Spiral Tide

[perm]

I'd definitely consider predicts over treasure hunt. Works well with Brainstorm getting rid of chaff in hand, and digs deep like impulse but draws two.

[ScatmanX]

@Piceli89:
You got almost everything right.
The advantages I think this deck have is: Having a more flexible toolbox, easy to find available. Also, the 4 Spell Pierces, that are awesome.
SnT decks don't seem to be so hard. Your Brain Freeze may be the most common kill, but Stroking someone is usually easy past turn 3. Reusable High Tide makes things better. Also, if you open a hand with Emrakul, just keep that against them. And they're easy to cast too. 15 mana demands only a couple of high tides, some lands, and 2 untappers...

Another thing: the worst about this deck is the part where you get to Time Spiral against a deck with loads of counters and open mana, and you manage to draw 5 lands, a High Tide and something useless...
Funny thing is that sometimes this is an upside, since against something like Rock, you only need 2 cards to start comboing (High Tide and Time Spiral (sometimes not even High Tide is needed)). If you don't manage to pull it off, his Goyf will be 0/1, and the Knight of Relicary will be 2/2, so you just bought yourself more time to dig for something.

Oh, and I have an out to Iona: Preemptively search for Slaughter Pact with Wish. But who plays Iona anyway?

[ScatmanX]

Okay, another tournament report. This time, 5-1.

1st round: Goblins Rb (my build)
Game 1: I kill him on turn 4, after FoWing a turn 3 Warchief from him, that bought me enough time.
Game 2: I sideboarded wrong, and he drops drops Vial T1 and Chalice of the Void T2. I don't find a Wish in time, and lose.
Game 3: I boarded right, and Kill him on T4 or 5 with Emrakul. He still manages to cast Warren Weirdings, but I had a Spell Pierce for that.
1-0

2nd Round: Junk
Game 1: I keep a hand with 5 lands, Time Spiral and Merchant Scroll. He Seizes my Scroll T1, and cast some dudes. I draw nothing, but turn 4 I rip that High Tide of the top, and kill him after 2 Time Spirals and an Emrakul.
Game 2: I mull, and he goes T1 seize, T2 Hymn, T3 Vindicate (Pierce) while I had only 1 land, and the Duress and Seize... Still, last turn before dying, I was 1 card short from comboing.
Game 3: He disrupts my ass of, with 4 Duress effects, while I only had Brainstorm do protect myself. I manage to keep a hand with lots of lands, so I just need to buy something good. I didn't manage to save any of my 2 High Tides, and I was left only with a Turnabout, while he stripped everything else but lands from my hand. My turn 5 I pondered into land, High Tide and Time Spiral. I took the High Tide, knowing that I did not wanted to lose my Turnabout, neither my Time Spiral from the top. He duressed and took my High Tide. I draw Time Spiral, play my 6th land, cast Turnabout and Time Spiral, and get to draw into enough gas to go off. Fun times.
2-0

3rd Round: Merfolk
Game 1: I did not get my combo pieces in time.
Game 2: He has quite some pressure, so I try to take his counters away. Turn 3 I ponder, and see a possible kill turn 4 with Time Spiral, but sitll have something prepared for Turn 5 if he counters my things T4. So I untap, cast 1 off my High Tides only (Had another in my hand, and another on the top of my library). He Dazes, I pay, and I go for Time Spiral, he counters. Next turn I untap, with 4 lands, play High Tide, High Tide, Turnabout, Emrakul.
Nice.
Counterspell.
Game 3: He cast a T1 Vial, and try a T2 LoA, which I FoW. He does not have any pressure, so I got enough Time. He ended with a Coralhelm, a Sylvergill and a Mutavault, and I had to cast a Cloud of Faeries to block the Coralhelm and went to 1 life the turn before I could go off. 2 Turns earlier I had baited a daze with Cunning Wish, and a Cursecatcher with an Intuition. My last turn I go off with double Pact for protection, and my Spirals out-draw him, and I get to Brain Freeze him after 2 Time Spirals.
3-0

4th Round: Merfolk (UW)
Game 1: I go off turn 5 or 6 I guess. I start with High Tide. He Daze, I pay. He Dazes again, and I Pact (only 3 untapped lands now). He FoW's, I Pact. He lets it Resolve. I cast Time Spiral. He taps his 3 lands and cast FoW. I cast FoW, and go off.
Game 2: He has a turn 2 Canonist, which I did not had a chance to remove.
Game 3: I board in a Wipe Away. He gets his Canonist. I FoW, he FoW back (removing FoW). I Tutor for the Wipe Away, and try to find another land (stuck on 4), but draw Emrakul, Time Spiral and Wish the next turns... When he'd have lethal next turn, I Wipe his Canonist. I do not draw my land. I cast High Tide, and he Dazes. I had a Pact, Emrakul, 2 Time Spirals and a Wish. I look at him, and something tells me that he has a freaking FoW to. I pay for daze, and High Tide resolves. I Wish for Slaughter Pact, and pass. My next Turn, I rip a High Tide from the top, and try to Pact his canonist, but he did had that FoW... (which I could not Pact back because of Canonist).
3-1

5th Round: GW Nucks
He's on my team. We look at the standings, and we're both with 9 points, but I'm in 3rd, and he's in 7th or 8th. We decided it was best for him to concede (much because, we did some math, and the next opponent would probably be a TES, which I have a MUCH better game against).
4-1

6th Round: TES
Game 1: He wins the dice, and I keep a hand with no FoW, but 2 lands, 2 Brainstorms and a Ponder (and High Tide and Time Spiral).He Brainstorm T2. I Brainstorm and find FoW. Turn 4 (me with 3 lands in play)cast Chrome Mox (I let resolve) remove Ad Nauseam, and Duress me. I had 2x High Tide, 1 Time Spiral, 2x Cunning Wish, 1 FoW and Emrakul. I FoW removing a Wish. He cast Rite of Flame (and is left with a Gemstone open). Resolve. He cast LED. Resolve. He cast LED. I cast High Tide, Wish and Pierce. LED gets countered. He taps his Mine and cast Tutor, search for EtW and make a 1 turn clock token army. I have to win next turn.
Like a champ, I rip a land from the Top, cast High Tide, Time Spiral, and Stroke him, while having an Emrakul on my board.
Game 1: I mull, and keep a hand with counters. Turn 1 he Duress, and takes a FoW. Turn 3 I tutor for a Pierce. His turn he does some math, and cast a Ritual. I Dispel It. He was prepared for the Pierce, not that. He passes. I draw a Fow. I Pierce on something. Next turn I draw a tutor, and search for Intuition. He passes. I untap, and get a land (4th). His turn he plays LED, Ritual, Ritual and Tutor, discarding his hand and breaking LED (with enough mana for Spell Pierce). I FoW, and we're both left with no hands.
I draw land, then Zenith Then Time Spiral. I cast the Zenith, and next turn cast High Tide and Time Spiral. He had not drawn protection. I Freeze him to death (with my last Wish).
5-1

I ended in 2nd, with some store money.
The deck is still awesome, and rock solid. It's very useful that many people are caught by surprise when they see what I'm really playing.
Well, hope this deck continue to do well for everyone like it's doing for me.
(list is the same as last time, but SB with -1 Wipe Away, -1 Meditate, -1 Snap, +1 Turnabout, +1 Fact or Fiction, +1 Intuition (So I can find a High Tide with Wish too.))

[egosum]

Piceli89: I' m afraid you are right as ScatmanX said about most of your statments. The deck is über-stable, which is more than most of modern Storm build may say (modern UB ANT is just simply the worst one since, as you said, it was badly nerfed with MT ban, it actually has the problems of going off early and most important, without MT you don't have a ceaph stop condition once you are resolving ADN, so you have to wait either for IT +LED, which are 2 cards and it doesn't happen as often, or Tendrils which is a 4 cost card, this may make you die too many times even if you are high in life, 16-18). But it has only one real problem in front of the ritual based decks, and this is, IMHO, that you give lots of time so your opponent have 1-2 extra turns in order to cast permanent hate, and this could cost you some games, and your extra counterspells (spellpierce) don' t stop Gaddock nor Canonist, niether Meddling Mages. It is very important to have a well tuned Wish board, I ' m afraid this is even more important than the main board, what I mean is that you have some variants for mainboard all of them more or less resilient and strong but for the wish board there are some staples that cannot be replaced since each of them accomplish a very specialized job in a given situation. For me this is the optimal Wishboard, already post:

4x Spell Pierce (better than dispel only because they hit CB)
2x Wipe Away
1x Rebuild
1x Echoing Truth
1x Mindbreak Trap
1x Slaughter Pact (this card may be Ravenous Trap if Ichorid is relevant in your area since will accomplisht the same effect, more or less, Stopping Iona. Sice seems that reanimator is making some kind of comeback I prefer to stick in the Pact)
1x Meditate
1x Brain Freeze
1x Blue Sun' s Zenith (replacing the Stroke, this is simply better while playing Scrolls because you can use one to refill and then the same for the kill)
1x Turnabout
1x Snap (some people dislike this slot, but Gaddock being a real problem and canonist being almost everywhere, at least in my area, this is a must have for second and third game, while is also strong in first game as a wish target)

Hope this helps just ask if something isn't or if you wanno comment anything else.

Greetings,

Iñaki.-

[Rune]

What about Spell Snare instead of Pierce? Hits all the most played hate cards and doesn't become dead in the lategame vs U.deck

[egosum]

It does not hit Duress effects which is very relevant against combo match up, also nice against junk or eva green.

Greetings,

Iñaki.-

[Mon,Goblin Chief]

I thought this might be of interest here:

http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/l...ol_Rising.html

[ScatmanX]

I thought this might be of interest here:

http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/l...ol_Rising.html

Thanks.
Very nice read.

[BattlefieldMedic]

I thought this might be of interest here:

http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/l...ol_Rising.html

Nice read. The article makes me want to make the deck. I think I will

[Piceli89]

How is Counterspell any effective given you're using 1 of your mana on turn1 and turn2 Pondering or Preordaining and you'd need to keep 2 open to counter that CB? How can you expect to get rid off CB on the draw with a 2cc Counterspell (given there's no Force) and a singleton Cunning Wish? It sounds pretty paradoxical to me to slow down the deck in order to beat the worst matchup if the deck isn't tuned enough well to get rid off the most scareful card if it comes down early.
I'd rather play 3 Spell Pierces maindeck. The Tide downside that lets them pay 2 more does not always come up, since they're arguably going to tap down for threats or for previous Cspells on the first Spiral. Also, you can go around this thing solidifying the counter suite with 2 Pact of Negations instead of 1 to save mana more often.

[Mon,Goblin Chief]

Happy you guys liked the article :)

@Piceli89: Counterspell vs CB: Sure, once in a while they'll stick the turn 2 Counterbalance while you're on the draw. Life's a bitch sometimes. Just go ahead and Scroll up your Wish to kill it, they shouldn't be having an active Top yet (no mana to use it before you Scroll and they most likely don't have a three next turn if they're not lucky). If you're either on the play, have a FoW while they don't or they don't have CB before turn three - one of the three is pretty likely to be true simply because you should win 50% of your die-rolls - it's your own fault if they resolve it while you have a Counterspell. Nobody forces you to cantrip on turn 2, so you're being an idiot (you the decks player, not you piceli, just to be clear) and tapping out of CS-mana to cantrip when you could just keep your defence up to make sure Balance doesn't come down. It's not like you have to win on turn three against CB.
Over all I'm pretty sure the pay 2 downside of Spell Pierce is going to come up a lot more often against Counterbalance than CB resolving turn two on the draw (if you're playing the matchup the way you should play it with NBS - as the control) because I usually have about six lands in play once I go off against them, meaning they do, too. Remember with NBS you're supposed to take the control-role against them, not try to play as combo because that's a losing position against CB as other combo-decks' success-rates show us. I'd still board in Pierces exactly because of CB coming down turn 2 but it's not the greatest later on (though you can use it to tap them out before actually countering to set up your combo-turn without blowing a Turnabout on their lands). I also happen to board out my Pact against them because it doesn't do anything I want it to do in this matchup as it can't counter their threats, only protect mine, so I definitely wouldn't want to run even more of them MD to help against CB.

[egosum]

Counterspell is ultra narrow for Spiral tide, in fact for a legacy combo deck (even cobmo control). If you really worry counterbalance, and nothing else, and want to be specific inthe ahte you pack just add 4 spell snare (along with your Fow) and 1-2 Wipe away must seal the deal, plus spell nare stops: ethersorn canonist, chalice of the void at 1, gaddock teeg, hymn to tourach, counterspell, and much more. nevertheless I feel more confortable with spell pierces just for being more fleixible and wining you more matches, like mirrors (i mean other combo decks, not only Spiral Tide, against other high tide decks is weaker than against Ritual Storm decks but still fine). Even remand will be a lot better than counterspell and more "sinergetic".

Greetings,

Iñaki.-

[Mon,Goblin Chief]

Counterspell is not for Counterbalance alone, that was the example chosen by Piceli and I answered to that. Counterspell is simply the one card that can stop whatever it is that needs stopping and therefore, in my opinion, the right MD counter for a deck that wants to really play combo-control instead of trying to race control and other combo-decks. The SB is full of different counters meant to come in in the appropriate matchups, often even replacing the Counterspells once you know this isn't one of the matches where you want to play control.
As for the anti-CB suggestions, thanks but let me reiterate: Spell Snare into Wipe Away and Pacts is excellent if you want to do what you guys try to do - stop CB from hitting before turn 3 and kill them. That's what all the other combo-decks try to do, too, and fail miserably.
My plan is completely different. I aim to keep CB or other dangerous permanents from hitting indefinitely (or destroying it with Grip) while cantripping to make sure I always have countermagic. Only once I'm sure the opponent can't do anything useful any more do I cast Tide and Spiral, which I usually just happen to run into while digging for more defense. My kill-turn against CB is absurdly late, rarely ever before turn six (generally only if they invest too many cards going Goyf-beatdown to adequately defend themselves). Winning fast is what CB is good at stopping (at least the GerryT-style control lists) so that simply isn't my plan any more. Instead I leverage the better library-manipulation into a dominating control-position and win at my leisure.
I can see why you have trouble grasping that plan/accepting it works because no other combo(ish)-deck in Legacy could ever do this before Spiral came off the list while still winning turn 3 to 4 against aggro so you've probably never had the option of even trying out something similar. It's standard-issue in Vintage, though, and NBS's ability to play that way is why I consider this deck to be so much better as combo-control, not combo.

[egosum]

Well, if it works for you then nothing more to say. But, I'm not talking about theory, I've tested like a big bunch of different Spiral Tide lists: WIth emrakul, without him, with remand, with counterspells, with and without retraced image, with and without pacts, withs 0-1-2-3 cunning wish, mono blue, with green splash and white splash, brain freeze main deck and without,... I mean I' ve already played that kind of list and, according to my testing, While counterspell is fine against a long term game it really sucks against aggresive strategies, and even against CB decks when they played CB early, they do it more usualy than you may think I guess, they played it protected with daze/Fow or even both, so this means CS is weak agansti that, it may be excellent against landstill-kind decks, but seriously this is not something you must fear while playing turnabout, force of will and pact, also without pact, since the gama will be long, you will have many opportunities to make him waste his countermagic bluffing threats. I also play vintage and I know some vintage decks play the combo control in taht way (my actual list is an almost blue, packing force of will and drains), but in legacy is quite different, while the vintage enviroment is more a war of resources trying to pass your bomb cards, legacy is a war of bombs, this is basically for the nature of the decks of each enviroment, playing 1-of of the good cards is very different than playing 4-of, this makes leagacy pace a lot faster, in general terms, and this is why countermagic like Cs is no longer that good, but in very few dedicated decks.

Summing up, what i think is that you need (if trying to play a combo, or combo control deck) a fast and resilient main deck that can adapt with very specific hate in the sideboard, and counterspell is not fast nor specific, so don' t make the cut.

Greetings,

Iñaki.-

P.S. by the way there is a deck very similar to vintage combo-control list in legacy, but is no longer a tier 1, and it' s called solidarity, I think it is the only deck that can work taht way in modern legacy for its "instant" nature, this gives it this half a turn it lacks to be lagacy-paced.

[Misplayer]

@Mon,
Great discussion and excellent job explaining your rationale without getting defensive.

In some limited testing against CounterTop, I'm curious about how it's possible to effectively control the board with essentially 4 Force of Will and 3 Counterspell to do so. Other strict control decks (e.g. Landstill) run a more robust counter suite but still rely on board control elements for spells that slip through. The glaring difference is straight control needs to maintain board control for multiple turns while it slowly grinds out a win - this is obviously not the case here as you stated in your article.

However, I've too often been in the situation where I'll be forced to fight an early counter war over Counterbalance, leaving me with no recourse when they drop a Goyf, Knight or Clique the next turn and put me on a 3-5 turn clock. If they follow that up with an additional threat on the following turn, the clock can easily be cut in half. In these situations I've been scrambling to sculpt a winning hand (i.e. find Time Spiral) having already spent 3+ cards keeping CB off the table, while my opponent is often using equally good card selection via Top to stock up on disruption.

Similarly, against pure Bant Aggro, they're usually going to drop threats turns 2-4 and back them up with countermagic. In these matchups, I feel like my best bet is to save countermagic for the combo turn and just treat it like a Zoo matchup where you need counter backup, but at that point I'm essentially playing straight combo again.

Then there's the whole issue of the crapshoot that is a resolved Time Spiral against blue decks.

Maybe I just need more practice?

[Mon,Goblin Chief]

@egosum: First, thanks for the excellent discussion. Having one's ideas questioned in a rational and logical manner is quite enjoyable. Now back to the discussion itself:

I'm not talking theory either in this case, the first three decks I tested this against MD are Zoo (fastest clock you're likely to see in the format), Fish (clock plus disruption) and CB-Top.
I'll go into the matchups next, but first let me say that Counterspell may suck against aggressive strategies, but so does PoN. Neither is really relevant in those matchups because you're essentially goldfishing (though Counterspell at least allows you to trade your second turn for theirs if you have a slow draw while PoN does straight nothing).

To the matchups (talking about the game 1 matchups, my post-SB testing is far from complete admittedly, so there I'd have to talk from theory drawing conclusions from how game 1 matches go):
Aggressive strategies (represented by poster-child Zoo): I still goldfish them most of the time without much trouble as long as they don't have the turn 3 kill curve, it has really been as simple as that.
Disruption plus clock (represented by Fish): I'm about 50:50 in testing game one right now, counting since I've added the singleton PoN (having it totally changes how the matchup plays out in my experience). In this matchup I suspect the multiple-Pact lists like those in this thread to do much better, at least if they run a similarly "high" landcount to what I have (making my first four to five landdrops without usually having to push good cards with my cantrips was instrumental in beating them for me), which is why I transform into that post-SB.

Coming to the focal point of our discussion, if you really tested a list similar to NBS against CB-Top and played it as a control-deck, the fact that your results didn't instantly keep you working on that list is really surprising to me, though maybe that's because I tested against the GerryT-list, which didn't have Dazes (those would be a pain for Counterspell because Daze allows them to resolve CB through it even when Tide is on the play). My approach is giving me a favorable first game matchup against that deck in testing so far, which I don't believe any other deck that kills aggro early enough to ignore them can claim, including the lists I've seen here so far. I'll try to do some testing against a list with Dazes soon, I'll report on how that changes the matchup afterward.

Non-CB control: I completely agree that Landstill is likely close to a bye for either version of the deck, which is why I didn't test that matchup so far (not to mention the deck is comparatively rare). If you are combo and can be favored against a Counterbalance list that runs nearly as many counters as Landstill does, the matchup against the latter should be quite good.

Summing up, what i think is that you need (if trying to play a combo, or combo control deck) a fast and resilient main deck that can adapt with very specific hate in the sideboard, and counterspell is not fast nor specific, so don' t make the cut.

I agree 100%. Note that you said "very specific hate in the sideboard". That's exactly why Counterspell is in the main - it's extremely flexible and gives you incredible resilence against threats that can be played before you're ready to go off through opposing disruption. It's also fast enough to come online before anything really bad (outside of 2-land, Chalice @ 1) can come down - the bad things I can think of are all two-drops, barring Duress/Seize and those alone aren't hard to survive - on the play and only gives them a one turn window on the draw (which I close by bringing in Spell Pierce post-SB).

Also, though somewhat off-topic, I completely disagree about Solidarity working like Vintage combo-control. It's control is FoW, Remand to stall for a turn and killing the opponent in response to doing something you can't beat. The regular control-elements obviously aren't enough to win a true control-fight because whatever you Remand is coming back next turn while FoW alone doesn't allow you to grind out the long game because you need to 2-1 yourself all the time and will end up short on cards to actually win (as the deck doesn't have something that ignores what you start off with like Time Spiral). That leaves killing the opponent in response to a threat, which is not the same as controling the game. It allows you to be more flexible than other combo-decks because you don't have to try and kill asap as long as the opponent doesn't present a threat. It still means your basic plan for beating the opponent is to be ready to go off once he can present a game-breaking threat. While Vintage-combo-control decks like Gifts can do that (though on their own turn as long as they aren't dead yet, say against something like Oath) that isn't what they plan on doing. They plan to fight the opponent's offense card for card while resolving their draw-spells and end the game in a single turn once the opponents resources are exhausted/obviously matched with countermagic. The only deck I've seen in Legacy so far that can follow this plan is NBS.

@Misplayer: Again speaking from experience against the GerryT list, not sure in how far the games differ against a more creature-heavy list. I'm usually happy to see them play creatures, though, that means there's less disruption to get rid off before I can take control for the single turn I need to kill them.
First, different from Landstill you generally don't need to control their creatures because their clock usually leaves you time enough to first take control of the real game - the battle for countermagic superiority - and then kill them (and if they really dare tap out on turn 3 to shorten the clock you might just win, which means they probably shouldn't be doing that). That means the only real threats the deck plays are the four Counterbalances, which is where you'll be battling for control.
A list like GerryTs has 2 Counterspell, 2 Spell Snare and 4 Force of Will, 2 Vendilion Clique and four CB to fight the battle for control and SDT plus Brainstorm to dig for them. You on the other hand have four FoW, three Counterspell and four Merchant Scroll->FoW/CS/Wish as your basic defensive-suite, the Cunning Wish as an additional counter (Dispel) or retroactive answer to their threat (CB) and the much faster search-engine of Brainstorm and seven cantrips to find more Countermagic. At first it looks like that means CB has two more relevant cards in this battle than you do, but from the games I have played, the higher velocity of the cantrip-engine usually allows you to keep ahead of CB-Top as far as disruption is concerned, especially as Clique often needs to take either High Tide or Spiral instead of Countermagic so that CB can avoid dieing when they try to punch through their threat and fail/should you decide to actually try to kill them.

As to Bant-Aggro I suspect that matchup plays out a lot more like the one against Fish where you have to try to get a back-uped kill before they race you (they don't have anything you actually need to defend against), so you're correct assuming that you should be playing this matchup as straight combo vs aggro-control. PoN are probably superior to CSpell here.

If you lose against blue-decks after resolving Spiral with regularity, you have to be one of the unluckiest people alive or you really just need more practice. The process you should go through is as follows: Figure out if you can just win by going for the Zenith-plan. If yes, use whatever Cantrips and Merchant Scrolls you have left over to grab more countermagic (preferably PoN, than CS or FoW depending on being light on mana or blue cards) and Zenith yourself for everything but six mana plus however much mana you need for Counterspells and Daze-backup. If you can't go for Zenith yet, start playing your cantrips and evaluate after each if you can now go for Zenith. If you can't try to find as much counterbackup as possible and another Spiral and try again. Oh yes, obviously always start of by casting any High Tides you have.

[Rune]

The more controlling approach is interesting, but I also think Spell Pierce/Snare would achieve this much better than Counterspell. Mostly because CS doesn't stop CB on the draw, and I often find CS to be painfully slow even when it's played in real control decks. I don't think it gets any better in a deck with 18-19 lands and a ton of sorcery cantrips/tutors.


@ego_sum:

Have you made any maindeck changes to your list that is on deckcheck? Retraced Image has been pretty good in my testing because it's sort of like Chrome Mox in ANT: it helps a lot to have it in your deck when you need to go off with a minimum of resources, and at the same time it can get you to your combo turn faster if it's in your opener (even though the card disadvantage is sometimes a beating). Still, do you think it's worth the slots? I'm thinking about cutting it for Pierce/Snare to get a much better postboard matchup vs Counterbalance (among other things). Spell Snare can also time walk the aggressive decks. However, I'm definitely not interested in drawing Snare vs Merfolk with this deck. I've found the Merfolk matchup to be pretty easy with your list. Part of that is probably because you can keep generating mana with Retraced Image after Time Spiraling, and so the new taxing counters they draw never become a problem.

[death]

Counterspell is competing against another spell in the 2cc slot, that is Merchant Scroll. Imho, counterspell will not fit in simply because of its cost. This deck doesn't really have the luxury of paying extra UU everytime pre- and post-spiral unless you succesfully cast twin High Tides which happens occasionally. This is where Pact of Negation shines being a free counterspell. This means you won't just fold to a Force or Daze because you don't have mana to counter. I wouldn't worry too much about CB or hate because the deck runs enough Scrolls and a Wish-board.

[egosum]

@Mon,Gob: got a p.m.

@Kikoo: My deck is the same as listed, but I ve been testing Intuition instead of Meditate, I' m afraid it didn't make the cut for some reasons but the most important is that meditate is hugepre-post board, while intuition post board is a bit narrower, also meditate is always useful when you draw it while Intuition has more requisits to be good. I tried to cut retraced image many times, seems most people suggested me to do so but every time I did it I decided to take it back, the mission of RI in this deck is very important, not only accelerating if needed, but the most important reason is that it allows you to go off early with scarce resources because you know that you'll be playing more lands so it will be easier not to fizzle, remember that with High Tide on line it is a mini ritual that can be re-used. I only changed the sideboard a little bit, but not significantly. Added 2nd snap for the 4th spell pierce, this is becaue snap is just a beast in post board matches, not only dealing with hate bears, but also giving extra time against aggro, while produces mana and storm if needed. And my choice of the 4th spell pierce to be cut is because in my original list I played 4 Pacts and 4 spell pierces so I can do a direct replacement against given matches, while this is not tre because I play only 3 pacts, I can play only 3 pierces. I know that this may hurt the CB Top match up but I still can handle it with this configuration. If you feel losing 4th spell pierce hurts you may also cut the mindbreak trap since is maybe the least used card in the board and spell pierce may help against storm combo aswell. Another mino change to the board I' ve done is changing Rebuild for hurkyl's recall, the reasoning behind that is speed, losing the ability to play it behind a Leyline (white one) may hurt but very few people play that nowadays, and there is even fewer people that play it along with releveant artifact hate cards.

Greetings,

Iñaki.-

[ScatmanX]

Another mino change to the board I' ve done is changing Rebuild for hurkyl's recall, the reasoning behind that is speed, losing the ability to play it behind a Leyline (white one) may hurt but very few people play that nowadays, and there is even fewer people that play it along with releveant artifact hate cards.

Don't forget Chalice of the Void @2.