Brainstorm
Force of Will
Lion's Eye Diamond
Counterbalance
Sensei's Divining Top
Tarmogoyf
Phyrexian Dreadnaught
Goblin Lackey
Standstill
Natural Order
frantic search is one of the best cards that deck can have. not sure how many people were playing high tide when it was legal in extended with time spiral, but it was quite good. turns spiral tide into a very solid turn 3 combo deck with protection and a ton of basic lands in the deck. (also gets around rishadan port pretty well)
not sure if frantic search would be okay in solidarity, but it is definitely a strong addition to spiral tide.
-rob
With frantic search legal you can cut time spiral. I would maybe keep one in my first build but it would focus on going off turn 3 (possible turn 2) with frantic and ideas unbound. Yes it was that easy.
I think everybody agrees on that one so no need to mention it. I didn't say we couldn't predict if it would improve high tide, I said one can predict for sure if the meta will be able to handle it.
Combo decks aren't all about their fundamental turn. Fow vs discard and being immune to wasteland (and thus soft counters most of the time) is a lot and the advantage to fow gets better as you go off earlier.
idem
It suffers from some specific hate and since you don't always choose your draws you can suffer on wasteland. That said I have been always surprised by the low results of the deck. It is kind of boring and the people who play it regularly that I saw on top tables never seemed to know how to sequence cantrips correctly. That was back when I was still playing in tournaments though, maybe they learned in 2 years but I woudn't bet on that.
A card doesn't need to take over to be banned. If it is handable but warps the metagame it's enough.
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You very likely can build it without spending any money, just out of what you already have.
An example with my (very large) list in a visual form
Oh no. When I think about High Tide my first concern is consistency: Time spiral is essential because it gives this deck some much needed consistency, and so does FS. I think Frantic Search would be best getting incorporated into the consensus shell, replacing the worse untappers. That would give the deck both less chance to fizzle and one full turn of speed while keeping the same level of protection and cantrips.
There you go
Taking for granted that combo decks aren't all about their fundamental turn, it does matter. In my opinion, ANT does set the standard here. It is consistent in closing the game at its third turn (sometimes even before that) and, unlike High Tide based decks, it has never fallen out of flavour and it has kept providing good results throughout the years. So, of course FOW can be better than discard in many cases (but hey, Aether Vial and Cavern of Souls would like to have a word with your statement) and Basic Island might be better than Dual Lands in most cases (and yet beingstuck to monoblue greatly restrics our sideboard options). However, as a matter of fact, we have a T3-discard-combo deck that has got so much more important finishes than a T4-fow-combo deck with comparable engine.
Storm decks suffer from specific hate too. I don't get your point here.
That being said, Omnitell is indeed showing up in top8's more than Spiral Tide does, and the reason is, it's a t3 fow combo deck. Spiral Tide is a t4 fow combo deck. They have comparable number of counterspells, different-but-somewhat-comparable engine (cast a key spell, then draw and cantrip into finisher), comparable number of dead draws (close to zero, although you're almost never super happy to draw into Emrakul or Cunning Wish), and yes, they even share a big portion of hate cards (thoughtseize, surgical extraction, reb and flusterstorm being the most dominant): it's just that omnitell is one turn faster and has access to a second color if you want to. So, in my mind, we already have a deck that's performing really close to what Spiral Tide could be doing if we unbanned Frantic Search, and this deck is not tearing the meta apart. Why not even consider the unban?
Well, in the end, I'd just come back to the same old Show and Tell argument here. It's simplicistic, but still. We can play a sorcery that wins me the game on the spot, but I can't have a faithless looting+dark ritual that only works if I have cast another card before? Really.
Last edited by Cave; 08-04-2018 at 11:05 AM.
When I say X is superior to Y, that doesn't mean there aren't some situations where Y will be better to X.3
You referred twice to spiral tide and/or "a T4-fow-combo" when all I am talking about is about high tide with frantic search. There is no point in the discussion on making comparisons between current spiral tide builds and omnishow.
Omnishow also need cards quite specific to go along with it. Whereas once you have high tide you can start comboing with a lot of different card drawers / untappers.
With high tide frantic search produces at least 6 mana. So it is a bit more than looting + dark ritual if you want to make these kind of comparisons.
CLICK HERE FOR THE RULES OF A VERY FUN MULTIPLAYER CASUAL FORMAT
You very likely can build it without spending any money, just out of what you already have.
An example with my (very large) list in a visual form
You said that FoW > Discard and basic lands > non basic lands and that a faster combo is not strictly > to a slower -but more controllish- approach. I pointed out that there is a discard-based, 3/4c combo deck that has constantly performed better than a counterspell-based monocolor combo. Therefore your statements, which I would generally agree with, are maybe not so true when speaking about combo decks.
I get your point. You think that there could be a blue shell that is faster and superior to the current iterations of sorcery-spell high tide combo, and this shell would be playable if frantic search got unbanned.
I beg to differ. A t2/t3-centered high tide combo deck would require you to ditch Time Spiral and play low-cc cards like Retraced Image, Ideas Unbound and Cloud of Faeries/Snap. I don't think any of these is an optimal choice, because my -untested, but likely- guess is that it would be both too prone to fizzling and too hard to USZ-win with (which you need against some decks).
I think an optimal setup would be pretty near to what is the current iteration of a typical Spiral Tide decklist, adjusted with a 4x FS: that deck would play very close to what the current deck does, only a turn faster.
You're not the first one to tell me this. I have thought about it for a bit, and I stand by my point. As a premise, i would like to point out that I played both decks and I still love both (yes, even the clunky, boring omnitell), so there is no bias against either. Back on the point, I seriously think the two engines are similar.
They're both monoblue.
They both generate a very large amount of mana.
They don't require you to wait a turn to win (or you get timewalk).
You cast an enabler.
You durdle around with cantrips and tutors looking for a finisher.
You cast your finisher.
I know that Show and tell is a different engine than storm. Of course I do. But I can't help thinking that the two decks are way, waaaaay more similar in their action than, say, what Sneak and Show does (because the sns needs one or more combat phases) or even to what ANT does. When an ANT player starts comboing, he/she knows 90% of the time his/her sequence to the victory. This is never true when playing high tide decks, and often not true when playing Omnitell: you cast your key spell and then durdle into a finisher. And that's why I still think that Omnitell is the superior deck, because it is a turn faster and you usually don't need much durdling, one cantrip or two will usually find either wish or the fat spaghetti monster. I think unbanning Frantic could grant High Tide a degree of performance similar to what Omnitell is currently doing: getting off t3 with counterspell backup.
Edit: as for "specific cards required to go off", I don't think it's true. Omnitell has had many iteractions along the years. You can really play a bunch of different cards and finishers. SNT->Omni can lead to a direct Emrakul cast, or chain cantrips into finding something; there are UB version who heavily rely on Lim-Dûl's Vault; you can play cunning wish into FF into Ants, or Burning Wish into Enter the Infinite, or both; lastly, you can pack 3-4 MD Enter the Infinite (that was an old approach).
Yup. Most of the relevant times that would be 7 mana (3 island, HT into FS with 1 mana backup). It's looting + 3 dark rituals: which is awesome, don't get me wrong. I would love to play that, as I was an avid spiral tide player back in the day and i'd love to get back on track with blue storm. However, SnT+Omniscience costs one mana less that HT+FS and generates infinite mana. It's very clear where the power level is, in my opinion.
This is particularly funny to me because you're explaining this to the person who built the original Monoblue Omniscience deck.
Either way, I think the point he's making here is that Show and Tell and Omniscience are both specific do-nothing cards when you're not going off, while Frantic Search actually has text if you're up against any disruption. How many "do-nothing pre-combo" cards would you anticipate a High Tide deck running if Frantic Search was available?
Nice to know, since playing the deck has given me tons of fun throughout the years. I was there during the early days, but didn't really pay attention to who was posting what. By the way, he could literally be the Pope, if I disagree with any particular statement, i'm gonna say it. That's how forums work.
Also, that's even more so a reason why he shouldn't disagree that the deck he created is inherently more powerful than spiral tide, which literally disappeared from the meta during the Eldrazi vs Miracles era.
So is Frantic Search so powerful because I can -1 myself for free when looking for answers? I don't think this is a valid reason to explain why the card is still banned. I think a High Tide deck packing FS would still run 4 high tide, 3-4 Time Spirals and a couple extra untappers (e.g. tournabout): that's comparable to the amount of junk you run in Omnitell. By the way, speaking of Omnitell, after the 4-EtI maindeck era I started liking the deck even more, because I realized that it is in fact, really close to a 2-card combo. You get omniscience online, you'll find a win eventually: and this was particularly true during the dtt era, but it is still true to a certain degree. Also, Show and Omni could be doing nothing pre-combo, but I still need them in my hand to win (which isn't necessarily true for, say, emrakul or wish) while i look for an answer, and that applies to High Tide and Time Spiral too.
To summarize my 3-4 long posts, I think that
1. Omnitell is much more similar to a storm combo than one could think
2. Omnitell has a better/faster/stronger engine than high tide decks, and that stands true for many reasons:
1. More certainty when comboing
2. Less calculations and spells, quicker to win
3. One turn faster
4. More build flexibility
5. Etc...
3. Unbanning FS would give high tide that extra kick, rising the deck's power level close to Omnitell's.
That being said, I don't like repeating myself over and over either, and I know what happens in this thread by experience. I'll happily read Lejay's answer and then we can agree to disagree have a nice one everybody!
Would love to see FS unbanned.
Spiral tide, replenish, reset high tide, and possibly ant (huge enabler for cabal ritual).
I could even see it being played in some show and tell decks and ub reanimator.
-rob
I didn't intend for my message to come off as dismissive of your opinions based on who you're talking to; I just found it amusing that you were explaining the "old approaches" to the person who came up with them.
If the person you're talking to doesn't agree that Time Spiral is the sacred cow you have made it out to be, you're essentially talking about a different deck than the one the discussion is about. I know you've already dismissed this offhand, but assume you're *not* playing Time Spiral. What does the deck look like now?
The claim is that Frantic Search enables a potentially too-powerful High Tide deck which is able to play a lot of redundant combo pieces that *aren't* 6 mana blimps like Time Spiral; your response boils down to "I can only imagine High Tide as a Time Spiral deck, and since Spiral Tide is weaker than Omniscience, Frantic Search is fine because it would serve only to make Spiral Tide closer in power to Omniscience." I honestly don't think that's an illogical assumption, but you've essentially decided to talk about "Spiral Tide and its position in the metagame" instead of the subject at hand.
Edit: I want to be clear here that I do think your assumptions are perfectly reasonable, but what you're trying to say hinges on the belief that Time Spiral is necessary in a Frantic Search deck, which I do not believe you have adequately demonstrated. The discussion you want to have about comparing Spiral Tide to other decks requires your untested opinion be accepted as the truth, but your only argument so far against other versions of the deck is that you personally can't fathom an optimal build of the deck using only cheap enablers since you don't like how they look. That's not very compelling.
Last edited by Namida; 08-06-2018 at 07:56 AM.
Are you referring to Show and Tell, and Griselbrand as the do nothing cards? What the hell is High Tide? A do-something card? To win with a High Tide deck I need to, you know, resolve High Tide unless the game got dragged out to t5 and I run Reset. Unless you are on Solidarity, or you're running Turnabout, you need to resolve a High Tide. Lejay mentoned Omni needs specific cards to go off. Yeah, same here dude. I also need to have another "do nothing" card in an untap effect. These cards "do nothing" for me unless I am going off. I require the same amount of "do nothing" cards to start my combo than other decks, but unlike resolving a Show and Tell and holding my Griselbrand in hand, resolving a Reanimate with some random crap in my graveyard, or slapping down a Hexmage with a Depths on the field, my High Tide does nothing even if I resolve it AND resolve an untap effect. Now I need to resolve my card draw.Either way, I think the point he's making here is that Show and Tell and Omniscience are both specific do-nothing cards when you're not going off, while Frantic Search actually has text if you're up against any disruption. How many "do-nothing pre-combo" cards would you anticipate a High Tide deck running if Frantic Search was available?
I resolve High Tide (A)+Untap (B) and still need to chain 12 spells together to win. There are 3 other combo decks just resolve A+B (hell one of them just resolves A, and cheats B into play, while the other one has a uncounterable land as a combo piece) and win. I woudn't even be writing this, but having to read all this crap, and see Griselbrand get printed after Entomb getting taken off the banlist... and Emrakul... but somehow Frantic Search too hot to handle. Throw me a fucking bone.
edit: FoW and basic Island? How about actually dying to Thalia (Reanimator, SNT, Depths can all go passed it a LOT easier), dying vs Leo/Spirit of Lab, being so slow that CB becomes a card that I can't go under but am forced to go over, dying to Damping Sphere. Why not mention some disadvantages instead of only listing advantages? It's obviously a HUGE list on both sides, but you're being disingenuous by stating High Tide decks are at an advantage regarding what hate they dodge. I agree though that High Tide decks can play through hate better, by virtue of being a deck that likes the late game and is able to CWish itself out of many situations it gets put under, whereas you resolve Chalice/Teeg/Thalia @1 vs Storm g1 and that might as well be GG a lot of times
Last edited by Kanti; 08-07-2018 at 12:35 AM.
Kanti, use "[.q.u.o.t.e.]" to begin. Use "[./.q.u.o.t.e.]" to end. (Don't include the periods. )
Frantic Search may have some value in Show and Tell decks. But its real value is as a blue mana production card and search spell in one in High Tide decks. It was the card's ability to add to your mana pool that got it banned in the first place and that is where any analysis of its possible unban should be centered.
I can't say if I fear the card in the end, but it does seem to make a successful turn 3 combo turn for High Tide decks far more likely.
"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."
"Politicians are like diapers. They should be changed often and for the same reason."
"Governing is too important to be left to people as silly as politicians."
"Politicians were mostly people who'd had too little morals and ethics to stay lawyers."
It only produces mana if you resolve a High Tide. And if I am resolving High Tide->Frantic search I rather resolve of the the 3 other 2-card combos in Legacy and just get it over with. Also, how much virtual mana does a Show and Tell produce? 4BBBB or 15.
I suppose that is aimed at me. I am not interested in getting into a debate with you. I would just say that you need to actually play High Tide a bit before making such passionate claims.
"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."
"Politicians are like diapers. They should be changed often and for the same reason."
"Governing is too important to be left to people as silly as politicians."
"Politicians were mostly people who'd had too little morals and ethics to stay lawyers."
Honestly after I made that post I felt dumb, as it feels from reading it back myself that I'm trying to pull you into a debate. Sorry, did not mean to do that. Still this is a forum, and forums should be a place devoid of ad hominems. I don't think I made any passionate claims, and if I did it's because I've had my fair share of playing High Tide, it's my pet deck, and I will unashamedly admit that I would love to see Frantic Search unbanned. Obviously I have bias in me, but I don't think my bias changes the fact that Frantic Search needs a resolved High Tide to generate mana, or that High Tide is a dead card much like Show and Tell, Dark Ritual, Omniscience, and the other 99% of cards that combo decks run are dead cards until they are going off. I hate this thread a little as it's where I come to think out-loud.
edit: typos
Last edited by Kanti; 08-07-2018 at 12:26 AM.
It's all good. This thread is a guilty pleasure.
You know, with all that experience I am sure you can see that High Tide players would LOVE to have Frantic Search.
In probably 1998 I played it in Extended for long enough to see what it was about. You piloted the deck essentially as an exercise in chaining Frantic Searches together until you built up to Time Spiral mana. The card was central to the deck. Of course, we did not have Candelabra available. But one really cool thing that could come out of unbanning Frantic Search is that people may learn that Candelabras are no longer necessary. That would open up the deck to a lot more players for financial reasons.
"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."
"Politicians are like diapers. They should be changed often and for the same reason."
"Governing is too important to be left to people as silly as politicians."
"Politicians were mostly people who'd had too little morals and ethics to stay lawyers."
I would like to see something unbanned to make the return of the Four Horseman deck - the greatest Basalt Monolith combo deck ever designed - a reality.
Speaking as someone who has a real nice play-set of Beta Basalt Monoliths...
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I'm game.
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Yeah, in retrospective that was kinda silly.
Alright, reasonable. Well, i'll try to put it as simple as I can.
1. As a (former-potential) player of that deck, I already want to cry when I look up how many top8's Spiral Tide put up during the past 6 years (my result at my lgs not being posted online though ). Spiral Tide is not a very successful deck. Also, as I already said, it's been largely overshadowed by Omnitell.
2. After reading my first point, go and verify it yourself if you don't believe, then think very carefully about the next three points.
3. Realize that Spiral Tide is the most successful version of High Tide deck ever played in legacy
4. Realize that every other high tide deck that doesn't play a draw7 hasn't put up one decent legacy result in the last decade
5. Realize that however good Frantic Search may be, it is still an inferior card to Time Spiral because it draws less and produces less mana.
A faster, t2-t3 oriented (instead of heavy t3-t3.5 approach like I'd like) version of High Tide storm would probably play cards like Ideas Unbound (as lejay points out), Predict/Meditate, cheap untappers (Cloud of Faeries/Snap), Retraced Image and it'd be probably packing Remand and/or multiple copies of Brain Freeze maindeck. A sort of a sorcery-speed Solidarity.
Anybody out there feel free to correct me or to post a finite decklist. Anyway, I could be spending all day speaking about how unsound this shell looks like from a competitive perspective and how playing any of the cards I listed would make your deck worse, but yeah, I won't (i'm on holiday, can't be bothered). It's just...I don't really feel frantic search is enough to make this shell competitive. Drawing two-three cards at a time is still too prone to fizzling, which is one of the major problems of high tide engine. Also, attempting to go off before t4 greatly increases your mana problems when starting the combo, which is yet another notorious problem of these kind of decks. It's seriously that bad. History has shown that Spiral Tide is not really a competitive deck, and non-spiral high tide versions are even less competitive: I highly doubt that just ONE card is enough to make the latter worth playing; however, they may gave the former that tiny extra kick to be present in the meta.
Yep. In the end, I can't fully demonstrate this fast-tide idea is not legit only using words; on the other hand, nobody can demonstrate through talk that unbanning frantic search would be bad because this shell is too much to handle for the legacy format. However, the thing does look silly from a power-level perspective, because me and others pointed out that this format has Show and Tell. What can I say more: print your proxies and do your tests. It is the one who makes the positive claim to normally have burden of proof
When i made my post about Frantic i honestly didn't even think there could be someone who seriously believed the power level was too high for legacy, i didn't think it would be a controversial take at all.
Thanks to the others that have debated this far more exhaustively and eloquently than i could. I'll just add a few thoughts expanding my point a bit.
Like others have stated, with what is currently unbanned i can't possibly imagine a world where FS is broken or too strong for the format. I don't even think it makes Tide playable at all in the format, even if it does, then great! another playable deck, but to think it would be too strong compared to other combo options seems like an absolutely huge stretch.
Again i'll post a list of cards that aren't banned (a bunch have already been brought up) and i'd love to hear an argument for a potential world where FS is more broken or even playable in any sort of shell than these:
Brainstorm
Ponder
Preordain
Reanimate
Show And Tell
Griselbrand
Entomb
Chalice of the Void
Dark Ritual
Crop Rotation
Most 2 mana draw spells aren't even playable in the format right now, mana acceleration has to be very very good to be justifiable as well. A 3 mana card that sort of does both, but poorly and only with set up and an enabler, in a world where all the best disruption costs between 0-2 mana, and can completely shut down not only FS but all of the shell around it just seems like such a stretch to me.
You have a format right now that is: Thoughtseize, Spell Pierce, Pyro, Thalia, Thorn, Chalice, Force, Daze, FLUSTERSTORM, Surgical
All being in the top 50 most popular cards and best disruption, and this THIS is the format you want to try to resolve a High Tide and a Frantic Search to MAYBE get your combo STARTED to then resolve more spells to go off with no certainty?
Good luck.
You want to be doing that rather than Show and Tell or Reanimate?
I honestly can't even fathom how that is at all a reasonable position to have.
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