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Thread: Changing with the Tide, Taking Day Two, Then Taking Beats

  1. #1
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    Changing with the Tide, Taking Day Two, Then Taking Beats

    So despite everyone saying high tide combo is dead, I decide to be stubborn and play it anyway. I essentially took the Hatfield list, cut 2 Mind over matter’s and a candelabra for 3 missteps and a island for another preordain. Cutting that Island was essentially the dumbest move of all time. I had horrible mulls all weekend and lost to decks that had no business beating me. So onto the goodness. I’m writing a lot of this from bad notes and memory, so if I made a mistake here or there, apologies.

    My crew leaves Albany at noon on Friday to head out to Providence, all three of us in a Prius listening to my buddy Riley’s horrible techno trance music while he delights in the audio waterboarding he is performing. We make it out to our hotel no worries and check in at the event no problem and a see a couple friends playing grinders. I already had 3 byes from winning a GPT at my LGS, so I pretty much walked around and scoped. I saw nightmare playing the U/W list that everyone seemed to be playing the night before, and reminisced about the old Albany VS Syracuse 1.5 battles that used to happen. (LAVA DART!) Onto the magic:


    Here is the list for reference, DO NOT PLAY 17 LANDS IN THIS DECK LIKE I DID.

    2 Flooded Strand
    11 Island
    2 Misty Rainforest
    1 Pact of Negation
    2 Polluted Delta
    4 Brainstorm
    3 Candelabra of Tawnos
    4 High Tide
    3 Mental Misstep
    4 Ponder
    3 Preordain
    4 Merchant Scroll
    1 Blue Sun's Zenith
    3 Cunning Wish
    3 Meditate
    3 Turnabout
    4 Force of Will
    4 Time Spiral

    SB

    1 Ravenous trap
    1 surgical extraction
    1 turnabout
    1 intution
    1 Echoing Truth
    1 rebuild
    2 pact of negation
    3 spell pierce
    1 brain freeze
    1 blue sun's zenith
    1 wipeaway
    1 meditate


    Rounds 1-3 Bye

    Round 4: Enchantress:

    This round was exciting for me as I finally got to play some cards after sitting around a while. My friends were all 1-2 at this point so I had to make sure someone from the crew ended up day two. I sit down from an enchantress player and grin, thinking it’s in the bag as they are fully slower than I, and I expect to be 4-0. My opponent game one try’s to land a exploration, which I misstep, he doesn’t play anything relevant till turn 4, when I just go off. Game two He had turn 3 double sterling grove, which negates my bounce and I had no force to stop him. GG.

    Game three was an epic battle, literally ending with both of us having about 5-10 cards in the library. Essentially he had me locked with double sterling grove, runed halo’s for both BSZ and Brain Freeze. He attempts words at war to win, I force then cunning wish for extraction, removing it, seeing he has 4 cards left, 2 of which are solitary confinement. I time spiral on my turn to draw a new hand, lucksack into an extraction and pass turn thinking I can just extract his confinements and deck him. On his turn, he casts solitary off of a 14 mana serra’s sanctum, I force, he casts replenish, I force, he casts replenish, I pact. At this point he has one card in hand, which turned out to be a choke that resolves and I can’t pay the pact trigger. GG.

    3-1

    Round 5: Merfolk

    He never get’s a threat on board and tries to play control against me game one, which is always a mistake for merfolk. I sculpt a hand with double force, then merchant for Pact of Negation for the safety blanket and go off.

    Game two was more of the same, I went off from 12 life after boarding in some spell pierces for preordains just in case.

    4-1

    Round 6: R/W/G Cascade LD

    Not gonna lie, this guy caught me off guard. Essentially I combo’d turn 4 without seeing anything but smaller creatures and thought he was playing NO RUG or something similar. Game 2, he cast a bloodbraid elf into boom/bust and geddon’d me. GG.

    Knowing what he was playing, I just sculpted to protect from the bloodbraid cascade and combo’d turn 5.

    5-1

    Round 7: Junk

    My opponent in this round was a nice kid, and I saw he day two’d as well. This match is where my deck started shitting on me. Game one I combo’d off no worries, misstepped a thoughtseize and he never had hymn. Game two, mull to 5, keeping a decent hand but hymn finished it.

    Game three was maybe the worst game of the tournament for me. Mull’d to 4. Now these mulls weren’t maybes, they were zero land or 6 land type hands. Hell I’d have kept a 5 land 1 ponder hand. These were HORRIBLE hands. So I keep a 4 hand with a land, a ponder, a brainstorm and a BSZ. Turn one I play land and ponder, no lands seen so I shuffle. He plays land, diamond, hymn. Turn two I draw no land, his turn 2 was a vindicate on my island. I never come back.

    5-2

    Round 8: NO Rug Burn

    Nothing really of note here, his combo doesn’t kill quick enough to get me, so I combo turn 3 with candelabra with a progenitus staring me down. Game two actually was very close, having me have to turnabout his creatures to stay at 4 life instead of taking a hirearch beats, when I spiral he shows me the bolt that would have been lethal if I didn’t play defense with turnabout.

    6-2

    Round 9: Merfolk

    I have one note for this matchup. PACT ALL STAR. It really was all day. The one maindeck pact really catches fish off guard when you merchant scroll for it. I ended up finishing the tourney 3-0 against the fish.

    7-2 Day one finished

    Feeling great day with a day two, we go to eat some Cheesecake factory. The food in providence was a win all weekend, with luxe burger being the highlight for their grilled cheese buns.

    Round 10: Maverick

    This is the beginning of the end for me. 3 games against a deck I should NEVER lose too, and I mulled to 6 and to 5. He get’s down some beats and I can’t recover in either game. I never made it past 2 islands in this round. At this point I’m pretty tilted, as that should have been an auto win for me, but try to recover for the next round.

    7-3

    Round 11: Merfolk

    Played against a great kid that didn’t know how to beat high tide, he again went for control over beats, and maindeck pact just owned his force. I can’t overstate how nuts pact is against force of will in this matchup. It’ll stay in my mainboard as long as I play the deck. (Props to Rion for making me see the light on this)

    8-3

    Round 12: Zoo.

    Game one, I mull to 5 from horrible draws again, he beats face. Game two, I go off at ten, when we realize he hadn’t pitched his original hand when he drew for time spiral. We call a judge as he has 9 cards in his grip now. Judge rules that he can just shuffle back and draw a new hand of 7. I thought this ruling was a little odd at Professional REL but my opponent was a chill guy so no biggy, until he draws lightning helix, bolt, fireblast for 10 off of his gift hand from the judge. I meditate in response, digging for any countermagic, don’t get there

    So at this point I’m not having much fun, I feel that game was stolen from me and I punted a match against maverick by having to mull so often. Magic gods weren’t kind day two.

    8-4

    Round 13: Kronenberger Blue

    This was piloted by none other than Chris himself, who I recognize from watching him win the SCG the week before. Can’t say enough about how nice of a guy he is, was a true pleasure to play against him, despite getting monkey stomped both games. He plays something like 17 counterspells, and I managed to actually fight through in BOTH games and resolve a time spiral with high tide active, but when we draw 7, he reloads on countermagic and I just can’t break through.

    8-5


    Was a disappointing outcome, with my deck busting me pretty badly with mulls etc. But we made day two with a “dead” deck. I will say this, the ONLY person who actually misstepped a high tide was Chris with his mono blue 17 counter deck. High tide isn’t hurt as badly as anyone thinks by MM. We play 3 of our own, have superior card filtration and it’s useless after a spiral.

    It’s very much a viable deck in my opinion. I could have easily been in a much better position if the dice roll a little better. Removing that island was a deathblow to any chance I had to make the money in this one. I dropped with 5 losses as I couldn’t make top anything from there.

  2. #2

    Re: Changing with the Tide, Taking Day Two, Then Taking Beats

    Thank you for writing the report. Very much appreciated!

  3. #3
    Member

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    Re: Changing with the Tide, Taking Day Two, Then Taking Beats

    No problem. It's a solid deck despite my horrible choice to remove an island. I don't think it would have solved the issue, but it would have made it better for certain.

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