[DECK] Bubbling tide v2

[toodumbtopost]

Recently high tide-based combo has taken a back seat to ritual-based combo due to the inability of the former to beat a counterbalance backed up with pressure. Many efforts have been made to incorporate black into spring tide lists to take advantage of the extra consistency provided by bubbling muck. However, most lists have failed to take advantage of the extra speed and options provided and are thus much more fragile and no faster than spring tide.

Several months ago I tried to build a bubbling tide list using lists from the source to start with and quickly realised two things:

1. Turnabout is powerful but slow and requires a lot of land in play. This does not have any particular synergy with cloud of faeries and snap which both reach peak efficiency at two land.
2. Black mana may as well have been colorless for the number of cards in the decks that used it. This led to an an inability to win the game without resolving a high tide in addition to however many bubbling mucks which defeated the point.

I did my best to fix the problems and came up with the following decklist. Testing has resulted in surprisingly few changes but I am certain there are more ideas that need to be considered hence the post. I felt that this was sufficiently different from spring tide to warrant its own thread and i didnt want to necro 3 year old threads on the old bad bubbling tide lists.

I would have sprung this on my local legacy community but for one reason or another I have been unable to take it to a tournament. So I'm posting it up to share.

Without further ado, a decklist:

TIDE EFFECTS

4 High Tide
4 Bubbling Muck

UNTAP EFFECTS

4 Cloud of Faeries
4 Snap
3 Dream's Grip

DRAW EFFECTS

4 Meditate
4 Infernal Contract

DIG EFFECTS

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
2 Impulse

WIN CONDITIONS

2 Tendrils of Agony

UTILITY & PROTECTION

4 Force of Will
2 Cunning Wish

LAND

3 Flooded Strand
3 Polluted Delta
4 Watery Grave
4 Underground Sea
1 Island

SIDEBOARD

4 Extirpate
4 Thoughtseize
1 Pact of Negation
1 Stroke of Genius
1 Wipe Away
1 Echoing Truth
1 Brain Freeze
1 Turnabout
1 Island

INDIVIDUAL CARD CHOICES

4 High Tide
4 Bubbling Muck

The main reason to play the deck over spring tide is the explosiveness granted by extra high tides. The only real choice here is whether to put a tide in the board to wish for - i found this to be all kinds of clunky.

4 Snap
4 Cloud of Faeries
3 Dream's Grip

The first two are fairly self-explanatory but Dream's Grip over Turnabout kind of isn't. Basically Turnabout is powerful but clunky, slow and if it gets countered it is very hard to not fizzle. Dream's Grip will never produce as much mana as turnabout but means you have to leave less mana floating as you dig and also means that it's easier to play around countermagic since you have options with only one open mana as you are going off. It honestly most of the time plays like dark ritual except that it adds correctly colored mana and sometimes adds, like, UUUBBB to your mana pool. 4 may be correct but I cut one to add the second tendrils which I felt was necessary.

4 Meditate
4 Infernal Contract

Your draw4s. Both are necessary, and Infernal Contract lets you do relevant things without using blue mana. This is critical in order to go off if you have only drawn bubbling mucks since without a high tide none of your untap effects can generate blue mana. You could put a meditate in the board but with only 2 cunning wishes I've been fine with just the stroke.

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
2 Impulse

Cantrips are the lifeblood of this deck and the reason you can get away with 15 land. The ability to find land is also why impulse is currently run instead of merchant scroll - scroll is also acceptable here but requires a bit of a decklist change since you then want to be running an echoing truth in the main.

2 Tendrils of Agony

Tendrils is better than brain freeze in this deck because you require less storm to win - this is quite relevant because it leaves less to chance and means you don't have to do dumb things like run 3 brain freeze and/or remand or some such to kill on less than 17 storm. The second tendrils is good because it means that generally after you've been through half of your deck you'll have drawn into a tendrils and just kill them. There is a brain freeze in the board in case it's necessary to do so - it doesnt happen much but occasionally for example the d&t player will activate his vial @ 2 in response to your tendrils and it's nice in that case to be able to freeze out his library before the true believer pops out. Also a mini tendrils is much much better than a mini brain freeze.

4 Force of Will

The reason to play this deck over ritual combo. This is your catch-all answer to hate and counterspells, and means that your belcher matchup is unfairly good.

2 Cunning Wish

Outs to random jank are good - cunning wish is the best way to make sure you don't lose to stuff like chalice for 1 while searching for gas if you don't need to worry about hate.

4 Extirpate
Extirpate is the ichorid hate of choice since you can search for it game 1. I'll talk about specific matchups later but extirpate is actually useful a lot of the time g1 as a cunning wishable peek effect that therapies for force of will.

4 Thoughtseize
Your worst matchups are CB thresh and dragon stompy - Thoughtseize helps a lot in either case. it's better than duress in this deck because duress doesn't deal with magus of the moon. In metas full of these decks and combo you can actually maindeck them over 3 dream's grip and a meditate. This makes you go off a bit less than a full turn slower but means it's much easier to protect yourself from hate.

1 Pact of Negation
1 Stroke of Genius
1 Wipe Away
1 Echoing Truth
1 Brain Freeze
1 Turnabout

Fairly obvious. Wipe Away is better than Capsize despite the infinite with cloud of faeries.

1 Island

Gets sided in against wastelands and bloodmoons. You don't want it in the main because it isn't a swamp.

PROBLEMATIC CARDS

Chalice of the Void/Counterbalance

You can't go off through either of these cards since they shut down your tide effects. You also cannot race them since they are either backed up with counterspell or come down turn 1. Game 1 you basically have to cunning wish your way out of it or force it - game 2 you have thoughtseize as well.

Blood Moon effects

Again, you cannot go off through them or do much of anything at all - you aren't kold to it because of the maindeck island so try to keep a fetch open if you know they're dragon stompy. Wish and force are your outs game 1, again game 2 you have thoughtseize to help as well as the extra island but it really isn't good.

Orim's Chant

Side in the thoughtseizes if you expect chant in the side - chant in the main is very rare outside of fetchland tendrils. Getting chanted in response to a draw4 usually necessitates a force.

Trinisphere

While you cannot go off through an active trinisphere, you actually have more outs to this than the other cards mentioned because trinisphere doesnt work when it's tapped. Dream's Grip it at end of turn then untap and win.

Daze

Daze is actually quite irritating because if your first high tide gets dazed you need to pay by tapping another land meaning you have lots less mana to work with. Feel free to slam your high tide into a daze though if you think it slows them down from playing a counterbalance or whatever - it's not like each tide effect is particularly precious since you have so many.

WHY ARE YOU BETTER THAN OTHER DECKS?

I'm not going to claim that this is tier1 or anything without having posted results at a big tournament, but it certainly has advantages over other similar decks.

Solidarity and Spring Tide are both at least a full turn slower than this. Spring Tide goes off turn 4, turn 3 with a good hand; this goes off turn 3, turn 2 with a good hand. In addition, you get more draw effects than solidarity and of course 8 high tides means that you dont have to spend ages digging for one. Extirpate and duress out of the board help out the problem matchups of ichorid and thresh much more than any monoblue options. Your tradeoff is that your manabase is now nonbasic and therefore much more fragile.

Fetchland Tendrils is probably the closest comparison to this deck - they're approximately the same speed and run different protection. I feel that Force is a better card than any disruption FT has to offer, and snap is again excellent against many normally problematic cards like teeg, glowrider, true believer and meddling mage. FT, however, devotes less maindeck slots to combo allowing it to run 4 duress and 4 chant in the main. I'd love to hear feedback from the FT players on this one.

Matchups to follow.

[georgjorge]

Have you had problems with decks playing no creatures (or g2 and g3 not dropping them), shutting off your Snaps if you don't get a Faerie, or alternatively using removal on your Faerie in response to Snap, likely causing you to fizzle ?

[Dark_Cynic87]

If I were you I'd drop a Snap for a second basic, most preferably an Island. Also, Drop a Meditate to the board in favor of a 3rd Wish.

I'd also drop a Tendrils for a Brain Freeze, as Teeg can sometimes hinder you from winning like that, not to mention that you can beat Ichorid by milling them so much easier turn 3. Counter their Dread Return, then your turn get a whole six storm and win. Also, going for the Kill instantly isn't exactly a bad thing, say, in the mirror?

The Impulses look like they would do better as Ideas Unbound or Peer through Depths which in this deck is a better Impulse, as very rarely will you be looking for a creature. Also, I've got to say that I do NOT like the exclusion of Turnabout. I think you have flipped your lid, but I'll test first before I write it off. In no way does Turnabout require 4x lands in play. It requires 3. 3 Islands, tap for High Tide, Tap 2 for Turnabout, tap a land for UU, High Tide, have the capability of 7 in your mana pool. Cunning Wish into a Turnabout, Turnabout, have the capability of 9 mana, so on and so forth.

The capability of having 10 (!!!) draw-4s is absolutely NUTZ! Have you considered Ill-Gotten Gains? That gets it to where you could easily double-Tendrils quite Easily. There's also Twincast, but IGG seems like an option as well, since it's an after-the-fact card, and that can be excellent in getting back lots of things to keep your combo going. Keep in mind it does let them get back Forces, Dazes and Chants, though.

I can't play this, as I would want to put Doomsday in it...lol

Just my thoughts as a FT player.

Pce,

--DC

[rufus]

Since you're already running sorcery speed effects, you can consider Candelabra of Tawnos as an untap effect, although it's a bit less efficient than snap or cloud, it's a bit better than turnabout with two lands out, and equivalent with three.

[toodumbtopost]

@georgjorge: if they have no creatures they generally have no clock and you can just sit there and draw cards, EOT meditate or whatever, and go off with like 5 land in play. At that point just your tide effects generate so much mana that you dont even need snap.

With regards to Peer: Impulse is in that slot because if you are playing a 2 mana dig spell you often want your third land to go with it. Impulse finds that land. This is the same thing as solidarity. If I didnt need the third land i'd be running merchant scroll which is like peer through depths for 20 cards instead of 5.

Honestly cunning wish is the worst card in the deck and the last thing i want to do is add more. I've given this deck to teammates to test and they agree that it's slow and clunky and gets in the way of your turn3s. It's really good in solidarity because you aren't doing anything else with your mana turn 3 but here you really want to just win the game.

I'll try dropping a snap for a second basic - as I said drawing basic island game 1 is often the stains because it doesnt make much mana but it does give random extra outs to bloodmoon and such.

Teeg is like the most irrelevant card ever, I have 4 maindeck snap. Brain freeze would be good in the mirror if anybody played it, feel free to drop a tendrils for a brain freeze if instant speed feels necessary. I had 2 tendrils and a brain freeze in the initial build of the deck and dropped the freeze because I literally never cast it.

I haven't tried IGG, I probably should - I'm sure it will help the goldfish but I kind of don't think it's that safe to play in a deck without MD chant or leyline or some such.

With the whole turnabout thing, what I'm trying to do is make a deck that doesnt keep losing because you ran into a daze and won't randomly lose because you could only float 2-3 mana going into a draw4 and drew all turnabouts. Also I dont want a card thats useless unless you have either 3 or more lands or have resolved multiple tide effects, as either of these two things mean that you probably win regardless. I hope that makes sense.

Candelabra is definitely worth trying, although I live in Australia and I doubt there is a playset of that card in the entire country. It has decent synergy with dream's grip too if i wanted to run both.

[GreenOne]

Holy Necro!

Dave Gearhart is testing Ad Nauseam in solidarity, splashing black almost only for it.

Is anyone testing the new goodness in this deck?

[toodumbtopost]

I gave it a run through already - FoW and AdN =/= combo. It's certainly better than infernal contract though in that resolved AdN with 2 mana floating always wins the game.