Complete 5-in-1 Forgetful Fish / Dandân deck: "Fish of the Floating World"
TL:DR: Decks here, decklists here
Hello everyone, this is a special post compared to what I usually do. It first started as a side project as I only had the intention to make the 2025 list, but then I started making other variants and at this point I'm calling it project 7.
This project contains a total of 5 different decks. All of the decks have been created by Nick Floyd, the creator of the Forgetful Fish MTG variant, also known as Dandân.
For those who don't know what this variant is, Forgetful Fish is a 2 player game where boths players share a library and graveyard, while keeping their hands and fields separate. The name of the variant comes from the only creature in the deck, Dandân, which is present 10 times, as well as a specific counterspell called Memory Lapse filling the Forgetful part as it's present 8 times in the deck. A lot of people call it Dandân because it's shorter, but I prefer the original name as it better reflects the gameplay in my opinion.
There are many possible decks you can use for this format, and there are many different variants that people have tried making, but in my case, I stuck with variants created by Nick Floyd. I simply feel like there have been a lot more playtesting involved in his variants and each spell synergizes well with everything else in the deck.
The Decks
I created some form of hub to show all of the cards and to contain all of the different deck lists together here
Deck number 1 is the classic Forgetful Fish decklist. It is the most popular decklist, which is why I called it Fish of Legends, it is the variant that popularized the format. Here is a primer by Nick Floyd on this list, as well as the format in general.
Deck number 2 is the 2025 refresh. I kept the name simple with Fish of '25. Here is the updated primer by Nick Floyd. This variant is my favorite as it fixes the biggest issue from previous variants, which is Mystical Tutor. Any tutor in a 2 player format with a shared library is flawed because it gives the player perfect information, by seeing one of the 2 secret zones, you can know exactly what's in the other zone, in this case, your opponent's hand. In this variant, Mystical Tutor has been replaced with Narset's Reversal. Apart from perfect information, it also accelerates gameplay by removing having to search in the library.
Deck number 3 is also found in the same primer as the classic variant, it's Nick's original list from 1997. Once again, I simply called it Fish of '97 to keep it simple. This decklist is shorter at 60 cards instead of 80, but is still quite fun to play.
Deck number 4 is the Forget the Fish variant. As there is no fish in this mode, I called it Fish of Lies. Here is the primer. This format is 50 cards and it notably removes the Dandân from the deck, to focus on the second win condition that is making your opponent draw from an empty library. The original list is playable by simply cutting cards from Classic Forgetful Fish, but this decklist uses the advanced variant that also replaces some cards with others. This variant can be played without a life counter as you can't lose from loss of life.
Deck number 5 is Red Hot Seizoned Fish. This variant is also created by Nick Floyd, but is inspired by Miguel Grados's Hot Sushi. I called it Fish of Heat. Here is Nick's primer on this variant. As you might have noticed, this variant is vastly different, being mono-red and using Red Herrings instead of Dandâns. Just as fun as Dandân and is a nice palate cleanser after having played too many games of Forgetful Fish in a row.
Fish of Legends and Fish of '25 combined with Fish of Heat let's us play another format called Blue Fish, Red Fish, 2-Headed Fish. Once again, designed by Nick Floyd, here is the primer. Really fun as it opens up the game to 4 players.
Power and Toughness
I have made a minimum of 2 versions of each creature in the deck as I have 2 ways of showing PT. The first way is the classic MTG way, Dandâns are 4/2, Red Herrings are 2/2. The second way uses a Go-En instead. In the Forgetful Fish variants I have proxied, Dandâns always do 4 damage and their toughness is irrelevant as they always die to any form of damage. This means that the only way 4 is relevant is that it means that it takes 5 hits to defeat your opponent, which is why I used a Go-En. A Go-En is a five yen coin and is considered lucky because Go-En is a homophone of good luck. I thought 5 hits and 5 five yen coins worked out pretty well.
It doesn't work as well with Fish of Heat, but it still works. In Red Hot Seazoned Fish, it takes 10 hits with Red Herrings to defeat your opponent. So the Go-En life counters are doubled, 10 for each player. Slash Panther, being a 4/2, is represented with 2 coins. Every creature in the deck has 2 HP, so everything dies from any source of damage as nothing does less than 2 damage. Only 2 cards affect power and toughness, Dreadmaw's Ire and Mishra's Foundry, both giving +2/+2s. In other words, these cards give an extra coin of damage and the +2 toughness can easily be seen as being able to tank the 2 damage increments. The moment any damage touches a creature and not it's buffs, it means that it's dead so it shouldn't complicate things too much. But if that's too complicated, you can simply choose the version with classic MTG PT.
Now, one thing you might be thinking of is what happens to these Go-En PT when you play Red Fish, Blue Fish, 2-headed Fish? Well I have made a version of Dandâns with 2 coins, so they could easily be printed on the back side of the regular Dandâns used in Forgetful Fish.
Artist Credit
Usually, the way I go about placing the artist credit would be at the bottom left, like on a regular MTG card. This time I decided to place it a lot higher and centered and since every Ukiyo-e artworks has a title, I also added it there. Since I cannot really provide any flavor text for the cards compared to my other decks, I thought this would be a very cool way to add flavor, filling two roles in one.
Ukiyo-e Theme
Now, why did I base all of these proxies around a Ukiyo-e theme? This is because the Koi pond imagery from the secret lair made me think of this. It's also why all of the proxied decks also have the Floating World moniker, as Ukiyo-e stands for pictures of the floating world. Floating World is a Buddhist term for the sorrowful, transitory nature of life, in other words, life is short and painful, it is best to float along and enjoy it. I just think it fits the vibe of the gameplay from these decks.
Alternate Arts
For the art selection, I have made 20 fish for both Dandâns and Red Herrings in a variety of different frame configurations.
Personally, I will print the small textboxes with the Go-En.
For the Dandâns, I am choosing arts 1,2,3,5,6,9,15,17,19 & 20.
For the Red Herrings, I am choosing arts 4,7,8,10,11,12,13,14,16 & 18.
I have also made multiple basic land options, including basic lands that do not appear in any of the decks like Plains, Swamps and Forests.
For the Islands, I am choosing arts 1,2,3,4,6,7,8,9,11,12,13,14,15,17,18,19,20 & 30.
For the Mountains, I am choosing arts 5,6,7 & 8.
Printing
Now there are many different ways to print these decks. The first route would be to print the variants of your choice, 80-60-80-50-80. Printing just one variant would take the least amount of cards.
If you want to print out all of the unique cards available for the blue variants, it would take 132 cards, you could do it in 80 cards by printing double-sided if you really wanted to.
Adding the red variant adds an extra 80 cards no matter what, especially if you have the intention of playing Blue Fish, Red Fish, 2-Headed Fish at one point. If you don't, you could save about 12 more cards in space printing double-sided, but that's so negligible that I think Fish of Heat is better printed separately.
There are also 5 additional decklist flip cards under extras as well as 2 life counter flip cards and 2 life tokens flip cards to cut out.
Personally, I am printing every card individually including the 5 decklists and 4 life counters for a total of 221 cards, but since 2 cards are used to cut out tokens, there will only be 219 cards which should fit nicely in 2 deck boxes.
In Conclusion
You can find all of the renders with bleeding edge, ready to be printed for free here on my Ko-fi and you can also find the G-Drive link here in case Ko-fi doesn't work for you.