[Deck] Solidarity (Reset High Tide)

[Carlos El Salvador]

Solidarity is one of the most complex combo decks that are around, where it's premise is simple, Draw cards and deck your oppoent on his turn. As many of us know, David G (Deep6er) Created this deck about nine months ago leading up to TBA. Here was his original list:

20 Island
4 Meditate
4 Brain Freeze
4 High Tide
1 Chain of Vapor
4 Words of Wisdom
4 Turnabout
4 Brainstorm
4 Accumulated Knowledge
4 Impulse
3 Flash of Insight
4 Reset

At first many people did not see how the deck did so well. I was one of the first, but because of my love for cheap, affordable combo decks, I was interested. The deck evolved fast and furiously. There are a few major builds nowadays; I will start with my personal build with sideboard and card selections.

Solidarity by Carlos El Salvador
Land: 19
13 Island
4 Polluted Delta
2 Thawing Glacier

1 CC:
2 Mystical Tutor
4 Brainstorm
4 High Tide

2 CC:
1 Words of Wisdom
3 Brain Freeze
3 Reset
4 Impulse
4 Accumulate Knowledge

3 CC:
3 Meditate
3 Cunning Wish

4 CC:
4 Turnabout

5 CC:
4 Force of Will

X CC:
1 Stroke of Genius
1 Flash of Insight

SB:
1 CC:
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Hydroblast

2 CC:
1 Reset
1 Words of Wisdom
1 Tolarian Winds
1 Brain Freeze
1 Hurkul's Recall

3 CC:
1 Meditate
1 Rushing River
1 Hibernation

5 CC:
1 Evacuation
1 Misdirection

X CC:
1 Flash of Insight
1 Stroke of Genius

Card by Card:
The Manabase: It's the most widely accepted build of the manabase. 19 to 20 lands and 6 to 7 fetchlands (Including Glaciers in this catagory).

2 Mystical Tutor, 1 in board: This is one of the more debateable card choices in the deck. I think running two has been quite good to me. The fact that this one card gets any card from the maindeck you need is a huge plus to it, but it is also very much card disadvantage. I can understand why people would not run it, but I think it is wonderful in my version.

4 Brainstorm: A staple in most decks, works wonders with fetchland and whatnot, blah blah blah. You know everything about this card.

4 High Tide: This card produces a lot of mana with untap effects. Nice. Auto Four-of.

1 Words of Wisdom: It's your kill condition when lethal damage is on the stack. It's quite important to realize that is basiclly the only use for this card. I occacionally cycle it off early to try and get a couple decent cards in my hand.

3 Brain Freeze, 1 in Board: This is what makes Words of Wisdom deadly. Usually a storm for 8 with two of these bad mamerjamers will win you the game. It also allws the deck to win on it's oppoents' turn.

3 Reset, 1 Sideboard: Get good instant to win the game with. Great for utility. Occationally you need ten untap effects over the game, as opposed to eight.

4 Impulse: Probibly the second most important draw/search card in the deck, behind Meditate, it's amazingly awsome at digging for cards. Probibly the last card I'd cut before it would be Combo peices

4 Accumulate Knowledge: I used to use Thirst for Knowledge, but this is better mid combo.

3 Meditate, 1 Board: You need this card to draw more cards, probibly the very most important draw card in the deck. That is the reason you have a wishable one. Paying six mana to draw four cards when you need them to continue the combo is very savvy.

3 Cunning Wish: It's like a non-card disadvantage version of Mystical Tutor. Sure, it costs two more mana, but generally it's better, and you can wish for just about anything.

4 Turnabout: This is your other half of your untap effects. It is quite effecient at that. Occationally used as a combat trick as well.

4 Force of Will: Protection is good.

Stroke of Genius, Flash of Insight, and from board: Massive card advantage and manipulation. Stroke also occationally acts as a kill verses decks that run a few Gaea's Blessings.

Chain of Vapor, Rushing River, Hurkul's Recall, Evacuation, Hibernation: These cards are wish targets to deal with irritating permanets. Chain for a singuler one, River for a pair of them, and Evac for all the creatures, Hibernation for annoying green things, and Recall artifacts.

Hydroblast: Counter VS red, also kills things dead that are red. Sometimes sided in.

Tolarian Winds: When you are holding almost all/all lands in a seven or eight card hand. This situation happens, not a lot, but engouth to warrent this card in the side.

Misdirection: When you need a fifth Force of Will at your fingertips. also decent to side in VS red.


And here is a U/w List for discussion, the basic change is for more of a lock win, it runs Orim's Chant.

U/w Solidarity, By Diablos

4 Brain Freeze
4 Reset
4 Turnabout
4 High Tide

4 Brainstorm
4 Impulse
3 Peer Through Depths
3 Meditate
2 Cunning Wish
2 Words of Wisdom
2 Mystical Tutor
1 Flash of Insight

4 Force of Will

11 Island
4 Flooded Strand
2 Polluted Delta
2 Tundra

Sideboard:
1 Stroke of Genius
1 Evacuation
2 Chain of Vapor
1 Hurkle's Recall
1 Meditate
1 Hibernation
2 Null Rod
3 Orim's Chant
3 Isochron Scepter


Discuss!

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

One of the fundamental concepts behind Solidarity is the way the deck spends the first three (occasionally two) turns sculpting it's hand, instead of doing anything to affect the board. To that end, one of the biggest weaknesses of the deck that we've been discussing since day one is the lack of a high-quality redundancy to Brainstorm, since missing a turn of hand-shaping is very bad generally for your ability to go off. Mystical Tutor is terrible for this both for it's inability to actuall net card parity and increase card quality, and for the fact that it can't help you dig for land. The best option we've been able to find is Opt, which nets card parity and provides a slight amount of dig. However, I still see a lack of this card outside of Virginia. There are other options worth discussing, of course- Whispers of the Muse will probably not make the cut since you'll so very rarely have any use for the Buyback, but Peek is a credible option against Control. Dave is a big fan of Thirst For Knowledge as a setup card in this deck, which I'm not a huge fan of, but I recently had the idea of, as long as one's running TfK, trying Obsessive Search, although I've not yet had a chance to test it out.

Another topic for discussion: With Stroke unbanned and available as a Wish target, is there any reason to maindeck Words of Wisdom, which only serves to make the control matchup harder?

[Peter_Rotten]

Solidarity, with the exception of ATS, is possibly the most discussed deck on this board. The original thread - found here - is 20 pages long. Much has been discussed and much has been decided. With that in mind, much will be deleted from this thread. All redundant posts will be deleted and the member will be directed towards the old thread. I know that 20 pages of Solidarity is daunting, but do your best. When it comes to Solidarity, the only thing more annoying than reading through 20 pages of a thread is reading the fifth incarnation of a Peer Through the Depths vs. Impulse debate.

[Carlos El Salvador]

One of the fundamental concepts behind Solidarity is the way the deck spends the first three (occasionally two) turns sculpting it's hand, instead of doing anything to affect the board. To that end, one of the biggest weaknesses of the deck that we've been discussing since day one is the lack of a high-quality redundancy to Brainstorm, since missing a turn of hand-shaping is very bad generally for your ability to go off. Mystical Tutor is terrible for this both for it's inability to actuall net card parity and increase card quality, and for the fact that it can't help you dig for land. The best option we've been able to find is Opt, which nets card parity and provides a slight amount of dig. However, I still see a lack of this card outside of Virginia. There are other options worth discussing, of course- Whispers of the Muse will probably not make the cut since you'll so very rarely have any use for the Buyback, but Peek is a credible option against Control. Dave is a big fan of Thirst For Knowledge as a setup card in this deck, which I'm not a huge fan of, but I recently had the idea of, as long as one's running TfK, trying Obsessive Search, although I've not yet had a chance to test it out.

Another topic for discussion: With Stroke unbanned and available as a Wish target, is there any reason to maindeck Words of Wisdom, which only serves to make the control matchup harder?

You make a lot of good points in your post. As I alluded to above, the Mystical Tutor is more of a personal prefrence. I tried Thirst for Knowledge for comboing out/hand sculpting, and I was not entirely impressed. I was not playing them alongside Accumulate Knowledge, so I do not know if that would affect the deck much. Opt is interesting becuase it does refill itself, but the fact is that the card dosn't dig deep engouth in my mind. Peer isn't my cup of tea because it's another 2 CC spell in a deck that is already too full of them.

However, as long as I am running Mystical tutor, I see no reason to not run a maindeck Words of Wisdom. I run 1 of each in the main because they are both useful in their own ways. Same reason why I run one of in the sideboards.

[tehmaty]

I've been testing this deck with Read the Runes (XU: Draw X Cards, the sac/discard X cards) and I've been loving it... it allows you to burn through your deck, gives a great outlet for discarding lands (or saccing them, because i abuse thawing glaciers as well in my deck) and even if you're playing it with a 3 card hand, it allows you to keep the key pieces you need to win... I've played it with 0 cards in hand, and still won (albeit barely)...

plus, there's also the random budget factor (i'm too lazy to buy strokes) :P

[Ewokslayer]

Read the Runes is pretty much inferior to Stroke of Genius on every level. Granted you get to draw an additional two cards for the same mana investment but you don't get to keep all of them. Saccing land is horrible in this deck and should never be done.
Plus you can't kill an opponent with a Read the Runes only yourself.

Spring for the Strokes they aren't too expensive, about 6 bucks, cheaper on Ebay.

[l_neiman]

I ran Diablos' version at a Legacy tournament in NYC a few weeks ago (minus the Isochron Scepters in the SB, since I wasn't expecting that much control; I had BEBs instead, for the Goblins/Sligh matchup), and I lost to peter_rotten and his BurningTog in Quarterfinals).

Something I noted in the Swiss rounds was that I was having a really hard time beating U/G Madness deck. Sure, I have 4 Force of Wills to help my first High Tide or Reset resolve, but the Madness player, besides hitting me anywhere from 4-7 damage per turn I delayed trying to go off, had access to 4 Force of Will as well as 4 Circular Logic. I boarded in 3 Orim's Chant, which proved to be very good, but in order to make room I had to cut 3 cards that probably would've helped me sculpt a better hand.

I ended up winning the match 2-1, but during Game 3 I started going off and fizzled, which had never happened to me with the deck up to then. I resolved High Tide, Reset, a Meditate and an Impulse, I think, and then just ran out of gas and had to let him go into his attack phase. Then I noticed that he had an Aquamoeba that was separated from his deck and his graveyard, that he had pitched to FoW in Game 2 and forgot to shuffle back in, so he conceded.

Anyway, the point of that was: I would've lost had he not forgotten to put the Aquamoeba back in. How can we improve the matchup vs. aggro-control decks like U/G Madness? The metagame in NYC isn't as developed as in other places, and there were very few people playing actual Legacy decks at the tournament (there was peter_rotten with BurningTog, Elias Vaisberg playing Landstill and myself with Solidarity, but everyone else was running less typical Legacy decks, and were mostly Extended ones). I believe this will be the case at most every Legacy tournament held at Neutral Ground, so I want to be better prepared for that matchup.

Also, going back to my Quarterfinal loss to peter_rotten: what's the best strategy to follow vs. a deck that can completely out-counter you and who is actually benefitted by your High Tides, like Burning Tog? I beat Landstill pretty easily in the Swiss, but my opponent was only running about 8 counterspells, so it wasn't too tough, but the BurningTog deck was Duressing me, FoW'ing me, Circular Logicking me, etc., and I was completely overwhelmed. Haunting Echoes prompted a quick concession, :( .

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

On Aggro-Control: This is generally the deck's weak matchup in terms of archetypes (other than Disruption-heavy strategies like discard and land destruction). Against Control the High Tide doesn't need to resolve, since you can wait until you have seven or eight Islands in play before having to go off. Against Aggro the High Tide lets you go off usually before they can kill you. But the ability to counter your High Tide and kill you before turn 7-8 spells doom for you most times. The best thing I can recommend is 4x Disrupt in the sideboard; that and getting lucky. Digging for multiple High Tides seems to be the next best answer.

On Tog: In this case I would try to build up a hand of 1x High Tide, 2x Untap effects, 2-3x Draw spells, and 1-2x Brain Freeze before attempting to go off. Then, even if they stop you from going off completely, you can still try to mill them for their library. Obviously the danger in this is if they have a Psychatog out, however.


In both these cases I might consider siding out Meditates for other cards, possibly Disrupt, as they can use your Meditates to kill you if they can counter the other parts of the combo.

[l_neiman]

Thanks for the tips. I'll definitely keep them in mind. During the tournament I had no problem vs. Aggro decks, and even The Rock, that I thrashed, but that Madness deck was just such a headache, :p!

[tehmaty]

Is it worth running Keep Watch (for reference - 2U: Draw a card for each attacking creature) in the SB? I know you're already running 1 Meditate there, but it seems to me that against most aggro decks (R/G survival, Elves, etc.), you're going to be drawing than 4 cards for virtually the same cost...

Personally, I don't really see a reason to go off before combat damage against aggo anyway (barring them playing something like Dosan), so it seems to fit the deck's strategy well enough, and could be insanely powerful in certain matchups (drawing 5-7 cards)...

[Slay]

Actually, it's generally a bad idea to go off with combat damage on the stack. You have a Hibernation/Evacuation in the sideboard, usually you can cast that(storm +2!) without too many problems. In addition, sometimes you just crap out and can cast a brainfreeze for lethal, but no Words/Stroke for the game winner. In general, a good rule of thumb I ave figured is to assume they have 6 damage worth of burn in their hand, and try to go off around it. If you let yourself go so deep into the red zone, you may find yourself getting bolted in response to you trying to go off way too often. It's happened to me, at least.
-Slay

[Claw_Outcast]

One big question: Why nobody even think about INTUITION??? It's synergy with AK is really amazing.

[CavernNinja]

Intuition has synergy with only one card in the deck, AK. AK is not in a large number of builds because it does not draw enough cards for the mana cost. There is absolutely no way to fit Intuition into the deck, it costs too much and is too slow.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

It also thins spells instead of lands, so you're more likely to draw Islands after resolving an Intuition. Not to mention that if you have to cast both in the same turn, while comboing, etc., you might as well just maindeck Opportunity and draw the extra card.

[Deep6er]

Hey guys, just realized that I haven't informed anyone on how to play the mirror. So here goes. In the Mono blue mirror the best way to win is to find more freezes and more lands. That's for instant speed solidarity by the way, it's kind of different for sorcery speed solidarity. For sorcery speed solidarity go off as fast as possible. Anyway, for mono blue instant speed solidarity, don't worry about throwing out draw spells from turns 1 to 3. Always keep freezes off of your draw spells and try not to miss land drops. Forces are decent but in all likelihood you should try to force the turnabout. Reset here is total trash and should be discarded and flash of insight is ridiculously amazing. If your using the wish board and you have an early cunning wish, wish for stifle or turnabout or foil. Second game side out the meditates for those cards. I know it sounds weird but that's actually the best plan. The mirror seriously does come down to intelligently playing around brain freezes, forces, and time. If you feel the need to go off, do it during your second main phase, turnabouting them. This should start some kind of response and try your best to fight through it. If they float mana, proceed into end step. Remember, High tide is also kind of bad. Wait as long as possible too. For the U/W solidarity mirror. Remember to abeyance/chant them and then go off. Obviously. However, this is by far the most irritating matchup I've ever seen. Chants flying all over the place in addition to forces. The U/W vs. Mono U matchup is aggravating as well. Here though the U/W player has a huge advantage in their own chant/abeyance and it could very well be gg for the mono blue player. I still haven't tested them to the extent that they should be tested however this is just for starters.

[Rhapsody in Pink]

It's a funny feeling how I instantly assume that playing Chant will win me the match. Either version of the deck is perfectly capable of winning in response (especially in response to you declaring a draw spell). I suppose it's a bit like Landstill players assuming one Stifle stops Solidarity.

Anyway, I'm just saying that Chant does not equal win in the mirror.

Also, High Tide is a pain. In fact, it might be best to wait for an opponent to High Tide, then go off. Testing ho!



Edited By braves54321 on 1112758634

[Deep6er]

Hey guys, I'd put a little report here about how I did on the 16th but I feel it's useless and nobody would really want to read it. Suffice to say that I went 5-2 and placed ninth. Congratulations both to ewokslayer and venisonmixup as the two solidarity (NoVA) players. I will admit that I was a little irritated with ninth place but I was fine with venisonmixup making it too. On a side note that was the first time venisonmixup played the newer version of solidarity. He was playing the mono blue version and I was playing U/W. I do want to emphasize that I think the U/W version has a lot of strengths and there were only two situations where I wished I was playing the mono blue. Overall I really enjoyed and found that the strengths of U/W were enough to the point that it is the likely solidarity deck that I will continue playing. On to the real point.

With two solidarity decks in the top 8 and it's reasonably good showing at weekly tournaments that the deck is at least decent. So, I think at this point we might leave the optimal deck discussion behind and move on towards how the best method of beating the hate for us is. The obvious hate cards like REB, Pyrostatic Pillar, Boil, Pyroblast, Orim's Chant, and Chalice of the Void. The real issue here is the fact that I can't seem to see whether having an actual SB strategy is better than keeping the fully versatile wish board. Ewokslayer likes the 4x Stifle and the 4x BEB. However, Venisonmixup went with the fully versatile wish board. (I went with the 4x Abeyance and 2x Tundra in the board with one maindecked Tundra for access to first game Abeyance.) Ewokslayer swears by the ridiculous power of the 4x BEB and the 4x Stifle. Venisonmixup actually used some of the less often wished for targets and said that he liked them a lot. My SB was 4x Abeyance, 2x Tundra, 1x Meditate, 1x Turnabout, 1x Stroke of Genius, 1x Words of Wisdom, 1x Tempest of Light, 1x Chain of Vapor, 1x Echoing Truth, 1x Rebuild, 1x Evacuation. Anyway, I think discussion now should be geared towards SB strategies and other possible wish targets. I'm open to suggestions although I'd prefer if you could give reasonings and possibilities as opposed to hearsay and rumor. Thanks much! :)

[venison mixup]

@Deep6er
I only wished for a few cards and found myself wondering why is this here? I never wished for counterspell, foil ,or tolarian winds.amoung a few others. The deck needs better side board option that shore up its problems against hate cards as you said. The 4 beb and 4 stifle plan seems strong,as it seems beb is a good answer for all majority of the hate cards.
@Ewokslayer
What exactly did you cut in order to make room for 4 stifle and 4 beb?
Also when you side in the bebs you side out what? I am guessing fow.

[Ewokslayer]

My sideboard for the tournament was
4 Beb
4 Stifle
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Echoing Truth
1 Rebuild
1 Meditate
1 Stroke of Genius
1 Brain Freeze
1 Words of Wisdom

It should have been either 3 Beb's or 3 Stifles in order to make room for Evacuation but I didn't think about my Angel Stompy matchup before hand. (though I still can get around True Believer - Mother of Runes its just much more a pain in the butt)

As for what I sided out for Beb's and Stifles, it depended on the matchup and the speed of the other deck. Usually it was some combination of Opts and Thirst for Knowledge. On Saturaday it was more often Opts since I was playing against Survival decks and could afford the decrease in usefully Turn 1-2 search. I never sided out the Forces because I usually wanted to assure myself of stopping the hate cards, not just more efficiently deal with them.

In the Solidarity Mirror against Deep6er it was 4 resets for 4 stifles. However, if I had to have played you I think I would have sided out the Thirst for Knowledges.

[l_neiman]

Since the maindeck for EwokSlayer's version of Solidarity is not posted on the top-8s thread, would it be possible for you to post it here for discussion?