[PRIMER] Spiral Tide

[egosum]

This deck is not abusing this engine. SOme lists use Cloud of Faeries instead of RI, just because they don't like or understand it. And some of those list use a single snap (great card post board) to abuse it a little more.

Greetings,

Iñaki.-

[EnemyMigs]

Cloud of Faeries enables their removal. It would obviously suck to get Swords to Plowshares cast on it in response to you casting Snap.

I like it still though, it's not candelabra so it's not $200. also, if you wish board a Capsize then you can go infinite mana when your islands can generate 5 mana each.

[ScatmanX]

Cloud of Faeries enables their removal. It would obviously suck to get Swords to Plowshares cast on it in response to you casting Snap.

I like it still though, it's not candelabra so it's not $200. also, if you wish board a Capsize then you can go infinite mana when your islands can generate 5 mana each.

So SNAP enables their removal, not CoF...
Also, Capsize is a wasted slot on the SB. When your islands are producing 5 mana each, you should win the game...

Tested against Ugb landstill yesterday, and it seemed a very good MU pre-SB, and quite good post-sb, goin x-0 on the former, and x-1 on the latter (oh, and there were this one time I fizzled also... haven't happened in a long time...)

[mrjumbo03]

Anyone watched the mirror between Gerry T and Zach Strait in the SCG Memphis Open? Man it was crazy...

[ScatmanX]

Anyone watched the mirror between Gerry T and Zach Strait in the SCG Memphis Open? Man it was crazy...

Is there a link to a video or something?

[mrjumbo03]

Regarding the Retraced Image builds, I know the standard has been 4 Fetches but would running 6 or maybe even 8 be detrimental for the deck?

[Mon,Goblin Chief]

Just won our biweekly tournament (six rounds, swiss only) with NBS, this build:

CAB - Neon Blue Sky

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Preordain
4 Merchant Scroll
1 Intuition

4 Force of Will
3 Counterspell
1 Pact of Negation
2 Cunning Wish

4 High Tide
3 Turnabout
3 Cloud of Faeries
4 Time Spiral
1 Blue Sun's Zenith

1 Tropical Island
8 Island
4 Flooded Strand
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Polluted Delta (don't have Rainforests, otherwise it'd have been 3/3/3 on the Fetches)

SB:
3 Spell Pierce
3 Krosan Grip
3 Snap
2 Pact of Negation
1 Rebuild
1 Turnabout
1 Brain Freeze
1 Meditate

2 Wishes make the sideboarding-plans so much more fluid, it's worth the include. Having two Grips game 1 is also kind of nice. Never wished for Turnabout though, so that might move back to the MD. The Meditate came in against the control-decks, you really just want some cheap draw-spell to Scroll for when taking the control-role, even though it never came up during the actual tournament.

Expect a Q'n'D in the bonus section of my next article, which might even cover matchups/SBing-plans for the deck - I've had more time to play it by now :) (gotta get some value out of the time I spend writing, right? ;) )

Matchups:
UWr CBThopter 2:1 (the loss being a game loss for being an idiot, so I actually just went 2-0 in played games)
Uwg Stoneforge Mystic with Spellstutters, Cliques, Snares and FoWs 2:1
Dredge: 0:2
Junk 2:0
Stoneforge-Junk 2:0
CAB Jace 2-0

I ended up being 5-1 with the best breakers (three player tie for 1st on points), good for enough store-credit to pay for my next 11 tournaments *g*
By the end I was really sick of actually having to go off, chaining tons of cantrips every time while the opponent sits there twiddling his thumbs for 10-15 mins becomes boring once you've done it a hundred times (Extra-turns were called during the first two rounds while I was winning and I went close to time against the Junk-decks just because the deck takes such a long final turn - and games usually didn't last more than 4-5 turns against Junk). One of my Junk-opponents actually told me he was dead to Brain Freeze when I asked simply so that he could finally stop watching me play with myself... I know I built the deck to combo-off that way because it makes it strongest before you're actually winning, that doesn't change that it's a quite the disgusting exercise to have to go through every time. Still, the deck is just such a beast I'll most likely continue playing it anyway.. The fun's definitly during the turns preceding the go-off, though.

[Admiral_Arzar]

Mon, I really like that list. I'll test it out at my local as soon as I get a fourth Time Spiral. The counterspells should be good as my LGS has a morbid obsession with the color blue (or if they don't play blue, they play hatebears and/or Hymns). I notice your only loss was to Dredge - are they actually fast enough to outrace this build, or did you just get bombarded by Therapies? Should that warrant a Ravenous Trap in the board, or is it just not enough of the meta to worry about?

[Mon,Goblin Chief]

Well, it all depends on the quality of their hand and if you have a FoW for their discard-outlet. If they win the roll and keep a good seven, you're basically dead because they'll likely multi-Therapy or even just kill you before your third turn (which is the earliest you can reasonably win with NBS, barring pipe-dream hands). On the other hand if their hand is slow or you have the FoW for their discard-outlet, you'll often just kill them before they get to Therapy the crap out of you. NBS goldfishes around turn 3.5 (that is to say, you're ready to win on turn 3 maybe half your games, the others you have to wait till turn 4) so against mediocre hands you can just race them or slow them down with FoW enough to win before they do.
If I was to add gy-hate to the deck, I'd probably ignore Ravenous Trap because it won't ever come online before turn 3 with Wish, which means it doesn't do all that much against the draws that actually beat you, at least on the draw. I'd rather just stuff 3 Crypts (because they're cheap) or Relics (the cantrip-effect means they aren't dead while going off) into the sideboard and trust the mass-cantrip engine finds them in time.

[mrjumbo03]

@ Mon, what's your take on the retraced image builds?

[Mon,Goblin Chief]

As a disclaimer, I've only tested a very few games with Retraced Image. For the way I'm playing, I didn't like the RIs as I had to cut Fetchlands to make them work (which makes the Cantrips a lot weaker), not too mention that a reasonable amount of time I keep one land hands that have to cantrip into more lands, which makes it hard to actually accelerate with the RIs (turn one you don't have a second land so for RI to actually meaningfully accelerate you, you need to find two lands of your cantrips if you want to use RI on turn 2 while only hitting the third land of your second turn 2 cantrip is fine when using Clouds. Additional acceleration besides turnabout that doesn't push you towards turn 3 wins is useless in my opinion because that's the important turn against aggro. RIs are insane while comboing, though.
As to the actual RI builds (mainly Iñaki's), I wouldn't want to play them because I really don't see what they gain compared to just playing the faster ANT outside of having access to FoW (which on its own isn't worth the turn 1-2 kills you loose, imo). The real draw to Spiral-decks for me is that you can truly play combo-control instead of straight combo that needs to win ASAP against pretty much anything. Obviously, Iñaki would disagree and he's put up some impressive results, so keep that in mind when considering what I say.

[Rune]

Got 1st in a small tournament today with a final score of 5-1. Don't remember the exact number of people - somewhere between 20-25.

Prizes were: 1st: JaceTMS, 2nd: Bayou, 3rd & 4th: Wastelands, 5th-8th: Dark Confidants

Same maindeck as the one egosum has posted in the 1st post (-1 Intuition +1 Meditate), slightly different SB:

1 Rebuild
1 Ravenous Trap
1 Meditate
1 Turnabout
1 Blue Sun's Zenith
1 Mindbreak Trap
1 Brain Freeze
2 Wipe Away
2 Snap
4 Spell Snare

My problem with Spell Pierce is that it stops doing anything past turn 3, and I want to be able to counter Hymns and Counterbalances in the midgame as well, so I played Spell Snare instead. Spell Snare basically counters all the things that are bad for this deck, while all the hatebears dodge Spell Pierce. In a more combo-heavy environment, Spell Pierce is going to be much better, though.


1-2 Affinity: g1 he has turn 1 Plating + memnite on the play and I die before my 3rd turn. g2 I FoW Canonist and Time Spiral after that. I make a pr0 play by casting a non-lethal Brain Freeze on him so that I can look through most of his library. I note that his hate consists of 3-4 Canonist. After that, I cast the 2nd Brain Freeze for the win. g3 I keep a shitty hand that should have been an easy mulligan, and I die to Canonist and Ravager+Disciple combo. Hand was Ponder, TS, CW, 2 fetches, 2 islands (in case you don't see it, this is basically a 5 card already hand). First match I lose with the deck in 3 events :I

2-0 BG Dark Depths: Meditate + Spell Snares > discard. I FoW his attempt at putting a 20/20 token into play. g2 he almost gets me with a Choke, but I have the FoW like a master.

2-1 UWG TarmoFaeries: Very hateful deck with maindeck Spell Pierce, Spell Snare, Spellstutter Sprite and Vendilion Cliques. I am able to punch through his counterwall in 2 of the games on the turn before I die. g1 I mainphase a Meditate when he's tapped out because I really need to draw extra cards after having to burn a FoW on a Clique. I play it on my own turn when he's tapped out because I can't afford to have it countered by his maindeck Spell Pierces. This play backfires tremendously when he gets to play Jace and sculpt a sick hand with it during his 2 turns. In the third game I almost got completely destroyed by a Pithing Needle on my one type of fetchland (had 1 in hand and immediate drew a 2nd one.. :< ). Not being able to a run a split of blue fetches is one of the disadvantages of playing Retraced Image. Games 2 & 3 exemplified the brokeness of Pact of Negation.

2-0 Goblins: He can't really interact, but he gets close to killing me in 1 game with Piledriver and haste goblins. g2 he scoops as soon as I play High Tide (lulwut?). His friend tells him he should at least wait and see if I also have the Time Spiral. I show him the Spiral and then he scoops (again?). Apparently he wanted to go smoke instead of watching me masturbate with my cards.

1-1 The Rock: I.D.

Top8
2-0 Affinity: Have to go off on turn 3 because I will die if I pass to him. Retraced Image after TS shows its strength. Actually the only game where the card mattered and wasn't just FoW fodder.. makes me strongly reconsider if it should even be in the deck at all. Playing only 4 (identical) fetchlands is very annoying :<. g2 I make his clock infinitely slower by Spell Snaring a Cranial Plating. At the end of his 4th turn I Rebuild his board of Canonist, lands and other dorks before I untap and cast Time Spiral.

top4
2-0 Dredge: He is on the draw and starts out by discarding in his end step. This means he will attempt to Breakthrough on his next turn, so I dig for a FoW and I manage to find it. The FoW slows him down and I have Cunning Wish for Ravenous Trap ready when he breaks his Cephalid Coliseum on his next turn. g2 is very strange. He dredges slowly and I hold on to Cunning Wish for a long time until he dredges into a Therapy. After the Trap, we both draw lands for a couple of turns and so I got to witness an amazing spectacle - a hardcasted 0/0 Golgari Grave-Troll (so he could get his dredging started again!). Apparently my deck won't stop giving me islands, so I end up tapping 6 lands and playing Time Spiral.

Final:
2-0 Maverick: g1 he has no way to interact. g2 things get a bit dangerous when he gets a SoFaI out, but luckily his mull to 6 only gave him the sword and no hatebear to go with it. I Wipe Away his Vial@2 so there will be no shenanigans during Time Spiral.


Having to combo off with this deck over and over again gets very tedious. I can only imagine how painful it must be for the opponents. I'm kinda hoping it won't be the best deck in the format for long so I will no longer have to keep playing it =)


Time Spiral generally treated me well, although there were a couple of times where it gave me 6 blanks + a cantrip, and I had to make some magic happen.


After this event, I'm 99% sure Retraced Image isn't worth it. The restriction on the manabase is the biggest problem, but it's also an annoying card to draw most times - Cloud of Faeries can atleast cycle when you don't need it. I think something like Mon's list is much more optimal, but I wouldn't drop the MD Brain Freeze and I wouldn't play Counterspells, because Spell Snare/Pierce is much better in that slot.


edit: made post less terrible.

[egosum]

Congratulations for the results.

For all those who want to contribute with a report, I encourage to do it as stated in the first post of the thread.

Thak you and keep storming!

Greetings,

Iñaki.-

P.S. it seems that RI is not working to nobody but me, but seriously I'm afraid I'll keep them in as long as I play the deck.

[egosum]

Congratulations for the results.

For all those who want to contribute with a report, I encourage to do it as stated in the first post of the thread.

Thak you and keep storming!

Greetings,

Iñaki.-

P.S. it seems that RI is not working to nobody but me, but seriously I'm afraid I'll keep them in as long as I play the deck.

[(nameless one)]

Concerning egosum's/kikoo's list:

Why Rebuild? Can you use Hurkyl's Recall instead? It can be wished for as well and it costs less. Is the cycling that relevant?

[Rune]

I would say Rebuild is almost always better than Hurkyll's Recall because Chalice@2 is very common in the matchups where you want the artifact bounce - it's usually what people follow their 1st lock piece up with. Rebuild doesn't target, so you don't get randomly owned by fringe cards like Runed Halo, Misdirection or Leyline of Sanctity. Rebuild also cycles if you draw it again with Time Spiral. H. Recall is not likely to be played before turn 3 in the first place, because you will usually have to spend your 2nd turn tutoring for it with scroll. With that said, Rebuild REALLY sucks against resistors (Lodestone Golem, Thorn of Amethyst, Sphere of Resistance), so if those start seeing more play, you probably want to play H. Recall instead.

@egosum: Thanks. I fixed my report a bit - this is the link to it: http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...l=1#post530578

[death]

I have no issues at all regarding this as I have both (see decklist). I will be more concerned about not having a turn 2-3 answer (M-Scroll for H. Recall) against Affinity which almost always swings for lethal on turn 4 than worry about double chalices which almost never occur.

[DuKeLiO]

I´m also doing it well with my build. I top4ed on Firenze two weeks ago with the list on my prior post. I won against all blue decks, but no counterbalance, and also two ANT decks. I lost on quarterfinals against a BGW deck with Hymn to Tourach winning the first game, losing the second for a mistake when I didn't hide my 4th Island and he topdecked an Hymn to Tourach discarding it, and the third one due to being my High Tides extirpated.

For the next tournament, this weekend I changed my sideboard:
-1 Relic of Progenitus
+1 Echoing Truth

I lose in the first round against an Affinity deck, beacuse his speed. In the third game I went on turn 2 Merchant Scroll->Hurkyl's Recall, but I never had a third turn to use it (obviously I was on the draw)
I won against Countertop on round 2, aggroloam on round three, draw against Baneslayer Control on round four and won against New Horizons and another Countertop (Thopters) on rounds five and six.
In the top8 I won against another Countertop deck, BGW Junk on Semis (he achieved to extirpate my High Tides on turn 2, but I have the last one on my sideboard for Cunning Wish -I learned the lesson-) and a Zoo deck on finals.

[death]

So that's why your decklist looks familiar, I checked your previous posts and they were all under Landstill and then it hit me. You're probably the greatest legacy Landstill player (and Vintage) I know. It's too bad deckcheck shut down along with all your achievements. Anyways, nice meeting you here!

Since you may be the only person here (aside from egosum) who has a vast experience with C-Wish, I want to ask you some questions regarding your build. How do you find the 1-of C-Wish without Stroke and Turnabout on the side? You're build relies heavily on M-Scroll and it looks to me that Gigadrowse is worse than Turnabout. Do you find C-Wish too slow for High Tide? And if you are hellbent on the Repeals, did you consider playing a 4th Candelabra?

[Mon,Goblin Chief]

@Dukelio: I thought I'd seen your list on deckcheck. Congratz on your performance, happy to see the Counterspell-plan has been working as well for you as it has for me at crushing control-decks.

Some comments on a few cards by comparing our builds:

Candelabra: Playing with the 3 Turnabout build, I would have liked having a single Candelabra a few times, as much as I've argued against it being necessary. Only having 3 Turnabouts (Wishes get used for other stuff) makes it sometimes difficult to generate enough mana to win with Zenith without Spiraling twice. CoF being blue and drawing a card have been very useful to me in testing so I'd keep at least two of them but a single Candelabra in place of one of them would have provided me with a fourth big untap-effect MD.
The Repeal my Candelabra plan seems pretty cool, though, giving you MD bounce that cantrips and, in your build, works as a combo-piece. If some list is going to convince me to give Candelabra-based builds another shot, it would be yours.

CWish: I've recently moved to a 2 Wish build (see above) and I suggest you give that a try for a few games to see if you like it. I've been impressed. Makes boarding out the High Tide a lot more effective (especially because you can now do it against Control, too, without sacrificing access to them), allows for more Grips pre- and post-SB (I actually keep the third Grip in the board against CB now) and generally has made my boarding-plans more comfortable. They aren't that impressive by themselves but their benefits concerning all-about fluidity of the build feel like they're worth it anyway for me so far. They also have the side-benefit of you hitting one for Brainfreeze early during the combo-turn more often, which leads to less playing with yourself (definitely a good thing, at least in my mind) and saves time, which can be relevant against control-decks (e.g. your draw against Baneslayer-control). The combo-turn taking as long as it does means you can time out even when you could win two out of three games relatively early as long as you lose at least one.

Pact of Negation: How has your experience against Fish been without at least one? Pact has been essential to winning that matchup for me.

Snap: If you have problems with decks like Affinity outracing you, I suggest you try out three Snaps SB, they've been incredible for me at both speeding up the deck (you don't need CoF for them to do that, the opponent should have creatures if you've brought in Snap which means you have more untap-effects that allow for a turn 3 Spiral even without Clouds) and slowing down opponents's fast kills. I've been very happy with them.

@Death: I know you didn't ask me but I also tested Gigadrowse and the card has it's merits, especially against CB. Being able to tap their top and their lands without being vulnerable to countermagic (turns Spell Pierce back on lategame, too) can definitely win you some games, especially longer ones (they'll flip Top in response to make sure High Tide won't be cast a reasonable amount of time and with the length of the games that often allows you to Spiral off of lands alone and win through that CB as long as they don't randomly hit another 1 on top). I cut it in the end because it seemed somewhat narrow and needed a ton of mana, so I prefered other solutions like a Meditate for additional carddrawing in those matchups (very useful when playing the control-role), in part because Meditate isn't dead when drawn during the combo-turn.