Paces is widely considered the weakest of the Ghoti tuners, but that doesn't mean it's not powerful. Of the three, it's the best Normal Summon, as seeing it and one of the deck's other Normal Summons is almost always a boon. It helps field higher-level Fish like Eanoc and Coelacanth, playing a key role in unique builds revolving around them. It's also particularly strong Turn 3+, as it can field whatever you searched off of Arionpos or Psiics on your opponent's turn to OTK. That being said, the best targets for Paces are the Fish that the deck already wants to Normal Summon, making Paces act more as a conditional extender than a true starter, leading most lists to cut it to 1 and banish it from deck with Arionpos. However, with Psiics revolutionizing the deck and White Aura helping add Fish to hand with little loss in advantage, Paces can be more proactive than before.

Rating : Strong

Impact :

• Extension : Raises the ceiling on existing combos, such as with Lifeless Leaffish

• Quick Synchro : Paces and Shif are what make Ghoti stand out from other strategies

• Jank : Enables unique builds that rely on higher level Fish

• Hard to Pin Down : Can still banish itself for cost if hit by Imperm, letting it come back next turn

• Needs Friends : Needs to be drawn with a non-Tuner Fish to do anything proactive

• Buried Alive : Has no way to get out of the GY after being used as Synchro Material, relying on others to do so

Of the two Standby-summoning Tuners, Shif is the most versatile, as it has a built-in way to banish itself turn after turn. Because it banishes itself for cost, it's hard for the opponent to stop Shif from setting itself up. Thanks to Shif, Lifeless Leaffish is a quick yet effective 1-card combo, climbing into a Level 8 Fish Synchro, an Arionpos search, and Psiics as a spare body on field. While this will not win the game on its own, it sets up the resource loops that Ghoti utilizes to win in the turns to come. In certain builds, it's not even bad to draw, as it makes Arionpos alongside a Special Summonable Level 4 extender, which is then able to climb into Deep Beyond. That's only certain builds, though, as typically you want it out of your hand as soon as possible so it can do its thing.

Rating : Strong 

Impact :

• Self Sufficient : Proactively banishes itself while another Fish is on field, which is easy to accomplish

• Compact : Enables the deck's main 1-card combo that's easy to extend beyond

• Recursive : Easy to banish on the opponent's turn with Askaan, looping itself turn after turn

• Vulnerable : It and Paces can be stymied from summoning with pretty much any board breaker

• Bricky : A garnet in most cases, you want Shif anywhere else but your hand

Zep is the least self-sufficient of the Ghoti tuners. It can only Synchro as a trigger on Special Summon, which is itself a trigger upon being banished on the opponent's turn, which it has no way of doing on its own. All it has on its own is its nearly useless hand effect. What Zep lacks in self-sufficience, though, it makes up for in collaborating with the higher level Ghoti monsters. Psiics, Arionpos, and Snopios can all banish it on your opponent's turn with relative ease, enabling access to Level 8 Fish Synchros at a moment's notice. Snopios especially uses Zep to play through interruption and board breakers while enabling the rare Turn 0 play. Additionally, Zep's Synchro being a trigger effect helps White Aura Whale not miss timing, thus allowing the deck to threaten several board wipes. This all makes Zep arguably the most important Tuner of them all, as it helps Ghoti survive the brutal environment of Yu-Gi-Oh! and live to see another duel.

Rating : Strong

Impact :

• Snowballing : Enables Synchro climbs into our most powerful interactions

• Less Predictable : Whereas Paces and Shif are telegraphed, Zep can surprise the opponent

• Beyond Deep Beyond : Allows follow-up plays alongside Psiics and Snopios for when our board crumbles

• Trigger Happy : Utilizes chainblocking to protect itself and others, and lets White Aura Whale resolve easily

• Not Always Lost : Hand effect is no longer useless, as Kiif can pull it out for it to Synchro immediately

• But Usually Lost : Hand effect is still almost useless, paling in comparison to how Snopios does the exact same

• Not Self Sufficient : Heavily relies on one or more other Ghotis to do its job

• Too Much Chain : The multiple chains it starts on the way to a Synchro Summon can make it more vulnerable to negates

S:P Little Fish is an incredible support card that boosts the deck's ceiling and contributes to your resource loop. Its disruption is repeatable, accessible, and potent, finally giving the deck a way to play through Kashtira Fenrir. It also helps solve a major problem with the deck's resource loop; Ghotis that do something when banished, like Paces, Shif, Snopios, and Psiics, get trapped if they (or another copy) are banished again in the same turn, and Keaf yanks them free to continue providing value. Being a free body also helps enable Link plays or skip steps on our Synchro ladder, but it's situational as an extender.

Rating : Strong 

Impact :

• Improved Grind : Makes it harder to turn off our resource loop by recovering banished fish that struggle to escape

• Recursive : Special Summons itself like the tuners to provide a repeatable, self-sufficient disruption

• The Out : More immediate than the deck's other interruptions, meaning it can respond to key threats immediately

• No Impact on Standard Combos : Only improves the end boards of hands where you draw too much engine

• Dies to Removal : If it or the opponent's target are off the field at resolution, the whole effect fizzles

Ixeep is functionally a free extender. The deck banishes fish so often that its summoning condition will virtually always be met. It has a cool interaction with the field spell, as banishing for cost and adding Ixeep will trigger Ixeep's summon despite it not being in hand when the banish happened. This makes it very good at making Arionpos during either turn, as it can Synchro with a Tuner you either just banished or one that you're now free to Normal Summon. Even if you have another 4 on board like Lifeless Leaffish, it can still enable Rank 4 plays to go into Kragen, Abyss Dweller, or Bahamut + Toad. It also recycles traps, but this rarely matters, as those traps can't be activated the turn they're set, making it extremely slow.

Rating : Viable 

Impact :

• Field Presence : Free level 4 body, the intended non-Tuner for Arionpos

• Field Spell Synergy : The field spell meets its summon trigger condition before it's even in your hand

• Slow Recycling : You can't activate the trap you set with this effect the same turn, making the effect next to useless

• Trapped : Once Ixeep is banished, it has no way to recover itself, relying on Kiif and having no way to return to hand

While it doesn't fit in every build, Eanoc enables a backrow-focused control style of play. Ghoti's backrow is quite potent, with Chain especially allowing the deck to play through pretty much anything, and Eanoc is the only in-engine means of searching them. It also helps recycle smaller fish that may have gotten trapped, ensuring that they're live to summon again on the next turn. However, being a Level 6 monster with no means of summoning itself, Eanoc relies on other cards to get on the field, and thus bricks up your hand frequently. That being said, the summoning power of Psiics and the White Aura engine makes it much more viable than it was in the past.

Rating : Casual Play

Impact :

• A Different Angle : Allows access to the deck's cracked backrow that it otherwise lacks access to

• Self Sufficient Search : Can use the same fish it summoned as the one to banish for the search 

• Guoglim Lines : Enables our worst synchro to do something productive, turning an 8 into Deep Beyond

• Bricky as Hell : You need to Normal/Special Summon him by using other resources, such as Paces or Abyss Keeper 

• Slow : Because it negates the Fish it summons, it can't be used for any plays on the opponent's turn

• Vulnerable to Interruption : The search is completely stifled by the likes of Ash and Droll

Snopios is basically a Fish-type Dragon Ruler, singlehandedly feeding the deck's Fish-based banish loops, and thus has an extremely wide array of applications. Because his effects are Quick Effects that banish for cost, it synergizes extremely well with Zep, whose summon effects only work on the opponent's turn, and Psiics, who can eat Snopios to search another Fish and enable Snopios to wield its unique interruption offensively. Snopios, Zep, and Psiics in tandem work together to play through board breakers and interruptions, reminding your opponent that they're never safe from the deep. It also works very well as a banish from deck off of Arionpos, as it can banish one of Arionpos's materials to add itself back immediately. 

Rating : Competitive

Impact :

• Resilience : Banishing for cost protects your GY from disruptions like Mudora

• Unique Disruption : Snopios's on-summon effect helps get your resources banished or denies your opponent of a GY effect

• Endlessly Recursive : As long as you have Fish to feed it, Snopios will keep coming back

• Chainblocking : With clever timing, Snopios's on-summon effect can chain block almost any trigger effect you need

• Turn 0 Turbo : In Fish-heavy builds, Snopios and Zep/Psiics makes Askaan or White Aura Whale on the opponent's first turn

• Trapped : If the add back to hand is negated, or if banished twice in one turn, you won't be able to get Snopios back 

• Brick Limbo : An awesome find in your opener if you open other engine, but does nothing on its own 

Arguably the best main deck monster alongside Snopios, Psiics completely revolutionizes the deck. Psiics is your primary means of searching out-of-engine fish on your own turn, and thus bridges native Ghoti plays into Abyss Shark, the White Aura engine, and Superancient Deepsea King Coelacanth wombo combos. Since it's also a free level 6 body on banish (Perfect for backing up your board with Dragite), Psiics dramatically increases the ceiling and resilience of your first turn plays, as long as you have enough fish in hand to keep it fed. To top it all off, it serves as extra copies of Zep for the purpose of Turn 0 Snopios plays!

Rating : Competitive 

Impact :

• Field Presence : Additional Body to go into Level 8 Synchros

• Chainblocking : Its synergistic trigger effects help protect it and your other fish from negation

• Wide Search : Not restricted to Ghoti monsters or level, letting it search exactly what you need

• Raising The Ceilling : Searches extenders on your own turn, unlike Arionpos who's search is often part of our endboard

• Flexibility : The ability to easily search on the opponent's turn gives creative pilots ways to play around Droll and Lock Bird

• Half a Brick in Hand : Relies on the rest of the engine to function, as it does nothing without a way to get banished 

Ghoti's archetypal Field Spell makes it nigh unstoppable in the grind game. Depths gets all of the Ghoti names in rotation and keeps them in rotation by generating resources every turn. Stopping it from doing so turn after turn is a tall order, as it protects itself from removal. It's even nice to see in multiples, as its GY effect can chainblock Deep Beyond and other important effects. It's not an instant inclusion, however. While it's an extremely strong search spell for Ghoti, the Ghotis themselves lack independent power and rely on other Fish to start plays. Additionally, higher level Ghotis require materials in the GY to gain advantage off of being banished. As a result, Depths only serves to improve hands that are already good, and only in builds that play lots of Fish without supplementary engines. Those builds are better than ever though, as Psiics and Kiif are both strong banishes and strong searches, and the White Aura engine provides plenty of fuel to use for searching.

Rating : Viable

Impact :

• Synergy : Ghoti monsters work well together, and Depths ensures that you see multiple names

• Advantage : Ghoti combos can be hand-hungry, and using the GY to get more resources from deck is huge

• Recursion : In a grindy game, the amount of protected advantage Depths offers turn by turn is unmatched

• Free Body : The banish meets the condition of Ixeep before it's added to hand, letting you summon it immediately

• Win More : Ghoti struggles to start plays on their own, meaning Depths only searches extenders

• Home to No Others : Only strong when playing a critical mass of in-engine Fish

Chain, like many modern archetypal Trap cards, is an extremely broken piece of support held back by the inherent challenges of being a Trap card. It only functions if you open a good enough hand without it, it's useless going 2nd (which Ghoti struggles with already), and the one Ghoti monster that's able to search it is unplayable outside of builds specifically tailored to it. In such builds, Chain is Eanoc's best search target. When everything comes together, Chain is an extremely strong card that helps protect your board from interruption and blowouts. It can even turn a mediocre hand into an extremely potent one. But those situations don't fix any of Ghoti's inherent problems, especially with more streamlined support.

Rating : Viable 

Impact :

• Board Presence : An in-archetype E-Tele is inherently strong for any deck, making sure you can play through anything

• Chainable : Resistant to backrow removal, and helps guard against targeted negation and removal

• Searchable : In addition to being a key piece in Eanoc builds, it's an extremely strong set off of Triple Tactics Thrust

• Slow : Traps do not provide immediate value, and Ghoti Chain is no exception

• Extender : Ghoti's monsters lack main deck interruption outside of Kiif, meaning that Chain is reactive rather than proactive

This card is unplayable in any serious build. The effects are not as easy to trigger as you would think; To Ghoti, the banish pile is an ever-shifting colony, and fish constantly move in and out. The more fish you have banished at a time, the less those fish are contributing to your gameplan more than a janky reactive Trap card. The new support helps with this to a degree, and Cosmos does address some of Ghoti's flaws, but it does so in an exceptionally clunky manner that only serves to force you into suboptimal lines, bad deckbuilding decisions and reckless play. If you really want to, play it as a fun-of in an Eanoc brew.

Rating : Casual Play 

Impact :

• Fixes Some Problems : Ghoti is vulnerable to the battle phase, and getting our Tuners negated really sucks

• But Not All : Ghoti still struggles with quick spot removal and especially going 2nd, and Cosmos does not help

• Slow : Trap Card. Enough said. Even if you activate it in Draw, which you're usually doing, it is still slow and winmore.

• Requires Setup : If being a Trap Card wasn't bad enough, it requires specific setup lines that only good hands can get to

• Not A Win Condition : The 8+ effect reads crazy, but you can win the game anyway before having 8 banished Fish

While it was once another strong piece of Eanoc Control comparable to Chain, the release of Kiif and S:P Little Knight have taken much of the spotlight off of Fury's previously unique effect. It's biggest boon is removing monsters until your next Standby phase, when a monster is much less useful to your opponent, allowing you to pick apart boards and clear the way for direct attacks. It also has no conditions for activating it besides having a Fish on field, so it's not as easily worked around as Kiif or S:P. It can even enable huge OTK pushes after swarming the field. However, Fury is just more of what the deck is already good at doing, so it's seldom worth running.

Rating : Viable

Impact :

• Slippery : Interacts with boards in weird ways, protecting your monsters while removing the opponents'

• Repeatable : Can banish monsters turn after turn, letting you pick and choose your battles as you grind away resources

• Security : More ways to chainblock, yippee!

• Slow : Does nothing going second, as with every other Trap card, and struggles to provide immediate value

• Redundant : Doesn't offer new possibilities to the deck

The heart and soul of the deck, Arionpos is Ghoti's best starter and playmaker. On your turn, the banish from deck is excellent for getting Paces or Shif into rotation. On your opponent's turn, it's one of the best ways to proc Psiics and Zep, providing access to Level 8 Synchros with just Lifeless Leaffish. Its search effect can not only chainblock resolutions of the big fish, but it can also be chainblocked itself to protect its search. Its search isn't locked to Ghotis, so you can search powerful follow-up cards like Abyss Shark or White Sardine. Most Ghoti endboards look like Arionpos pass, and for damn good reason.

Rating : Competitive 

Impact :

• Starter : Once on field, banishing one Ghoti from deck is all you need to turn the Ghoti engine online

• Followup : Searches strong cards that help you on Turn 3+

• Generic : Enables running a smaller Ghoti package alongside engines dedicated to making Arionpos

• Ash-Proof : Your opponent will try to Ash its effect, and you will get to explain why they can't

• Chokepoint : Ash is not the only handtrap that exists, and Arionpos is the best target for most others

On its way to Deep Beyond, Ghoti seeks to control the board, and it does so with Askaan. Its ability to banish any card on field is huge for picking apart monster-focused combos and removing problematic backrow. Afterwards, it serves as a recursive high-level body to Synchro climb into the deck's win condition and contribute to OTKs. However, Askaan's banish only happens once, so after that it's just a big guy. But that big guy serves a very important function regardless, as it can push the game into positions where the Battle Phase matters.

Rating : Competitive 

Impact :

• Removal : Picks apart boards and outs backrow, forcing your opponent into Plan B

• Recursion : Returns to the field immediately to serve as the non-Tuner for Deep Beyond

• Synergy : Banishes the Tuner that made it from the GY, ensuring follow-up next turn

• Going Second : If you can get to it, Askaan helps break established boards while effortlessly setting up Beyond

• Generic : No summoning restrictions make it flexible

• Only Once : Its removal is only on Synchro Summon, so it isn't as repeatable as you'd think

• Gets Trapped : Situations where it can get banished twice in a turn are frequent, in which cases it's thoroughly stuck

Not useless, but not good. Non-Targeting removal is awesome on paper to bypass protection, but it only banishes what it can target for an attack, making its utility limited. The recycling effect enables some goofy combos with Eanoc and Snopios for quick Deep Beyond setups, but goofy is all that they are, and you'll typically have already banished its materials by the time the Standby Phase rolls around. It's just far too vulnerable and situational to run in an Extra Deck that becomes increasingly tighter as Ghoti evolves.

Rating : Casual Play 

Impact :

• Going Second : Strong during the Battle Phase to out a problematic monster, then mutate into something else

• Niche Function : Guoglim can respond to situation only Deep Beyond can for less cost 

• Outclassed : When it comes to breaking boards, Askaan is often infinitely more practical

• Situational : Its second effect takes setup to be effective, and there's usually a better, more resilient option

• Restrictive : Needs a Fish Tuner for some reason, I doubt the second effect is broken anywhere else

The funniest fish of them all. Resolving Deep Beyond is how you win games, and the entire deck is designed to help it resolve. Even if you don't get to it on Turn 2, Ghoti's grind game picks through enough of your opponent's resources that Deep Beyond is sure to seal the deal when it does hit the field. The only bad thing about Deep Beyond is that your opponent usually scoops before it resolves.

Rating : Competitive 

Impact :

• THE Win Condition : Very few decks can come back from a boardwipe midway through their turn

• Protected : The deck has numerous ways to protect it from both targeted and chained negation

• Potent : Its boardwipe doesn't target or destroy, and if that doesn't do the trick, it's big enough to beat over anything

• Not Once Per Turn : The reaction from your opponent on learning this fact is priceless every time

• The Dieroll : Deep Beyond only wiping the board on the opponent's turn exacerbates the deck's issues on the draw

• Allergic to the GY : Deep Beyond turns offline completely if it ever hits the GY, necessitating a means of recycling it

• Predictable : Smart opponents can force Deep Beyond out early, making you vulnerable to OTKs afterward