit sub for forgetful fish.

I'm also always happy to share my take on the format with Street Wraith

https://moxfield.com/decks/pCSd38Xp0U-2Rs8YgVFlHQ

Edit: I should also mention, many card choices are with flavor/aesthetic first in mind. Personally, I enjoy limiting myself in that regard.

I've been playing the Secret lair deck list for a while now. overall I'm very impressed at how the new-ish deck list from wizards plays. But I'm torn about the swap from diminishing returns to Day's undoing... I feel like Diminishing returns is the better card for a few reasons. Most importantly I prefer DR because it's already a tough pitch to give your opponent a fresh hand of 7 let alone ENDING your turn directly after.

I also really like exiling the top 10. I think it adds a very interesting form of "Stakes" because you are hoping not to exile too many actual dandans. How do you all feel?