I don't Think retraced image and personal tutor are cards for this deck. Card disadvantage is allways pretty bad, especially in high tide. This is not show and tell where you can just jam bombs until one sticks. Adding tutors and speed at the cost of cards is a huge cost when facing any kind of disruption. Maybe that personal tutor is the pitch-card to force you no longer have?
Deck is slow allready and we only have 4 time spirals in total so it takes both time and cards to setup another attempt to combo off if the first one fails. We want to make sure our first attempt is enough. Compared to show and tell we need atleast 2 cards (high tide+time spiral most often) meaning that a well-aimed counterspell is often game winning against us, unlike it is vs sneak and show where they just traded a card for another. Going off a second time is also not how the deck usually operates. It's super consistent with a lot of cantrips, probably more so than any other deck in legacy. This means that going long usually favors you the most. Waiting for the last possible moment to go off (or a window when opponent is tapped out or choked on Resources) is often what you are looking for. The turn after this Point you are often dead so there is no chance to try again. High tide compensates for beeing slow with high redunancy and countermagic and I Think you should treat it as combo/Control rather than combo.
Tutors would be good but there is nothing but Intuition that's Worth playing in my opinion and to speed the deck up there's sadly nothing at all (unless you Count multiple untap-effects).
I really like sensei's divining top though. It's not card-advantage but if you face hymn/Liliana it sort of acts like it. I Think I will play one or two in the sideboard moving forward unless I can find some raw efficient card draw (maybe predict?). Pieces of the puzzle is a mana to slow I'm afraid... and meditate is not great during the non-combo turn.
I am actually not concerned about a faster goldfish but instead I am looking in the other direction for some more card advantage. The decks today (delver, even moreso delver-less delver) are so efficient that all they need are 1-2 lands and a creature which means that the rest of their hand can be manaefficient disruption. A mana-efficient but not a very fast deck. At the same time we would need 1 high tide, 1 time spiral and atleast 4 lands. ATLEAST. That is a 3 card difference right off the bat. Same can be said for miracles. Even if we can stop their counterbalance we have trouble pulling ahead on cards and have enough Resources to overcome their disruption. A snapcaster mage killing us is not a very rare sight.
On the other hand, this grindy metagame with efficient spells are probably great for high tide as a deck overall. We simply don't care if they play a true-name nemesis. Leovold is a problem but all things considered I think it's a decent choice (if you can Dodge miracles the whole tournament...).
I played some side-events at GP Prague and a local 4 round tournament at the LGS with Close to the same list I played last time. Titi in the board were allright but I made a mistake and boarded them in vs aluren. I think some discussion about which decks we want it against is needed. hatebears, delver and eldrazi aside. Do you play it vs elves? combo? miracles?
edit: what is your experience with gitaxian probe? I dismissed it some year ago because the Life loss mattered and made my keeps slightly akward. I can see playing a few if I find space (preordain is better imo) if the meta is a bit slower.
I recently liquidated some of my Modern stuff on MTGO to get some Force of Wills and built Manaless Dredge. Neat though the deck may be, turn 1 Deathrite Shaman has been an all-too-common occurrence, and hate too easily locks you out in games 2/3. So I said to myself, now that I have FoW on MTGO, what's an inexpensive blue deck I could move to? I know, one that plays lots of basics! And so I arrived at this thread.
From reading some recent pages, it sounds like Miracles can be trouble, but I'm okay with one bad matchup (even a popular one) if the rest are okay. How does it fare against the fair decks with disruption, e.g. BUG and Grixis?
Also, has consideration been given to Spell Snare in the 75? Seems like a lot of the problem hate/answers (Counterbalance, Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, Ethersworn Canonist, Chalice of the Void on 1) have a CMC of 2.
All,
I took this deck to my LGS and ran a 5-0 victory. Not the cleanest deck by any stretch, but I was in the lab mixing my mad scientist potions to come up with this deck idea. Lets start with the deck.
10 island
2 misty rainforest
4 flooded strand
1 Polluted Delta
4 high tide
4 merchant scroll
4 brainstorm
4 ponder
3 Sensei's Divining Top
3 predict
2 turnabout
4 timespiral
3 candelabra of tawnos
3 cunning wish
3 force of will
2 Flusterstorm
2 spell snare
1 snap
1 Wipe away
1 Capsize
1 Blue sun's zenith
1 Brainfreeze
1 Turnabout
1 Meditate
1 Surgical extraction
1 Rebuild
1 Echoing truth
2 Teferi's Realm
3 Thing in the ice
1 mindbreak trap
1 Force of will
Notes:
First, I played 17 lands. Before i get ripped by the trolls (because 18 land is the norm) I would strong consider trying 17. I think i am also able to get away with it because of running predict.
Second, i ran the card predict. There were many times that i found myself not being able to recover after discard spells and i needed a way to refill my hand pre combo. Predict works great with ponder, brainstorm, and top. And even allows me to merchant scroll for it as its an instant. Also predict works well against miracles. It makes it more difficult for them to flip a top. And while combo'ing predict helps dig especially while i have top in play. At worse i take the card i need from ponder and predict what i don't need.
Third, 3 Force of will main. I am not insane... I boarded the 4th lol. But the point is that force is a very difficult card for us to play because we need to pitch cards to use it. But i understand that sometimes you just need to force a spell. Normally you only want one force a game and 3 felt correct.
Forth, Spell Snare. I ran 2 spell snare for obvious reasons of trying to counter Chalice of the void on 1 and counterbalance. although i wanted a max of 7 counters main which is why force was cut to make room for this.
Thoughts:
I built this deck with intention of working against miracles because its our worst match up but i didn't end up playing against it LOL. My matches were...
-Delver 4c 2-0
-D & T 2-1 (I got a little lucky here that snare is good against him. it counters good creatures like thalia and revoker and spirit of lab) plus Thing in the ice was a surprise.
-Elves 2-0
-B/R reanimator 2-1 (I had the play which helped)
-Lands 2-0 (Snare was able to counter sphere of resistance)
Thoughts Blue Mages?
How did this work?Originally Posted by bigbadbern
It was great as more of the surprise factor after people boarded out removal. When death and taxes doesn't have swords in their deck after board its a way to either clock them or defensively bounce their board for comboing off. 3 might be much, but i wouldn't go lower than 2.
I will be taking spiral tide for a spin this Friday. Either my old list or something with tops and Predict. Will report back later! Also curious if anyone is having any succés with the deck recently. Miracles aside I think the metagame is pretty good... lots of midrange with no pressure or discard. I Think it's time for defense grid to make a comeback in the sideboard.
The tournament had way too many Ionas om blue way too soon. I played the "regular" version with candelabras and got smashed. I got bitten by the love for high tide once again though so I started streaming with the deck and so far it's been pretty good. The list I run include 4 tops over preordain and a full set of predict over candelabras to make it better in the grind. Beeing an even slower deck than usual I put some Counterbalances in the board.
You can find the stream in my archives at twitch.tv/truckis123
Hi Mackan, I saw your list in your twitch channel, would you please elaborate more on your choice of SDT and predict? I have few questions.
1. Do you run SDT because of Predict (card advantage is the primary reason), or do you play Predict because of SDT (being grinding and being able to fight control decks is the primary reason)? Or maybe you think SDT + predict are equally important? I hope I phrase it clearly
2. What is your opinion between Predict vs Meditate (both are card advantage)? I found your list run a full set of Predict and 0 Meditate in the main.
Many Thanks
So, -4 Counterbalance in the side board, add in some Vendilion Cliques & Grafdigger's Cages
-4 Sensei's Divining Tops in the main deck, Bring that 4th Preordain in, what do I put in those other 3 slots? I was prepping for Magic online and I'm glad I didn't buy tops/counterbalances yet.
Also I'm like a year and a half out of the loop, but was already planning on jumping on the magic online train in the next couple weeks with twitch streaming anyway, but still waiting on new internet in a few days.
---
With announcement, does High Tide improve in the meta, of course it does, Counterbalance is one of the hardest cards to go against, does it get good enough to start placing again, that I don't know, but I'm gonna find out... KEEP HIGH TIDING!!!
Primary legacy deck High Tide primer
Peer through depths perhaps?
Sent from my ONEPLUS A3000 using Tapatalk
Once you go Legacy...
I did 5-0 and the day after Wizards ban top? :DHi Mackan, I saw your list in your twitch channel, would you please elaborate more on your choice of SDT and predict? I have few questions.
1. Do you run SDT because of Predict (card advantage is the primary reason), or do you play Predict because of SDT (being grinding and being able to fight control decks is the primary reason)? Or maybe you think SDT + predict are equally important? I hope I phrase it clearly
2. What is your opinion between Predict vs Meditate (both are card advantage)? I found your list run a full set of Predict and 0 Meditate in the main.
Many Thanks
SDT is a better card than preordain, but it costs more mana. There are scenarios where top is worse, for example when you just want to dig deeper post-spiral having multiple tops, but for the most part the mana-difference made all the difference. Legacy is (now was) slow enough to let us play SDT and get away with it. This was the same reason why Predict was played, people mostly tried to grind you down and predict+top is one of the best answers to that.
Meditate is a lot worse than Predict pre-spiral but better post. I think we need some sort of CA still but I don't think meditate i the way to go. Exciting times ahead of us! No more counterbalance is GREAT news for high tiders.
Thanks Mackan for the explanation.
Holy shit, SDT and Miracle is gone! Brothers and sisters, it's time again to cast our beloved blue spells and let people draw the entire freaking deck!
Now at least, let's still play the good old preordain and meditate
I never had time to seriously playtest with Pore over the Pages since I quit playing the deck during the Miracle era, but two cards for one mana after one HT is ok; after two HT, PotP gives two cards and starts actually generating mana. Chaining 2 of those in goldfish was ridiculous, i'd rather run that over meditate.
It costs 5 though. I'm looking at something for 2-3 mana:-(
Yeah, it does to little pre-spiral in my opinion.
Only cards I can think of are meditate and pieces of the puzzle. Pieces is not instant so sayd :(. I might drop my 2 tops for a meditate and an intuition, as I did not have one main.
Ideas Unbound
Murmurs from Beyond
Pieces of the Puzzle
None of which is better than Potp, except maybe Pieces which is more expensive post-combo and doesn't fetch for land.
Pages "does little pre-spiral" but so does meditate: i don't think we can afford giving a free turn to anyone in the upcoming meta, which will be faster.
I'd suggest playing Pages 2x in a 12-cantrip build in order to get max value pre-combo.
In-combo game is just insane. Just try it, fizzle chances are as low as you can get. Free mana AND free cards: it's as close to frantic search as it can be.
I can see how it is very hard to fizzle with 2 pore, and I do fizzle once in a while. I also haven't tested it, so to be fair I need to give it a try.
I feel that my fizzle chances are low already with my current set-up (12 can-trips, 2 Tops), and I am more concerned about hitting that high tide into time spiral. Meditate is meh pre-spiral I agree, and I'm not keen on pieces myself, as I can't wish/scroll for it.
Does anyone like gitaxian probe?
I don't think Pore over the Pages is needed. The problem was never comboing off, but always getting to that stage. What we lost with top was card filtering, (and also a hedge against targeted discard). What replaces the filtering would be another cantrip (however there really isn't any good ones left) or pure card advantage for those grindy discard games vs bug.
I think one of the cards added for sure into the mainboard will be either 1 intuition or 1 blue sun's zenith, or even both. Intuition helps solve the combo filtering lost from top (while also being tutor-able), and blue sun's zenith, also being tutorable, could help fill your hand eot in theory vs discard. An extra blue sun's zenith in the mainboard also acts as an additional pseudo-copy of time spiral. Going off with high tide + USZ not even needing to time spiral is hot. Also, though I'm not sure if it will be as important now with the absence of miracles, but sanctum prelate from D&T on 3 was a huge hassle, locking out use of cunning wish. Having that additional blue sun in the main allows us to by-pass being locked out of using cunning wish.
That still leaves 2-3 extra slots in the main. Nothing really shouts out at me at the moment. There's cute stuff like disrupt, or simply adding in the 4th flusterstorm main, and possibly simply another turnabout with the added option of tapping down opponents lands. Maybe even 1 wipe away too, after all, it's never truly dead being able to bounce and re-use a candelabra; I think people underestimate a card never being dead while being able to answer anything and being virtually unstoppablee now (thanks to the death of counterbalance).
I do remember an mtgo 5-0 list with 3? gitaxian probes in the main. It could be useful, a free gitaxian probe post spiral to see how much, if any, countermagic we need would enable us to scroll/wish hyper efficiently lessening the chance of a fizzle. Free cards are always nice!
I like this thought process.
I agree many overlook the importance of actually getting to the point to cast HT --> TS. A maindeck bounce will still be useful for Chalice and hatebears. I like probe even more now that counterbalance is gone, since we don't need to diversify cmc as much. I liked before for the information pre and post combo and the sheer velocity in early turns to find combo pieces.
Ok, I've been thinking about this all day for the past 2 days. I think ultimately there will be 2 ways to go. We have our stock list:
18 land/fetch
4 High Tide
4 Time Spiral
3 Cunning Wish
4 Merchant Scroll
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Preordain
3-4 Candelabra of Tawnos
1-2 Turnabout
4 Force of Will
3 Flusterstorm
3 Open slots
First way: 1 Blue Sun's Zenith, 1 Wipe Away, 1 Intuition. This does everything we want to do, I think.
Second way: +3 Gitaxian Probe, maybe -1 Flusterstorm +1 more Gitaxian Probe. Reasons being more velocity and you can chuck them for zero post spiral, and knowing which deck you're going up against lets you cantrip/scroll more efficiently which I think is important having lost the fetch/top/fetch power.
The faster you take damage the worse probe becomes of the nature in how we go off(wait until the last possible minute).
My gut tells me option one will be the way to go. Since I don't get to play much anymore, I think I'll have to buy into mtgo to see for sure; never been more excited to play!
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