[Primer/Deck] High Tide

[feline]

Got to meet fellow High Tider Casey Hanford, heard about a belcher playing killing griselbrands & emrakul's with charbelcher, Blue Sun Zenith'd 2 different opponents for ridiculous amounts, one like 160 something the other closer to 200 just for fun, met & talked to a bunch of people all day when I walked into the room not knowing any of the players or staff, & got to chat with Joey Pasco throughout the day as well as the head judge throughout and after the event at a white castle ha ha, not to mention some broken sleeves and a couple losses, ended 6/2/1 with a 30th out of 280, this was probably the most fun Open I've done yet, it was awesome coming in there not knowing anyone and playing high tide like that round after round and getting people to see how much fun the deck can be. Long story short, SCG St Louis was a blast, next stop, Minneapolis in August ^.^

Also as per the usual, I will write a tournament report this week with all the good stuff about, it all!

[haymaker18]

Got to meet fellow High Tider Casey Hanford, heard about a belcher playing killing griselbrands & emrakul's with charbelcher, Blue Sun Zenith'd 2 different opponents for ridiculous amounts, one like 160 something the other closer to 200 just for fun, met & talked to a bunch of people all day when I walked into the room not knowing any of the players or staff, & got to chat with Joey Pasco throughout the day as well as the head judge throughout and after the event at a white castle ha ha, not to mention some broken sleeves and a couple losses, ended 6/2/1 with a 30th out of 280, this was probably the most fun Open I've done yet, it was awesome coming in there not knowing anyone and playing high tide like that round after round and getting people to see how much fun the deck can be. Long story short, SCG St Louis was a blast, next stop, Minneapolis in August ^.^

Also as per the usual, I will write a tournament report this week with all the good stuff about, it all!

It was fun to meet you and play against you on Sunday...definitely the most enjoyable opponent of the day. If memory serves, it was round 4? Whoever said combo vs combo isn't interactive definitely wasn't watching our match! -Dan

[feline]

Thank you, I am pretty much at the point of considering any Open to attend as long as it's on this half of the country, which include stuff across the plains from Minnesota all the way to Texas. Also welcome to the forums. ^.^

-edit- I'll keep informed, but I might be writing Legacy articles for a website at this point.

[Isaac]

Feline can you tell me if the main deck snap and wipe away have been useful post board in your recent tournament plays.

[GoldenCid]

Sorry...i want to ask if this thread is still for candleless list...or if there's another as happens with ledless dredge.

THX!

GC

[TheChuggernaut]

It was nice meeting you at SCGSTL! I Just wish i could have represented us better on the legacy side. So, I'm considering my options to take to one of the SCG Invitationals. Part of me wants to play a deck that acts similarly to what I'm playing in standard. However, I here that the number of fair decks in the event give combo a tangible edge as a meta selection. I'm thinking it's probably just best to tighten down my high tide play and get practice switching mental gears between matches. I suppose I could force combo in standard but I don't think it's viable. What are your thoughts?

[feline]

Standard is my bane right now for invitationals, I have 1 I can use right now but I'm likely going to wait till rotation and just use it in Vegas in December, since it's closer than Indy/Edison New Jersey.

As far as the format goes, the other combo decks are the reason I push 3 main Flusterstorms, I hope the format doesn't catch on & start doing that too, every once in a while I run into a Show and Tell or an Ad Nauseam Storm deck that brings in a couple games 2/3, but it's definitely not common as most don't. Also I'm aware that Spell Pierce is better for Show and Tell as it can stop an opposing planeswalker like Liliana of the Veil, & Flusterstorm can't, but either way.

As far as High Tide goes, it's still very viable, I think even more so than it was last year at this time, because then it was RUG/UW Stoneblade, now it's Jund, Shardless BUG, & Esperdeathblade at this point. That means there is less blue than before and they are relying on discard, and that makes brainstorm even stronger where as against counters, Brainstorm doesn't nullify a counter. On top of that there's the fact that Discard is useless once Time Spiral's start resolving. Some decks even have their Force of Will's in their sideboard now, a Deathblade round 2 admitted that to me after our match was over in St Louis. As far as Shardless goes, they just basically run Thoughtseize / Hymn to Tourach & Force of Will as their disruption from the 1st game, & depending on what they bring in game 2, it's usually more discard because they don't want to flip a Counterspell/Spell pierce, etc, off of a Shardless Agent. As well on top of the increased opposing discard coming from the other side of the table in the format, Flusterstorm shines there to against things like early Thoughtseize & Hymn to Tourach. Sometimes I'll even save a Brainstorm just to increase the storm count, & if they wait too long to use their discard because they're worried about me countering it knowing I have a Flusterstorm, I'll just eventually go off anyway.

I suppose in a nutshell, as long as I feel I can have enough disruption for opposing/faster combo decks, while being resilient enough against the opposing disruption, I'll continue to push the deck on top of the fact that I just love playing it like crazy! In either case, congrats on the Standard trophy! As far as the invitational goes, I'm already preparing myself for some sort of U/W or U/W/x control type deck for post rotation after Innistrad rotates out, especially with the rumors of it being creature based, based on the legendary changes, Mutavault coming into m14, another round of Slivers in with m14 as well, & them saying it's "Roman themed".

As for what I'd play right now in Type II/Standard, I'd like to play some sort of U/W/x control type deck now but it doesn't seem to be doing good enough compared to the other decks, and I don't want to invest into a lower tier deck just to play it at 1 or 2 Opens before rotation, so for now I'm just focusing on Legacy.

As far as combo in standard goes, I tried the Human Reanimator back in December in L.A., & again here in Seattle in April but I went 6-3-1 & then 5-5, though admittedly I don't know standard the way I know Legacy, & my misplays were definitely higher in the Standard portion because of that. I almost feel so out of touch with Standard that it's hard for me to even feel comfortable suggesting / pondering what to do in it. I suppose that just means I take the fastest aggro deck and hope it plays itself ha ha.

[Mackan]

Played high tide this weekened and loved it... I realized I miss playing the deck a lot. Even though I think Esperblade is superior if you want to win a tournament I've gotten really tired of Lingering souls.

I want to brew and I would like to hear your thoughts on a pretty overlooked sideboard card...Ancestral Vision.

The fair decks with black (Jund, shardless bug, esper, deathblade) are all very slow but packing a lot of hate, most of which is discard. Ancestral vision suspended will act like brainstorm 5-8 hiding business, without having to put anything back :-) It is slow, does nothing post-combo (other than pitching to fow) and is more or less required to be in our starting 7. But. It might work.

I love mystic remora versus combo, but versus the midrange-decks as of late we need something else.

thoughts?

[TheChuggernaut]

How do you feel about Sapphire Charm in the toolbox? It does the same job as creature bounce but for 1 mana with a few extra perks: it kills batterskull if we're trying to buy time; phased out hatebears can't be recast or vialed in; only costing one gets it around snare and makes soft counters that much worse. It loses some utility but it also cantrips if all else fails.

[flrn]

Sapphire Charm is too narrow. It doesn't draw the card immediatly. Therefor it doesn't help you midcombo. Other bouncespells also don't help you midcombo, but at least they work on more things than opposing creatures. There is a reason, why people always use the same spells in their sideboards (Chain of Vapor, Echoing Truth, Snap, Wipe Away, Hurkyl's Recall, Rebuild). They are simply the best ones for their manacosts at what they do.

[GoldenCid]

Made a 3rd with my candleless list. Im very glad because it has been a very long time since i ran tide for last time. I'd apreciate advises to imporve my game.

4 Bstorm
4 ponder
4 preordain
4 tide
4 spiral
4 fow
2
flusterstorm
1 pact of negation
1 intuition
1 meditate
4 merchant scroll
3 turnabout
2 cloud of fae
3 wish
1 zenith

18 lands (6 fetchs and 12 islands)

Side:

1 BF
1 Turnabout
1rebuilds
2 pierce
2 surgical
1 hibernation
1 snap
1 meditate
1 echoing truth
2 wipe away
1 zenith
1 pact of negation

i sided in pierce in every match in exchange of 1 tide and 1 intuition.

Faced: aggro loam and two different versions of esper blade.

What do you think about testing retraced image instead of cloud of fae??

THx!!

GC.

[Isaac]

I would like to here some thoughts on running misdirection as either a one of or a sideboard slot option. This would be are force number 5 and could also cripple an opposing jund or bug player. With the current sideboard I'm running I play 2x spell pierce and 2x remora. The remora is absurd against most decks and I will continue playing it however the spell pierce has been iffy at times and is worth considering cutting down or all together.

[feline]

At one time I did have a Misdirection in the sideboard, but I've since moved it out as between Force of Will, Flusterstorm, & Pact of Negation, it's enough lines of play from cheap/free to cast counterspells. When it was in there, very rarely if at all that I can currently recall, did I ever Wish for a Misdirection, almost always it's a Pact, or in some cases the 1 Flusterstorm in the sideboard.

But that's just me, if one is bigger on running more 1 of's, it is "Free" to cast like Force of Will, so it's "kinda" like a Wishable Force of Will when you have 4 Force's maindeck, that's the biggest argument that I could make promoting it, since technically Flusterstorm costs 1, & Pact of Negation has that next upkeep cost so it's really not used before the combo turn.

After all that, I could also just say "try it out for yourself & toy with the idea for a while" Put it in and do some games, see if you find yourself using it more or less than you expect, etc. Though you probably don't need to be told that. ^^

-edit-

Something I decided to look over recently, all 7 Open events, the archetypes I went against, & my win/loss record over those archetypes live. Again, this does not include local game store events / 1,000's of playtesting games, this is just Live at the Open Series:

Matches: No losses
Deathblade 2 wins
Humans 1 win
B/W Stax 1 win
Affinity 1 win
Death & Taxes 1 win
TES 1 win
UB Tezzeret 1 win
Merfolk 1 win
Junk/The Rock 1 win
American Delver 1 win
Nic Fit 1 win
Jund 3 wins
Walking Dead/Jund hybrid 1 win
UR Delver 1 win
Reanimator 1 win
BUG Control 2 wins 1 draw

Mix results, wins & losses
Goblins 4 wins 1 loss
Esperblade 3 wins 1 loss
Maverick 2 win 1 loss
RUG 3 wins 3 losses
ANT 2 wins 2 loss 1 intentional draw
UW Miracle top control 1 win 1 loss
Team America/BUG aggro 1 win 1 loss
Omniscience 1 win 1 loss
Sneak & Show 1 win 1 loss
Shardless BUG 1 win 1 loss
Elves 1 win 2 losses

No wins
Bant 1 loss
NO BUG 1 loss

Also to note:
Games lost due to fizzling: 4, +1 fizzle where I still won the game.
Games lost completely to my own play mistakes where I otherwise would have very likely won: 3, +1 where it didn't matter but I still made a major mistake, & +2 where I still won & just "got lucky".

[Isaac]

Thanks feline. I got some other things on my plate at the moment but I want to get this all figured out before gencon and rock indy. I think the deck is really strong but I feel theirs one or two things missing from it. I need to crunch some numbers test a bunch and see what works and what doesn't.

[herbig]

...I want to get this all figured out before gencon and rock indy.

Awkward.

[flrn]

It's been a while, since I've done a longer post in this forum, because I didn't play legacy at all apart from two grand prix trials for Strasbourg and Strasbourg itself, where I played Canadian/UW Miracles. I learned a valueable lesson though. Don't try to meta in legacy. Just play, what you're used to and have fun. And that's what I did two times in the past two weeks. But let's start with the list:

4 Brainstorm
3 Cunning Wish
3 Flusterstorm
4 Force of Will
4 High Tide
1 Intuition
3 Meditate
1 Pact of Negation
4 Turnabout
4 Merchant Scroll
3 Ponder
4 Preordain
4 Time Spiral
4 Flooded Strand
2 Polluted Delta
12 Island

Sideboard
1 Blue Sun's Zenith
1 Brain Freeze
1 Chain of Vapor
2 Envelop
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Intuition
2 Pact of Negation
1 Snap
1 Surgical Extraction
2 Wipe Away
2 Grafdigger's Cage

Still the same maindeck as late 2011/early 2012, because why not. It is still awesome and Wizards didn't print any good blue spells in the meantime. For all the copypaster's out there. I recommend -1 Chain of Vapor and a third Grafdigger's Cage in the board. So anyway, I played two local tournaments, because I had the time and thought legacy could be fun.

Frankfurt, 20 players:

Round 1 Elves 2-0
Round 2 Junk 0-2
Round 3 UR Delver 2-0
Round 4 Tezzeret Stax 2-1
Round 5 Elves 2-1

Mainz, 34 players:

Round 1 GW Maverick 2-0
Round 2 Death'n Taxes 2-0
Round 3 UR SneakShow 2-0
Round 4 Jund 1-2
Round 5 GW Maverick 2-0
Round 6 UWb Miracles 1-0, he concedes after game one, because he was first place anyway, due to me losing round 4.

The deck is awesome. I feel like I'm only losing games to mulligans and heavy discard draws of my opponents. I didn't face much tempo decks, but I love to play the matches against tempo decks, due to the massive amount of interactions between both players. With three Pact of Negation postboard against tempo decks, I also feel comfortable in that matchup, because we should be winning game one, due to him having so many cards in the deck, which do nothing against us.

So anyway, to touch on the sideboard. I feel Chain of Vapor isn't needed. It was included to have a wish target for one blue mana, so you can get rid of anything by playing Cunning Wish into Chain of Vapor for 2UU. The problem is, I rather dig for my solutions with cantrips/Merchant Scroll, than spent a Wish on it. I played a lot of the matchups, where Chain of Vapor could be useful and I never wanted to use it. That's why I'm recommending an additional Grafdigger's Cage. I really feel like it's the best Yardhate at the moment. It's proactive. You can protect it with your counters. It slows Dredge down, which is all we need in that matchup to combo out on turn four. And it is spectacular against Elves. Talking about Elves. Be aware of Ruric Thar. He will be in maindecks and he is scary as hell.

On the other hand, we swapped out the sideboard Meditate for a sideboard Intuition, due to recent discussions in here (can't remember when we actually did it). The reason behind that is, that if you are so desperate to use Cunning Wish on a business spell, you need to untap after that anyway. The sequence Cunning Wish -> Meditate -> Turnabout (Time Spiral, Merchant Scroll -> Turnabout) costs 10 (12) mana. The sequence Cunning Wish -> Intuition -> Time Spiral costs 12 mana. There aren't many situations where 10 to 12 mana makes a huge difference and Intuition makes it, that we get what we want 100%. Meditate is always the gamble. I think it's a good change, even though I didn't need to use it in those two tournaments and even though it is vulnerable to Surgical Extraction/Extirpate. You just need to be aware of those cards, when you are trying to use that.

[feline]

I can second that, if you know the format enough from your decks perspective, & your confident that you're playing a good enough deck to get there, then you can't control specifically what match up's you'll get, a lot of times you might not even run into some of the "best decks" because the format is just that diverse.

-edit- July 9th. Real life is getting in the way, I won't be hitting SCG Minneapolis like I planned, it looks like now my next one will be Seattle when it comes back into town in October. As far as High Tide goes lately, keep pushing/testing/etc, the deck is in a good position right now, & the deck is basically "off the radar" again since it's not had a higher profile top 16+ placing for a few months now.

[feline]

Real life is real life, bla bla bla. Long story short, took care of some things that at first looked like would prevent me from going, & now I might be on again for SCGMINN as I originally planned. Will keep informed if/when I get ticket, will be sometime in the next week!

[pollution]

Hey everyone,

It has been a while since I've posted here (asking for advice) but I had put MTG and the deck on hold because all of my friends were busy cubing/playing standard when I wanted to practice legacy for a tournament so I stopped playing altogether. However, my friends decided to enter the SCGO in NJ this weekend (from what I was told, the biggest one on record) so I went along with them. My record was pretty awful, but it was my fault - first tournament jitters + almost zero knowledge of deck match-ups. Overall record was 2-4-1. Could've been 4-2-1 or 5-2-0 if I didn't make so many misplays.

First game was against maverick. The only 3 decks I had actually played against before the tourney were reanimator, dredge and enchantress (decks that my friends ran) so I had never seen this deck before. First game, my opponent 2nd turn Thalia'd, which I FoW'd, 3rd turn Avon Mindcensor, 4th turn Gaddock Teag. The only counter I had other than the opening hand FoW was a flusterstorm so that game was pretty much done. 2nd game I countered his first Thalia but couldn't counter his second. I managed to go off on turn 5 and combo'd off. 3rd game I made a huge misplay. Down to 5 life I didn't have a choice but to go off with 2 islands, a high tide, 2 turnabouts, and a preordain in hand. I managed to cantrip into others and got storm up to 15, leaving him with 2 cards in deck. The last 2 cards in his deck were GSZ's and with 10 seconds left on the clock it didn't dawn on me that I could've won if I wished into a surgical extraction. I ended up losing after he cycled the GSZ back into his deck 2 more times. 0-1-0

Second game was against what I thought was an RU delver variation. First game he had 3 flipped delvers in play but I managed to combo off at 4 life. 2nd game he went pure goblins and ended up winning on 1 mountain by casting a goblin guide EVERY turn. I kept a hand that I figured I could cantrip into combo pieces but the only things I got were echoing truth and turnabout so I lost the 2nd game. 3rd game he said he drew a perfect hand - lackeys, matrons, and chieftains. Think I lost that one in 4 rounds. 0-2-0

Third was against another goblin deck. Both games I managed to top-deck a turnabout or cantrip that gave me the last combo piece needed to go off. One of the games I was lucky I waited an extra turn for a counter - he tried to fireblast me when i was at 4 life before my Time Spiral went off but I happened to have a flusterstorm as the last card in my hand. The only answers he had were mindbreak traps. 1-2-0

Fourth was against a UG delver variation from what I could tell. We played 2 games and ran out of time, but I never saw a third color. First game I mulled to 5 but managed to draw out his counters by continually trying to turnabout his lands and baiting with brainstorms. I combo'd off on turn 4 when he only had 1 card left in his hand after a 2nd time spiral (first one gave me 3 FoW, 2 lands, 1 turnabout, and another time spiral). Next game I scooped almost as soon as time ended because he went heavy on counters. I had no cards in hand and he still had 2 soft counters, but couldn't do enough damage to kill me before the 5 turns were up. I made a heavy misplay missing one of his flusterstorm counts on my turnabout and fizzled. I could've drawn it out to time but he was cool so I just scooped. 1-2-1

Fifth game was against another goblin deck - go figure. Combo'd off on first game, nothing notable. 2nd game time spiral gave me nothing but turnabouts and FoW, and topdeck was 4 islands in a row. Last game was another lackey-chieftain-guide filled hand and he cleaned up on turn 4-5. Don't remember why I couldn't answer but I think this game I kept a bad hand hoping to cantrip into something useful. 1-3-1

Sixth game was an enchantress deck. No answers to anything except Rest in Peace, which I was able to work around and eventually echoing truth. The guy I played was cool about it and was calling every step I was going to make because he used to run the same deck so we were just laughing the whole time. 2-3-1

Seventh (last) game I played was against RWU delver. First game I kept a hand full of cantrips and counters but never got any combo piece I needed. He ran a lot of Thalias and stoneforges. 2nd game I popped a fetch at the end of his turn but forgot to get the land because I got distracted by friends lol. Would have been able to go off during my turn but with no turnabouts in hand there was nothing I could do. Dumbest thing I did all tournament. 2-4-1

Dropped after 7th match because my friends in the sealed tourney were done, one friend dropped because he was tired, and last friend dropped to trade so I didn't want to make them all wait. They ended up trading for another 2 hours so I could've finished, but it's too late now. Overall, I'm pretty mad that I made so many huge mistakes and kept so many bad hands but I definitely know better now.

I obviously didn't get info on everyone, but from what I gathered I was one of MAYBE 2 people running Spiral Tide. My friends ran reanimator and omnitell. As far as the meta in this area was for the tournament it seemed heavy on delver variations, stoneblade and, surprisingly, there were a lot of dredge, reanimator, and enchantress. At one point the end of my table had 4 reanimator players at the same time, plus my friend, a mirror match he played, and the guy's brother. My omnitell friend played 2 dredge and said he saw a bunch of others (he also has a dredge deck) as he was walking around. My reanimator friend and I both played enchantress, and one of my opponents said he played 2 other enchantress decks and saw another 2 playing a table away from us. Jund didn't seem that heavy, but almost everyone I played said they lost to the same few jund players.

Record was definitely poor, but the deck was definitely solid during the tournament. I was just too nervous to think straight during play, but if I wasn't I think I would've done much better even with very little knowledge of other decks and newer cards. Also, I had never sideboarded in cards before...ever, so I wasn't sure what to put in or take out. I mostly took out HT+turnabout, and flusterstorms/meditate depending on how heavily the opponent seemed to use creatures. Pretty much every game an echoing truth/snap, surgical extraction (1 for wish, 1 put into main), and 4th flusterstorm or spellpierce. Any input on what I should be siding in/out would be appreciated - I might also attend the SCGO in DC.

Also, almost every single person I played knew what deck I was running as soon as I made my first land drop. Turns out they all have either played high tide in the past or knew someone currently playing it. Sounds like that's a good thing.

This is what I ran:
12 Island
3 Misty Rainforest
2 Flooded Strand
1 Scalding Tarn

4 High Tide
4 Turnabout
4 Time Spiral
4 Merchant Scroll
3 Cunning Wish
1 Intuition
4 Force of Will
3 Flusterstorm
1 Pact of Negation
4 Brainstorm
3 Ponder
4 Preordain
1 Blue Sun's Zenith

SB
1 Blue Sun's Zenith
1 Brain Freeze
1 Flusterstorm
1 Spell Pierce
2 Pact of Negation
2 Wipe Away
1 Echoing Truth
1 Snap
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Meditate
1 Ravenous Trap
2 Surgical Extraction

I might put in more echoing truths because they came up pretty big during the games I've won, and might also test Ertai's Meddling. It was originally on my board but I figured it would be better to just play what is known to work for my first event. If I can make the next event hopefully I'll do better. A lot of people seemed to have gotten rid of hydroblast/pyroblast completely for mindbreak trap. I also didn't see any emrakuls outside of the few omnitell/sneakshow decks that I watched, of which there were very few.

Definitely had fun yesterday, and I'd like to thank anyone I've played if they happen to read this. Sorry for the long post.

[feline]

Congrats on pushing High Tide, the more of us there are, the better!

-edit- Just booked a flight for SCGMINN, talk about last minute. Pushing again on August 4th! Attempt #8 with High Tide. (Will be doing Saturday as well)