Dat Dragon's Maze tech.Originally Posted by feline
Interesting,
Uncovered Clues vs Meditate
Is downside about Gaining extra turn if fizzle is such a bad that you replace draw 4 on instant to draw 2 from 4 ? Thought that fizzle mostly mean lose anyway so I'm not sure its good replacement.
I can see factor on Uncovered Clues can be cast turn before go of when still forging hand, but turn 3 is little late for it.
On the top I would even use Three Wishes instead of Uncovered Clues since you can safe additional cards after spiral with it.
The thing is, for an additional mana, you're picking two from an Impulse set. Even at sorcery speed, that's an impressive haul of card advantage.
3 mana sorcery speed to pick 2 out of 4 might be impressive in Standard. This is Legacy.
I much rather have cunning wish to get me exactly what I need at instant speed. Which gives something in the lines of
-2 Uncovered Clues, -1 Brain Freeze, -1 Blue Zenith
+3 Cunning Wish
+4th turnabout
So
Yes, but not the card.. 3 actual Cunning Wishes ;)
Why?
- By not playing wish you need to play maindeck kills and with just 3 turnabout, getting to a lethal zenith is a lot harder, so zenith and brain freeze are needed maindeck. 2 slots that you will never cast pre-spiral.
Uncovered Clues T3 hoping to find the missing piece so you can combo off T4 is not very impressive imho. Wish at least can get you a counter or turnabout (or maybe even intuition to grab spiral if you play one in side).
- But more important, not playing wish makes you unable to ever sideboard out a high tide. This is one thing you do a lot. Suspect extraction? Board out one high tide. This ensures you always have access to at least 2 high tides and adds the option for T3 wish for tide to win T4.
That said, I do like his take on Spiral Tide. And not playing wishes but simply play both kills maindeck does open up 2 sideboard slots + no wishboard needed so a lot more possibilities for sideboard. I will give it a try :)
Tried it and went undefeated through 7 rounds of swiss in the Belgian Legacy Cup this weekend. 103 players.
T8 I lost quarter 1-2 against a good friend playing comboelves, killing me T3 last game through a T1 grafdiggers cage.
Played Erik Beckers list
-1 treasure cruise, +2nd dig through time
-2 uncovered clues, +4th turnabout, +1 sleight of hand
dig through time was absolute nuts all day.
So yeah, playing no wish, no candelabra also works perfectly fine :)
That has always been kind of known. You CAN get by without it, but if you grind a hundred tournaments with both, which do you feel will have the best results in terms of winning?
The stability that candles provides is strong and carries through a spiral, I think you'll always have one off's where new tech wins out and we all look, and that is why this is fun, but I just don't know if it's better than candles long term.
Please no Candelabra vs Turnabout discussion. It all has been said tons of times.
@esthoril: long time no see
3 Dig Through Time? Did you have one stuck in your hand at some point?
So, what's your feeling about getting rid of the wishes? I am talking about "feelings" because it's the only thing that matter on 1 single tournament. Anyway, I remember that you were also making results with other lists...
Apart from a dozen smaller (30-100 people) tournaments, I T8'd 3 tournaments with 100+ people playing Spiral Tide. All 3 playing a 4 turnabout, no candle version. Just go with what you like most and what you think will perfom best in your local meta.
During swiss I only lost 2 games in 7 rounds. And one of those was because I fizzled at about 30 storm 80 mana after playing 11! consecutive cantrips..I don't want to know the odds of that happening.
That said, I played 2 dig through time. I goldfished a bit with 3 the evening before but that felt like 1 too many. You want to see one all the time, but never two at once. And you have merchant scroll to get one one. Merchant Scroll being the main reason I opted to play 2 digs instead of 1 dig 1 cruise. I will probably goldfish some more though with minor changes to this list (intuition, meditate, 2nd probe, 3rd dig, impulse, ... instead of sleight of hand and or probe, ... things like that).
There isn't much discard in the current meta (at least not in Belgium) so not running wishes and not being able to board out a high tide isn't a problem. The flexibility you gain from not having to run a wishboard is immense. No singleton pact of negation, no singleton this and that, no 2 killslots in side, ..
In the end my sideboard was very straightforward (but I didn't really test and hadn't played Spiral Tide in quite some time before heading to the tournament, so it wasn't the best sideboard for sure!!)
- 4 defense grid
- 4 counter (1 spell pierce, 1 spell snare, 1 swan song, 1 annul)
- 4 bounce (1 wipe away, 1 snap, 1 hurkyl's recall, 1 rebuild)
- 3 grafdiggers cage
Is spell snare a maindeckable card? It's a cheap counter for a lot of problem cards like chalice on one, spheres, thalia, hymn, and counterbalance while also being cheap defense against a lot of the format's non delver threats.
This is why I play Spell Pierce in my counter suite--4 FoW, 2 Flusterstorm, 2 Spell Pierce. Spell Pierce answers those cards on the draw and then some. It's a very effective card that I recommend--and have posted on in this thread.
Red blasts everywhere, or decks trying to go around it by playing fast (Storm strategies etc.) MY combined recored over the past 3 events is 3-7-1. Even worse, 1 of those wins was a BYE, and another was an opponent who beat me, then conceded because they wanted to go home. So my actual record is like 1-8-1. I like to have 3 events to draw conclusions from, and well, this is my past 3 events combined. Dropped from each. I don't think High Tide has been this poorly positioned since I've been playing the deck. I am actually seriously concluding putting the deck down for the while, with the format as such, I just can't get there.
Talking to another Tide player at SCGPhilly, they said they lost when their opponent played multiple red blasts, spell pierce, force of will & flusterstorm. Yikes! That's just too much stuff.
Primary legacy deck High Tide primer
Play 4 Defense grid in the board for red blast/pierce/flusterstorm and mystic remora+cmc1 counters against faster combo.
Played the same list again in a small local tournament this evening.
Erik Beckers list
-1 treasure cruise, -1 probe, -2 uncovered clues,
+2nd dig through time, +4th turnabout, +1 intuition, +1 swan song
And again it performed like a charm.
Went 3-1
winning against Infect, Elves and ThopterFoundry-CounterBalance-Control
lost a very close 1-2 against Stoneblade.
Game 3 vs stoneblade
I go T4 EOT turnabout, he forces, T5 EOT turnabout, he counters again
I untap planning to win this turn. My hand is 6th land, merchant scroll, time spiral, pact of negation.
So after countering twice already in the previous turns, my opponent would need 2 more counters, and he only has 1 mana untapped and 3 cards in hand.. Merchant scroll into high tide, time spiral with pact backup should do the trick.. only my 6th land is a fetchland and his last 3 cards are stifle (which I hadn't seen in game 1-2), force, blue.. So rather unfortunate to lose this one.
Apart from that the deck is rock solid. Played the list in 2 tournaments now, for a combined record of 9-2-1.
:edit: Edited in decklist for future reference.
Not to sure about the intuition though. DTT is just better in most cases because of the mana it costs less to cast and extra card you get. So I will try something else in that slot.
Lands (18)
9 Island
2 Flooded Strand
3 Misty Rainforest
2 Polluted Delta
2 Scalding Tarn
Spells (42)
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Preordain
4 Merchant Scroll
2 Dig Through Time
1 Intuition
1 Swan Song
1 Spell Pierce
1 Flusterstorm
4 Force of Will
1 Pact of Negation
4 High Tide
4 Turnabout
4 Time Spiral
1 Blue Sun's Zenith
1 Brain Freeze
1 Wipe Away
Last edited by esthoril; 02-01-2015 at 09:33 AM.
Had fun at scg indy today. Dnt was representing its ugly mug and I went 3-2-2 drop. After talking with feline a bunch i'm at a weird stance on how I want my 75 to look. I could go into detailed explanation on a ton of different card choices I can see the deck headed in but all those different choices need further testing before I will mention them.
What was your list? If you haven't tried the wish-less list, I really recommend to at least give the list above a try in testing/goldfishing :). It feels very powerful and Dig Through Time is broken beyond belief. It has won my numerous games that no other card could.
Also I have been thinking about playing annul in the sideboard. It counters a ton of cards we don't want to see, including D&T cards like canonist and spirit of the labyrinth, on top of the (turn 1) vial.
I Haven't changed it in a while but the list I ran goes as followed.
18 land (6 fetch 12 island)
4 brainstorm
3 mystic remora
4 ponder
4 merchant scroll
3 cunning wish
1 blue sun's zenith
1 meditate
4 force
3 flusterstorm
1 wipe away
4 high tide
3 turnabout
3 candelabra
4 time spiral
sb
2 pact of negations
2 defence grid
1 meditate
1 wipe away
1 echoing truth
1 hurkyl's recall
3 surgical extraction
1 intuition
1 brain freeze
1 blue sun's zenith
1 flusterstorm
I Haven't tried any non wish lists. I also feel that it's wrong to do so. Cunning wish has bailed me out of so many different situations that imo the card is an auto include in the deck. For instance this past weekend I was playing dnt. My opponent had ethersworn canonistx2, mom and a spellskite out. I at eot wished for my recall, took my turn and then passed. he knocked away at my life total some then at his eot I bounced everything and went off during my turn. Another instance from the weekend has me against junk and I sided out 1 turn about and had I not had the wishes I couldn't have grabbed it from the side to continue on with my combo. Those are just two instances. I can remember wishing for meditates to seal the deal or wishing for an intuition to get time spiral. The reason I like wish the toolbox sideboard makes situations that would other wise seems impossible possible.
Now about dtt and the whole candle vs no candle argument. Dig is an interesting idea I will give it that. What makes the card viable is it's searching capability. I can count 2 time's where if it would have came up I could have gotten there. However let's turn this into a bad situation for us. Let's say you are out of gas due to a counter war. You drawl dtt awesome but now you have either two options. 1 go the safe rout and cast it on there eot or 2 delve a bunch and hope whatever cards you pitched that are worth value don't come to bite your ass. In the current legacy world I'm seeing option 1 is not gonna happen. When you have fast decks that also have counters you are on the clock punched in and can't durdle for long. So that leaves option 2 which is the good old hail marry high tide time spiral one two punch then hope on the drawl 7 not to get hurt by the choices you just made. I am not saying I don't think the card isn't interesting and I do plan on trying somethings out so only time will tell.
My main goal right now is to create something better than the current high tide lists people are seeing. One idea of mine was to run a similar list mentioned above but with the additions of explorations and idea's unbound. The idea of the deck was to let you hit more land drops early on and enable you to not worry about daze or pierce. This also would help against thalia and while she isn't a must get rid of it's like having a open wound while working with salt.
As for your deck, there are several things I don't like about it (and I may or may not be right about them)
Maindeck remora. The best thing about combodecks is having an awesome game 1 against the field because your deck is pure efficiency and they have dead cards. After side, they have less dead cards, and you lose some of your efficiency because you have to board things in. By playing maindeck remora, you already play a sub-optimal engine game 1. Not something combo wants to do. Much better off to change them to Preordains. You really don't want cards game 1 that are dead 50% of matchups and dead 100% of matchups postspiral.
Maindeck bounce when you have Cunning Wish. There are hardly ever things we want to bounce game 1 and if so, you still have acces to it through wish. This is another maindeck slot that can get better use.
No 4 turnabout. If you don't play it in the sideboard, you should be playing the 4th one main before adding more candelabra's. Candle does not pitch to force, candle does not tap your blue opponents lands EOT (and even costs you more mana to untap 3+ land). It makes games vs blue decks much much easier. Also tapping all of D&T's creatures so you don't care about Mother when you want to snap/bounce a hatebear. Being able to bounce your candle(s) for even more mana is win more in games that are already won. Having candle when you really want to tap your opponents lands EOT actually makes you lose games because they have too much counters available. :edit: Another thing, T5 facing lethal, 5 lands, turnabout, spiral and you may very well win. 5 lands, candle, spiral and you are simply dead.
Meditate Outdated. DTT does a much better job, does it cheaper and is also very useful prespiral. T4 scroll for DTT, play it EOT, untap, win.
Eric Becker's Wish/Candle-less list hasn't been played a lot, yet it already made some T8s in larger tournaments. Something I haven't seen more traditional lists (like I too used to play) do in a long time. So even if it feels wrong to do so, put aside your feelings and try it out, so you have actual proof for yourself whether it is good or not, rather than some gut feeling. I know I did and it won me a tropical + 4 fetchland right away losing only a single game during 7 rounds of swiss.
It may not be the perfect list yet for the current meta, but it sure does feel very powerful and puts up results.
Last edited by esthoril; 02-02-2015 at 01:31 PM.
I have to imagine this is going to start to trend downward with the Treasure Cruise banning - there are enough non-blue decks that are competitive, and you don't have the near-guaranteed payoff spell every other match to justify the MD inclusion. Miracles was really the only non-red base deck that could afford to spend a slot or 2 on the card before.
Did you see any indication that the format might be a bit more friendly to Spiraling in Indy?
Check out my Legacy UBTezz Primer. Chalice of the Void: Keeping Magic Fair.
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Playing since '96. Brief forced break '02-04. Former/Idle Judge since '05. Told Smmenen to play faster at Vintage Worlds.
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Most of the 'Ban brainstorm!' arguments are based on the logic that 'more different cards should get played in Legacy', as though the success or health of the format can be measured by the portion of cards that are available and see play. This is an idiotic metric.
Oh geesh yes. Already since the banning, doing the IQ in DC with Solidarity, and doing Indy with Spiral Tide, I already feel much better about these 2 performances alone. I didn't day 2 Indy but I still had a winning record. On top of that, my last 2 matches / losses, were round 8 against miracles, & round 9 against miracles, which is a tough match up.
My record COMBINED from SCG Seattle's IQ, the Columbus IQ & the Philly 2 day Open (Treasure Cruise Era), was 3-7-1 dropping from all 3 events. On top of that, 1 of my wins was a bye (The Open in Philly) and a second win was someone round 4 in Philly conceding after they won because they wanted to go home instead.
It might sound extreme, but the shift has been that real for me, it went from "awesome High Tide" to "Treasure Cruise meta, every deck is faster or has added Red Blasts to their counter spell package" to "Back to awesome High Tide potential."
Primary legacy deck High Tide primer
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