Doesn't delving away your cantrips increase your probability of getting jacked by TimeSpiral? I feel like a lot of the games I lose it's because I resolve TimeSpiral and get a hand that can make a bunch of mana, counter a bunch of spells....and that's all!
It would increase your chance of fizzling yes. You want as high of a % as possible to be draw spells in the deck. Hopefully when Delving away cards, after a couple fetchlands if you are lucky (It's rarely ever gonna Delve away a bunch of lands because you only play half a dozen fetchlands, so after that it's gonna be other stuff.) But anyhow, after whatever fetchlands you can Delve away, you can pick and choose between draw spells or other stuff.Originally Posted by clavio
I guess basically, if you have 50% of a deck as draw spells, & 50% of a deck as, everything else, as long as you can remove enough no draw spell stuff while having to remove draw spells too, you can the % of the deck the same when it comes to the number of draw spells in the deck as a whole. Obviously though, that will not always happen. Sometimes you might Pay 3, delve away fetch lands and counters and 1 or 2 draw spells, other times you might have to delve away a lot more.
For me the issue isn't the Delve part though, it's that you can almost never reliably cast Dig through Time before turn 4. You'd have to pay 3 mana on turn 3, requiring you Delve for the rest, & since the first 2 turns you can only cast up to 3 cantrips, that + fetchlands would mean after paying 3, you'd still have to Delve 5 cards away. Meditate you can actually, potentially cast on turn 3. (providing lethal combat isn't on board or other stuff from opponent)
Going back though on it, with Dig through Time you can still pick the best 2 of 7, so it's good card advantage. It's almost turning into a Meditate -vs- Dig through Time situation.
-Meditate always costs 3, but nets more card advantage overall when resolved, and is castable as soon as turn 3
-Dig through Time can cost as low as 2, but can also cost a lot more with nothing to Delve during the combo turn. Also Dig through Time lets you pick the best 2 of 7.
I guess in that regard, it just depends on what you want to do.
Primary legacy deck High Tide primer
People who dropped Meditate out of their lists have no reasons to look at Dig through Time (DtT). It has the exact same disadvantages. I am one of these persons. The only question remaining is: is DtT better than Meditate? It is very difficult to answer. Pre-Spiral, I think it is. Giving a turn is something we cannot afford anymore. Most of the time we look for specific cards we got discarded, or just combo cards... DtT does it better. Post-Spiral, it can be really horrible to open a hand with DtT because our graveyard is empty... once we get started, it will be better than Meditate but it is not critical anymore....
I would say that the card is not worth playing in HT overall :'(
I prefer DTT over Meditate, and it's been running well in my sandbox games. Exiling 3 cantrips and 2 fetchlands is fine pre-TS, exiling 3 and 3 is even better, both of them increase your chances of drawing combo pieces and countermagic and decrease your chances of drawing lands. I unfortunately don't actually own any (wanted to get some playtesting in yesterday with my vanilla list and I'm not willing to buy into the PT hype, I'll pick up a playset once the market calms down) but DTT is even been fine in test games post-spiral, as long as you have enough other cards to get a few cantrips in the yard. You'll probably pay 4 or 5, but that's OK in exchange for 7 chances at a Candel or a Scroll. I would not want more than 2 in my 75, but 2 mainboard is fine, and 1 main + 1 side could even work as a wish target, like we used to use meditate. I feel much better burning a wish to look at 7 cards than to look at 4.
As for the playtesting, my two losses were to miracles and infect. Miracles I managed to slow him down a lot, but didn't get there in either game. Infect I got unlucky, went off without enough protection game 2 and lost the next turn, and waited longer than I should have game 3 (didn't expect him to have two +4/+4 effects AND a pendlehaven).
L2, New Jersey
Couldn't you run more fetchlands to support dig through time better? Most lists in the previous pages seem to be only running 6 or so, but this number could easily be increased. It seems like adding in some more fetches shouldn't hurt you overall in games, especially since stifle sees very little play right now. Dig is just massively powerful, giving you not only card advantage but selection all at the end of your opponent's turn.
Even with only 6 fetches, I'm still probably playing a fetch for 1/2 of my land drops, becausewhen brainstorming or other looking, I'll trade basics for fetches to get the shuffle. I could see maybe an argument to go up to 8 (2 of each), but certainly no more than that.
I agree, but I do think that Dig through Time is something I'm going to be seriously testing. While removing some cantrips obviously hurts us post spiral, digging that deep and keeping that many cards is SO strong, that it makes the need of a second time spiral also dwindle.
I think the card has potential.
Sure, as long as you remove at least 1 land for every 2 gas cards, you're fine. I'm sure that it's better than meditate. I just don't think you need either. But let us know how testing goes
I completely ditched meditate a while ago and I don't miss it at all. If anything, I would try to add Tolarin Winds to the SB as a one of. There have been times post spiral where I have exactly eleven mana and my only gas is cunning wish. I'm one short of wish->intuition->spiral but wish->winds might be good enough to get there. I just don't have room for such a card.
This may have already been discussed. I don't play High Tide but I would like to, in the land of unlimited money for cards. In a deck that wants to cast Time Spiral a bunch, and draw relevant cards with cantrips, and already plays merchant scrolls and such, would not a singleton Mana Severance be super nice? After a Mana Severance your Time Spiral is 7 gas cards. That should give you a much lower chance at fizzling out. As in, never fizzling out. Even a hand of cantrips will draw nothing but more gas. Just something I have wondered. You could even run it as a wishboard spell if I'm not mistaken, and just fetch it when you need it (before time Spiral) and then just go off. Sorry to subject jack.
It WOULD be nice... but it's a sorcery :-(. You can't get it with wish or scroll. If they printed an instant version of mana severance I would be totally on board.
That makes sense then. So in theory its still doable but you would have to splash red off duals and fetches and run burning wish, which would be good for getting a spiral out of the wishboard as well I guess. interested. i may proxy it up and see if it makes a difference. I just really like Mana Severance in this deck for the same reason I think it would be excellent in Burn.
As someone who is splashing red already, Burning Tide is significantly worse to play. A) it's a sorcery speed deck (yes so is timespiral but sometimes you don't need a spiral to win), B) you rely much more heavily on red making you weak to wasteland. I tried it out, but those two issues, particularly red reliance, make it much worse than regular tide.
If you were playing Personal Tutors, maybe with some sort of sorcery speed USZ (which I'm not sure exists but might), you could try severance. But personal tutor has been found severely lacking before.
We really can't afford to fall victim to cards that are too situational
Ok, so I played a small tournament last night and ended up top 4ing. I use a list similar to Feline's except I don't run counterbalances mainboard, but SB.
Having played it for a few rounds now, I must say, it just isn't working for me. In the games where it seems to matter it's too slow, and by removing things like grafdiggers cage it also slows down our combo turn.
Feline, do you have any more insight on how it's been performing for you lately? I'm getting tuned as i'm going to be playing high tide at the GP. I played the deck in 2012 when misstep came in and managed to day 2, want to improve my performance in November.
Oh, I only did maindeck Counterbalance for 3 opens, then moved it back to the sideboard, the game 1's they aren't so much needed. It's the sideboard games when people bring in a buncha disruption and side out their swords to plowshares/wasteland/etc dead stuff for live stuff.
As far as how it's been performing for me lately, since June 1st I've 13th placed Indianapolis, top 8'ed Providence, did horrible enough to drop for the first time in Legacy at Columbus, 28th Vegas, 105th Portland, 47th Baltimore, 119th Kansas City, 14th place Syracuse, 90th place Washington DC, 76th place Jersey, 44th place St Louis, top 8'ed Atlanta, and then this past weekend in Worcester I went 3-5-0 and didn't prize anything. I hope that is a large enough & recent enough amount of pool to grab from. All of these are SCG Opens. As far as the 2 invitationals Columbus & Jersey. I bombed in Columbus and didn't even day 2, and I made day 2 in Jersey but didn't prize only going 8-8.
Also Mental Misstep Ugh! I'm glad that's likely to never be unbanned.
Primary legacy deck High Tide primer
Have the counterbalances been carrying their weight for you?
I don't have half as many matches as you do with them, but when I've boarded them they have been less than perfect.
Yes in my opinion. The counterbalances almost always draw out disruption at a minimum, if they resolve it's stupid.
The worst case scenario is when they cast a delver early, get out a threat, then you cast counterbalance, it resolves, and you still later die. But usually when that happens it's because you didn't get to the combo, which can happen with or without a counterbalance in play.
Primary legacy deck High Tide primer
Hello,
I ran a list with 4 CB in the sideboard a long time ago (we were talking about it on the old thread...) and the main problem is not CB itself, it is 4 SDT. Drawing a second one is always bad and make you use mana for finding something new. On top of that, you really want to hit your land drops consitantly. SDT is less good at doing this in comparison to extra preordain. I prefer to run 1 or 2 SDT in High Tide... and no CB, which is sad because the card is really strong against combo.
It's tough, I only run 3 tops as I also hate the redundancy there.
I've talked with Feline a bit about it on Facebook and the Counterbalances really shine for her. I guess I just need to test a bit more.
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