[Deck] Solidarity

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Any argument about why you should play sorceries or splash a color in Solidarity is an argument in favor of another deck. I don't think the people making these arguments actually understand why Solidarity is a good deck. If you expect to have to go off turn three, then Solidarity is a bad deck. Almost every other remotely viable combo deck is better at going off turn three. The only reason Solidarity is ever worth playing is because you can wait to go off until you know you need to. It's not being faster or more resilient that really wins Solidarity games; it's being able to wait and force the opponent to actually get a lock or kill in place before you can combo off, and thus giving yourself those extra land drops and card draws that make your other cards better. Disrupt, Merchant Scroll all fail to contribute to this.

Here's the list I've been running lately:

11x Island
4x Scalding Tarn
3x Flooded Strand

4x Brainstorm
4x Opt
4x Impulse
4x Cunning Wish
3x Thirst for Knowledge

3x High Tide
3x Reset
4x Turnabout
3x Meditate
2x Flash of Insight
4x Force of Will
3x Twincast
1x Brain Freeze

SB:
Brain Freeze
Meditate
High Tide
Reset
Twincast
Hibernation
Misdirection
Echoing Truth
Stroke of Genius
Careful Consideration
Rebuild
4x Wipe Away

As per the above, some of the ability to go off very early was sacrificed to make turn 4 as reliable as possible. Hence using Cunning Wish as a tutor, for example. It is simply unbelievably convenient to be able to just Wish for whatever you're missing; having played this for a bit, it actually seems insane to me that the deck ever used to maindeck all 4 High Tides.

[Bahamuth]

Any argument about why you should play sorceries or splash a color in Solidarity is an argument in favor of another deck.

I see no reason for this to be true.


I don't think the people making these arguments actually understand why Solidarity is a good deck.

I belive that after playing this deck since about 2007 and having done well with it, I understand this deck pretty well, and that makes me see this deck is not good enough to compete in the current meta. I want to play this deck as Solidarity, and I want to be able to be more aggressive. I see no reason that Ponder and Scroll would make my control plan worse.


If you expect to have to go off turn three, then Solidarity is a bad deck.

Again I see no reason for this if I can have a decent control plan as well.

[ScatmanX]

Nice report ScatmanX! Congrats on the finish. I just have some questions though:
- When you were boarding did you board out Remands for Veil's? I figured you would since you can't really use them post-Veil.
- How was FoI overall? Was it any better than PtD?
- Was Peek any better than the 4th Opt (maybe against Breakfast) or did you just Veil and not need it?

- I should, but I was stupid and did not think about that...
- Up until then I was with 2 BF and 2 FoI. Now, with a faster meta, I think PtD deserve a few slots. FoI is awesome, but right now I think 1 is the right number. They both seve different roles, therefore should not be compared. FoI did won me 1 or 2 games, but made me lost 1 (because i didn't rtfc...) where PtD did help me win a few games also...
- All Peek made me was feel more secure. I think that, if I play in more tournaments, it will be cut, once I'll have a better understanding of the deck, and what to do with it. Also, Veil is there for us now, so no big worries here...

[Olesch]

I have been reading the last 30 pages of this thread, but I have a question.

I would like to know how this deck handles the shuffle effects of Emrakul and Progenitus?

I know that you can answer on the shuffle effect and continue, but what if they have more than one Emrakul or Progenitus?

[mans0011]

I have been reading the last 30 pages of this thread, but I have a question.

I would like to know how this deck handles the shuffle effects of Emrakul and Progenitus?

I know that you can answer on the shuffle effect and continue, but what if they have more than one Emrakul or Progenitus?

Stroke of Genius by way of Cunning Wish usually doest he trick. You just play the other storm copies in response to the trigger (Emrakul) or you just ignore Progenitus/Darksteel Colossus/what have you and then stroke them out. ( sounds so naughty, hmm? )

[Olesch]

In order to understand I need to know one thing first.

When the copies of Brain Freeze goes on the stack, I don't need to choose targets untill I resolve them?

In a scenario with Emrakul it would look like this:

Brain Freeze on the stack with 10 copies.

Resolve BF 1: I target opponent, he flips 3 random cards

Resolve BF 2: I target myself, flips 3 random cards

Resolve BF 3: I target Opponent, he flips Emrakul as card number 2. I then choose to respond on Emrakuls shuffle effect by resolving BF 4.

Resolve BF 4: response on Emrakul effect targeting opponent, flips 3 random cards

Resolve BF 5: I target opponent, he flips Emrakul as number 3. I then choose to respond on Emrakuls shuffle effect by resolving BF 6.

Resolve BF 6: response on Emrakul effect targeting opponent, flips 3 random cards

..........

Resolve BF 10: I target opponent, he flips 3 random cards and is decked.

Resolve BF 11 and in response cast Stroke to force my opponent to draw a card and then he dies.

Is this correct?

[Hopo]

The top item of the stack always resolves first. You need to make yourself aware of how and in which order things happen in stack and when casting stuff.

If you have ten copies of Brainfreeze on stack and the first one reveals Emrakul, then Emrakul's trigger goes on top of the stack and resolves therefore before the rest of the storm copies. This means that first opponent's graveyard is shuffledback to library and then you continue resolving storm copies.

[GreenOne]

Is this correct?
No, first you have to declare the target for the original Brain Freeze spell. Then resolve the trigger of Storm ability. Once sotrm resolve, the copies go on the stack, and you declare targets for every copy. Then they start to resolve.
If Emrakul is flipped, the 15/15's ability goes on stack, over the remaining copies of brainfreeze. This means that his ability will resolve BEFORE the other copies of BF. You still have the chance to play other things in response (like remand on BF, play BF again).

[dontbiteitholmes]

In order to understand I need to know one thing first.

When the copies of Brain Freeze goes on the stack, I don't need to choose targets untill I resolve them?

In a scenario with Emrakul it would look like this:

Brain Freeze on the stack with 10 copies.

Resolve BF 1: I target opponent, he flips 3 random cards

Resolve BF 2: I target myself, flips 3 random cards

Resolve BF 3: I target Opponent, he flips Emrakul as card number 2. I then choose to respond on Emrakuls shuffle effect by resolving BF 4.

Resolve BF 4: response on Emrakul effect targeting opponent, flips 3 random cards

Resolve BF 5: I target opponent, he flips Emrakul as number 3. I then choose to respond on Emrakuls shuffle effect by resolving BF 6.

Resolve BF 6: response on Emrakul effect targeting opponent, flips 3 random cards

..........

Resolve BF 10: I target opponent, he flips 3 random cards and is decked.

Resolve BF 11 and in response cast Stroke to force my opponent to draw a card and then he dies.

Is this correct?

I don't think so.
You play Brain Freeze, it goes on top of the stack (original) all copies then go on top of it on the stack above it, lets say 9 copies. You let BF #1-4 or whatever resolve and on BF#4 he flips Emrakul. Now the shuffle effect is on top of the stack above all the BF copies as well as the original BF and will resolve first. At this point you either make them draw out their library for the win, Remand your Brain Freeze and recast it and put more BF triggers on stack ontop of shuffle trigger then make them draw out before shuffle trigger resolves, or let the shuffle trigger resolve and let some of the BF copies resolve again after they shuffle up (may be your best option if for example you have 10 copies of BF on stack and the first one hits Emrakul). Of course there are more ways to do it but those are the main options. With the way Solidarity works it's impossible to go through all the possible plays.

[Van Phanel]

I have been reading the last 30 pages of this thread, but I have a question.

I would like to know how this deck handles the shuffle effects of Emrakul and Progenitus?

I know that you can answer on the shuffle effect and continue, but what if they have more than one Emrakul or Progenitus?

Kill with Hunting Pack

[Olesch]

So to conclude. The time when I cast Brain Freeze, all the storm copies goes on top and I need to choose targets for the storm copies as well when they hit the stack.

But for the FoI trick with BF, I then need to determine in advance how many storm copies should target me and how many should target my opponent and then resolve the stack?

But how would you guys recommend to handle Emrakul in general? A little more discussion of this would be great!

[largebrandon]

So to conclude. The time when I cast Brain Freeze, all the storm copies goes on top and I need to choose targets for the storm copies as well when they hit the stack.

But for the FoI trick with BF, I then need to determine in advance how many storm copies should target me and how many should target my opponent and then resolve the stack?

But how would you guys recommend to handle Emrakul in general? A little more discussion of this would be great!


When you play BF, its storm ability will trigger as a triggered ability. Then, if it resolved, all the copies will go on the stack. You then choose a target for each one. Usually, to save time you can say "All to you". But, you may have a few go to you if you would like for FoI tricks. But usually at that point, you are winning anyway and no need. Though if you really need it, then I would only do maximum 5 copies of BF to do so. Any more than that, you won't have any cards left in your deck.

Second question: Emrakul is no different than Gaea's Blessing. If you BF them, and mid BF, Emrakul or GB goes into the GY, their ability will trigger. In response you can BF them again with another BF or Remand your own BF, then Stroke them to death before their trigger resolves.

[ScatmanX]

Round 4: Cephalid Breakfast

Game 1: He starts a little slow, with 2 Cabal Therapy. He then finds Shusher, that I promptly ignore, due to Repeal and SB Veil. Turn 5 I guess, he Therapys me, knowing what I have, So I go off, protected. I get do do everything I want, and BF for a lot. He starts revealing, and eventually gets an Emrakul. I then float some more mana, Wishes and Stroke him for lethal.
Game 2: He gets an early en-Kor, and after trying a Cephalid, I peek, and see only 1 counter. So I Fow, he Fow, I PtD, and FoW again. Then I have a lot of time, and by turn 7-8, with 7 lands in play, I go off Veil protected, and get to stack my deck for a letal Stroke of 73.

Well, that's how I did it...

[Seraphus]

Hi there folks its been a while...

As Olesh suggest, a little more arguments a debate about Emrakul must be placed on the table...

First to solve this problem, counting that there is only one copy of it in the opponent deck, we have the gae's blesing like solution, brainfreeze + remand or other Brainfreeze + stroke. However decks like Aeon Bridge always have multiple copies of it. With that in mind and with others benefits (like against Sensei's, Aether Vial, Grim lavamacer, Jace/ Planeswalker, Fetchs, Survival, Loyal Retaineers, Spellstuter Sprite, Vendilion Clique and others) I started to use Stifle and Trickbind on SB.

Believe me when I say that it works very well...

Regards to you all

Ps: In my opinion Splashing or introduce soceries isn't the right step to go forward...

[i-never-smile]

I'm rebuilding Solidarity at the moment, and I plan on taking it to a bunch of Legacy events around Southern California and maybe other nearby areas. I love that this metagame, without Mystical Tutor, seems to be very friendly to Reset-Tide combo. The only real problem match-ups appear to be Merfolk and Counter-Top, but I think those could be solved TBH.

What I am curious about is Flash of Insight. Do people still play this in Solidarity? Does it still work? I remember it being a really good B-plan to freeze yourself and then FoI to stack most of your deck, but did Cunning Wish's M10 changes make this a significantly weaker plan? FoI is also card advantage, but I don't like that it costs so much mana to do anything with it, when it's actually in your hand. For those who are experienced (Bahamuth, Vanphanel, etc.) and still playing the deck occasionally, where do you stand with FoI? I have skimmed recent pages of the thread, and hopefully I didn't miss a big discussion about this very card, but if I did then please point me in the right direction. Is it worth playing as a 1-of? 2-of?

[largebrandon]

I'm rebuilding Solidarity at the moment, and I plan on taking it to a bunch of Legacy events around Southern California and maybe other nearby areas. I love that this metagame, without Mystical Tutor, seems to be very friendly to Reset-Tide combo. The only real problem match-ups appear to be Merfolk and Counter-Top, but I think those could be solved TBH.

What I am curious about is Flash of Insight. Do people still play this in Solidarity? Does it still work? I remember it being a really good B-plan to freeze yourself and then FoI to stack most of your deck, but did Cunning Wish's M10 changes make this a significantly weaker plan? FoI is also card advantage, but I don't like that it costs so much mana to do anything with it, when it's actually in your hand. For those who are experienced (Bahamuth, Vanphanel, etc.) and still playing the deck occasionally, where do you stand with FoI? I have skimmed recent pages of the thread, and hopefully I didn't miss a big discussion about this very card, but if I did then please point me in the right direction. Is it worth playing as a 1-of? 2-of?

I'm sure people will disagree with me, but FoI is my favourite card draw in the deck. You are able to cast it turn 3+ to gain a card, and when you are going off, it's the best card to have in the gy to get whatever you desire and to stack your deck if applicable. It's not 4x, but i think 2 is the right number to be efficient.

[Van Phanel]

When you play BF, its storm ability will trigger as a triggered ability. Then, if it resolved, all the copies will go on the stack. You then choose a target for each one. Usually, to save time you can say "All to you". But, you may have a few go to you if you would like for FoI tricks. But usually at that point, you are winning anyway and no need. Though if you really need it, then I would only do maximum 5 copies of BF to do so. Any more than that, you won't have any cards left in your deck.

Wrong.

If you have to Brain Freeze yourself always target yourself with all copies (or with enough to mill your entire library if you have more than that). The trick is that the copies resolve one by one and once you mill the Flash you can play it in response to the remaining BF copies. This gives you the maximum chance of hitting Flash of Insight. Even if you mill your entire library with the leftover Brain Freeze copies you will likely have resolved a Meditate at that point so your opponent dies from decking first.

Also kill with Hunting Pack.

[Vacrix]

I'm sure people will disagree with me, but FoI is my favourite card draw in the deck. You are able to cast it turn 3+ to gain a card, and when you are going off, it's the best card to have in the gy to get whatever you desire and to stack your deck if applicable. It's not 4x, but i think 2 is the right number to be efficient.
I hate this card exactly for this reason. 2U Draw a card is fucking horrible. Peer through the Depths does the same thing while setting up only you are sure to grab something useful off the top, choosing from 5 instead of 1. Post-going off, you are already winning, who cares... I've never fizzed because my Peer wasn't a FoI and have enjoyed having that extra mana that I didn't use to cast FoI to cast an additional Opt or Brainstorm. Having +4 Impulse to interact with BF is disgustingly good. Don't bother with it. Its outdated tech.

[i-never-smile]

I've been doing some testing today. This is the list that I'm working with, after updating it:

12 Island
6 Various Fetches

4 High Tide
4 Brainstorm
4 Opt

4 Reset
4 Impulse
4 Remand
1 Peer Through Depths
1 Brain Freeze

3 Cunning Wish
4 Meditate

3 Turnabout
2 Cryptic Command
4 Force of Will

Sideboard under construction--I'm playing with about a 25-card board and gradually narrowing stuff down.

I'm experimenting with 4 maindeck Meditates because I always want to draw many of that card, all the time. In the sideboard, I'm testing Fact or Fiction and Thirst for Knowledge as the wish target for card advantage. FoF is pretty damn good, and so is drawing lots of Meditates....

I'm sure I could find room for another maindeck Brainfreeze, but I don't really seem to need it just yet. If anyone has some strong arguments for including 2 MD Freezes (aside from mini-comboing vs control), I'm interested in your opinions.

I'll probably take this deck to a tournament in a week and a half, if I can get myself a set of reasonably-priced Forces, Meditates, and Resets by then. I used to have this deck fully built, but over time I sold/traded off a lot of stuff to build a Cube and to pay bills...but now I'm selling my Cube, so it's time to get Solidarity back! Hopefully I can play a tournament soon, and not play like a donk in it.

[Bahamuth]

If I were to run the original version, I'd definitely run it with FoI. Drawing into the Brain Freeze is going to suck so much when you don't play it, and FoI is one of your best card in any matchup where you want to play control. I always wanted to see one when I wasn't playing against either combo or aggro.

[largebrandon]

I hate this card exactly for this reason. 2U Draw a card is fucking horrible. Peer through the Depths does the same thing while setting up only you are sure to grab something useful off the top, choosing from 5 instead of 1. Post-going off, you are already winning, who cares... I've never fizzed because my Peer wasn't a FoI and have enjoyed having that extra mana that I didn't use to cast FoI to cast an additional Opt or Brainstorm. Having +4 Impulse to interact with BF is disgustingly good. Don't bother with it. Its outdated tech.

Yes, FoI might initially say "2U, draw a card" but it also says "1u, search your library for any card in your deck and put it in your hand. Then, stack your deck anyway that you see fit. Also, remove all blue cards from your graveyard so they can be wished for."

If drawing a card for 2U is the drawback for playing its second ability, then I'm more than happy playing that than Peer.

[lebarion]

Yes, FoI might initially say "2U, draw a card" but it also says "1u, search your library for any card in your deck and put it in your hand. Then, stack your deck anyway that you see fit. Also, remove all blue cards from your graveyard so they can be wished for."


Actually, you can't wish for cards from the exile. The last trick you mentioned doesn't work.
I'm not quite sure about the justification, but I believe that's because the exile is a zone from the game, and Cunning Wish lets you search for a card from outside the game.

[Vacrix]

Yes, FoI might initially say "2U, draw a card" but it also says "1u, search your library for any card in your deck and put it in your hand. Then, stack your deck anyway that you see fit. Also, remove all blue cards from your graveyard so they can be wished for."

If drawing a card for 2U is the drawback for playing its second ability, then I'm more than happy playing that than Peer.
Again, its great when you are already winning, but PtD does the same thing only it also lets you set up. Woot you can't look through your entire deck for a card and stack your deck... With a deck full of cantrips, Meditates and Cunning Wish's, I've not once needed FoI to get the win instead of PtD. You cantrip or Meditate into what you need. Why does the deck NEED this card?

The fact is it doesn't need this card. Solidarity needs ways to set-up quickly, not ensure your win after you are already going off. The format is simply too fast to approach this deck in any other way.

However.... if the deck could play Frantic Search again, I'd most certainly play one or even 2 copies. Otherwise, its McJank when you could be setting up with PtD. The deck has no problems beating control. Hell, its built to beat control. What it can't beat these days is aggro. In the metagame of today, you need cards that help you set up. PtD is even better post-board if you are trying to dig for Moment's Peace against aggro. FoI was cool and all when the format was slow, but trying to pretend like its still a good card is just stubborn if you ask me.

[Dark Ritual]

Another strike against flash of insight is that it doesn't allow you to stack your deck. Read the card and it clearly states put the rest on the bottom of your library meaning in the order you saw the top X cards. Peer through depths is infinitely better IMO, digging 5 cards AND you can put the rest on the bottom of your library in any order not that that's relevant a lot of the time. FoI is outdated tech and cunning wish doesn't work with exiled cards ever since the M10 rules change all the wishes got neutered, not being able to wish for something in the exiled zone and only being able to wish from the SB. Also PtD can be cast on turn 2 to gain a set up card while FoI on turn 2 is impossible without wasting a high tide to cast it for X=2. That is also a problem. How mana intensive the card is if you hardcast it with X equal to mana you spend rather than X being equal to the number of cards you exiled. And saying you want to see it against control is like Vacrix said, essentially win more because solidarity already rolls over control decks since it can manipulate the stack so well in your favor and against landstill we have so much time. Only troublesome control MUs for us are the ones where they pack in a countertop package like thopter control or postboard landstill lists sometimes board in a countertop package but this is less common.

If frantic search were unbanned solidarity would be tier 1 again there is no doubt in my mind that a deck packing 4x frantic search, 3x turnabout with one in the SB, and 4x reset would dominate the format because solidarity could realistically go off on turn 3 over 50% of the time with that kind of mana available and 2 turns of set up before hand.

[i-never-smile]

In my recent testing I have tried 0, 1, and 2 Flash of Insight in the deck. With each number of FoI, I have also been trying 0, 1, 2, or 3 Peer Through Depths. I haven't played the deck for well over a year, and my playskill/deck building ability has risen considerably in that time, so I've tried to look at things objectively with a blank slate. The way I see it, PtD is very good in this deck, but FoI is absolutely necessary because it fulfills an important role. PtD will dig you pretty deep towards more business, but it's still a 1-for-1 that costs you mana. FoI costs a little more to set up, but it produces card advantage (when drawn) and it's almost impossible to win when you've flashbacked a FoI for 10+ cards. I have had so much trouble in match-ups where I need to produce some card advantage in order to out-resource my opponent and win the game, and when I put FoIs into the deck that problem wasn't as big a deal. Even when I was running an extra draw spell (Meditate #4/FoF/3 Dreams) in the maindeck, I was still having trouble producing card advantage. FoI is going to do about the same job that PtD does when you're already comboing off, and it can be a 2-for-1, or a way to turn Brain Freeze into more gas. While the Cunning Wish trick doesn't work anymore with FoI, it's still pretty insane.

I think I'm going to stick with Van Phanel's mono-blue, 2x Cryptic maindeck from a couple of years ago, with a possible change to the Opt/Peek configuration and to the number of Fetchlands. Most of the tuning I'm going to do will have to do with sideboarding, which seems to be one of the harder aspects of the deck for me. I'm reading everything I can to learn about sideboarding, but I think I'll just have to get more experience under my belt to figure out how I feel about cards like Spell Snare and Twincast and Repeal in this metagame.


Another strike against flash of insight is that it doesn't allow you to stack your deck. Read the card and it clearly states put the rest on the bottom of your library meaning in the order you saw the top X cards.

Oh, really? And who is going to stop you from rearranging cards from the top of your library? If you look at 15 cards, they're not specifically told to be randomized, and they're not specifically told to keep in order, it's basically assumed you can rearrange them. This is why any time you're told to search your library, it is specifically stated on the card that you are supposed to shuffle. Otherwise, it is impossible to prove the library is out of order. Even if your opponent sees you blatantly rearranging cards, how does he know that you're not potentially moving them back into order?

People have been stacking their libraries with the flashback mode of FoI for years, in tournaments, in front of judges, at high tables. If it didn't stack a large portion of the library, we would have found out by now.

[Nessaja]

Oh, really? And who is going to stop you from rearranging cards from the top of your library? If you look at 15 cards, they're not specifically told to be randomized, and they're not specifically told to keep in order, it's basically assumed you can rearrange them. This is why any time you're told to search your library, it is specifically stated on the card that you are supposed to shuffle. Otherwise, it is impossible to prove the library is out of order.
There are several cards in magic that state "In any order" when it's allowed to rearrange you library (Scry mechanic is the most glaring one). What is the reason you believe that you're allowed to do it when it isn't stated on the card?

[ScatmanX]

There are several cards in magic that state "In any order" when it's allowed to rearrange you library (Scry mechanic is the most glaring one). What is the reason you believe that you're allowed to do it when it isn't stated on the card?

Years of people doing it in tournys around the world?

[Nonex]

Hope this clears something.


401.4. If an effect puts two or more cards on the top or bottom of a library at the same time, the owner of those cards may arrange them in any order. That library’s owner doesn’t reveal the order in which the cards go into his or her library.

[ummon]

Hope this clears something.

Thanks. In fact, the scry that people were pointing to is actually evidence that you can put them back in any order. Notice that scry says you can put the cards on top of your library in any order but doesn't mention the order of the cards on the bottom.

Still think that FoI is not a good card though...

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

The only reason to play Peer Through Depths is because you're not using Cunning Wish to it's maximum potential. Cunning Wish should already be a tutor; just stick the 4th Tide, Reset, and Meditate in the board. Flash of Insight helps you dig for land, which is one of the most important aspects of the setup. It's also your best form of card advantage against disruption strategies that doesn't require losing a turn, and helps ensure you don't fizzle late-stage in the combo. It also helps make TfK amazing, and it's already pretty amazing.

[largebrandon]

Actually, you can't wish for cards from the exile. The last trick you mentioned doesn't work.
I'm not quite sure about the justification, but I believe that's because the exile is a zone from the game, and Cunning Wish lets you search for a card from outside the game.

You're right on that. My mistake. I just came back form magic after a few years and am still learning the new rules.

[Nonex]

The only reason to play Peer Through Depths is because you're not using Cunning Wish to it's maximum potential. Cunning Wish should already be a tutor; just stick the 4th Tide, Reset, and Meditate in the board. Flash of Insight helps you dig for land, which is one of the most important aspects of the setup. It's also your best form of card advantage against disruption strategies that doesn't require losing a turn, and helps ensure you don't fizzle late-stage in the combo. It also helps make TfK amazing, and it's already pretty amazing.

Just a minor question. What makes Thirst for Knowledge stand out above Three Wishes?

If something like this has been discussed recently in this thread, I couldn't find it.

[Nonex]

...

[Vacrix]

In my recent testing I have tried 0, 1, and 2 Flash of Insight in the deck. With each number of FoI, I have also been trying 0, 1, 2, or 3 Peer Through Depths. I haven't played the deck for well over a year, and my playskill/deck building ability has risen considerably in that time, so I've tried to look at things objectively with a blank slate. The way I see it, PtD is very good in this deck, but FoI is absolutely necessary because it fulfills an important role. PtD will dig you pretty deep towards more business, but it's still a 1-for-1 that costs you mana. FoI costs a little more to set up, but it produces card advantage (when drawn) and it's almost impossible to win when you've flashbacked a FoI for 10+ cards. I have had so much trouble in match-ups where I need to produce some card advantage in order to out-resource my opponent and win the game, and when I put FoIs into the deck that problem wasn't as big a deal. Even when I was running an extra draw spell (Meditate #4/FoF/3 Dreams) in the maindeck, I was still having trouble producing card advantage. FoI is going to do about the same job that PtD does when you're already comboing off, and it can be a 2-for-1, or a way to turn Brain Freeze into more gas. While the Cunning Wish trick doesn't work anymore with FoI, it's still pretty insane.

I think I'm going to stick with Van Phanel's mono-blue, 2x Cryptic maindeck from a couple of years ago, with a possible change to the Opt/Peek configuration and to the number of Fetchlands. Most of the tuning I'm going to do will have to do with sideboarding, which seems to be one of the harder aspects of the deck for me. I'm reading everything I can to learn about sideboarding, but I think I'll just have to get more experience under my belt to figure out how I feel about cards like Spell Snare and Twincast and Repeal in this metagame.
Its simply a crutch. I've never needed FoI. Have fun losing to aggro with your maindeck Cryptic Commands.

[i-never-smile]

You know, I actually think Cryptic is good against aggro, because it's basically a Time Walk. I like that against Goblins, I can Cryptic their team down, draw a card, make my 5th land drop, and then go off with extra mana on the table. It honestly makes things much easier. And against aggro decks with Islands and countermagic, Cryptic is reasonable in counter-wars. Especially when both players start being able to produce enough mana with their Islands to hardcast Force of Will, Cryptic becomes valuable. Not only that, but it can be card advantage.

I'm just going to have to go with what has been testing well for me, I guess. Maybe I'm dumb for playing 2 FoI and 2 Cryptics in the main, but it sure seems to be solving all sorts of problems I was having without either.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Just a minor question. What makes Thirst for Knowledge stand out above Three Wishes?

If something like this has been discussed recently in this thread, I couldn't find it.

Three Wishes is great going off, but miserable setting up. TfK is great setting up, and since you tend to draw lands/FoIs, it's very rare that the discard two line actually stops you from going off. The times when TfK is good and TW isn't (when you're setting up) simply outnumber the times when the roles are reversed (pretty much at the start of your combo with a weak hand).

[Silent Requiem]

I've played around with FoI/PtD for over a year, and I keep coming back to FoI. It's just broken.

That said, PtD is great too. My current build adds two land and drops four Opt for four PtD. It needs more testing, but so far I like it.

I also love Cryptic. Yes, it is dead for the first three turns, but it is absolutely broken after that. Cryptic has won me a lot of games.

What a lot of the anti FoI, anti Cryptic crowd forget is that although these cards are unnecessary when things are going well, they can turn things around when things are have gone horribly, horribly wrong. For example, I was playing a tournament game against Merfolk. He shut down my attempt to go off with Curse Catcher (flashed in), two FoW and a Mindbreak trap. I end the turn with just a High Tide in hand. Next turn he has lethal.

I top deck a Reset. With my FoI in the gy, I go on to win. No other card could have won me that game. It was not about play errors, it was about my opponent having a godly hand. FoI got me there. I have similar stories about Cryptic Command.

-Silent Requiem

[Olesch]

Well I am still curious on how Solidarity will handle decks with Emrakul.

There are alot of decks appearing with four of Emrakuls and Progenitus.

I don't think that it is doable to recast a BF (Remand or a new one) for each Emrakul. In this case do you change plan and bulk up with alot of mana to respond with a deadly stroke? Is that doable? It might result in that you need to force your opponent to draw 20+ cards and then you need 23+ mana. I don't really like to include stifle or trickbind either.

What about the green splash like Van Phanel mentioned? Hunting Pack, is that a good way/option? I am trying to look up what options we got and what is the most optimal.

In the Progenitus case, since it is an replacement effect, there is no option to respond to it and you are just able to wait untill the Progenitus is the only card(s) left in the library and then stroke for them I guess?

[ummon]

Well I am still curious on how Solidarity will handle decks with Emrakul.

There are alot of decks appearing with four of Emrakuls and Progenitus.

I don't think that it is doable to recast a BF (Remand or a new one) for each Emrakul. In this case do you change plan and bulk up with alot of mana to respond with a deadly stroke? Is that doable? It might result in that you need to force your opponent to draw 20+ cards and then you need 23+ mana. I don't really like to include stifle or trickbind either.

What about the green splash like Van Phanel mentioned? Hunting Pack, is that a good way/option? I am trying to look up what options we got and what is the most optimal.

In the Progenitus case, since it is an replacement effect, there is no option to respond to it and you are just able to wait untill the Progenitus is the only card(s) left in the library and then stroke for them I guess?

I would think that Stroke of Genius is more than doable in Solidarity. Resolve a few high tides and a several turnabouts/resets and you have enough mana for a lethal stroke on turn 4 or 5. Another option is to wish for Ravenous Trap after your Brain Freeze.

[i-never-smile]

Wish-->Ravenous Trap is the simplest way to do it. You probably need 2-3 freezes/remands going to hit most of the emrakuls at once, then you can go for a stroke with another wish. This means comboing off hard, but it should be viable against a deck with 3-4 Emrakuls in the library...this means they haven't put one on the table yet.

[Seraphus]

Since the powered green list of solidarity look like the new star on the block what do you think using Early Harvest?

[ummon]

Since the powered green list of solidarity look like the new star on the block what do you think using Early Harvest?

Good suggestion but you can't create two green mana reliably enough to cast Early Harvest.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Since the powered green list of solidarity look like the new star on the block what do you think using Early Harvest?

Why is it the new star on the block? It seems utterly without results from what I can tell, and the idea's hardly new. The splashes have never worked well in Solidarity, Wasteland does too much to hurt you.

[Seraphus]

I don't really like the deck splashed, you are right 100% right, wasteland kills the deck if we put some non-basic land but the amount of decks at GP colombus using Emrakul was amazing, and probably they use 3 of it...

So Hunting pack looks very decent...

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

It should not be difficult to combo around Emrakul. The only time you need to worry about Emrakul is if he's in play, in which case Hunting Pack won't do much to help.

[Zinch]

Wish-->Ravenous Trap is the simplest way to do it. You probably need 2-3 freezes/remands going to hit most of the emrakuls at once, then you can go for a stroke with another wish. This means comboing off hard, but it should be viable against a deck with 3-4 Emrakuls in the library...this means they haven't put one on the table yet.

That's not right. I'm not saying it's not a good strategy, but you will only hit ONE Emrakul with a brain freeze (unless there are 2 or 3 in the top 3 in any moment... very unlikely), because when it goes to graveyard, the ability triggers on top of any copy of brain freeze still on the stack, so the graveyard is shuffled back into the library before resolving the next storm copy.
So the idea is wait for the first Emrakul to be revealed, with the trigger on the stack search for the trap removing all the graveyard so there isn't any card to suffle back when the trigger resolves. Keep resolving copies until the second Emrakul is revealed, and then in response to the trigger, stroke for lethal your opponent.

[ummon]

Any argument about why you should play sorceries or splash a color in Solidarity is an argument in favor of another deck. I don't think the people making these arguments actually understand why Solidarity is a good deck. If you expect to have to go off turn three, then Solidarity is a bad deck. Almost every other remotely viable combo deck is better at going off turn three. The only reason Solidarity is ever worth playing is because you can wait to go off until you know you need to. It's not being faster or more resilient that really wins Solidarity games; it's being able to wait and force the opponent to actually get a lock or kill in place before you can combo off, and thus giving yourself those extra land drops and card draws that make your other cards better. Disrupt, Merchant Scroll all fail to contribute to this.

Here's the list I've been running lately:

11x Island
4x Scalding Tarn
3x Flooded Strand

4x Brainstorm
4x Opt
4x Impulse
4x Cunning Wish
3x Thirst for Knowledge

3x High Tide
3x Reset
4x Turnabout
3x Meditate
2x Flash of Insight
4x Force of Will
3x Twincast
1x Brain Freeze

SB:
Brain Freeze
Meditate
High Tide
Reset
Twincast
Hibernation
Misdirection
Echoing Truth
Stroke of Genius
Careful Consideration
Rebuild
4x Wipe Away

As per the above, some of the ability to go off very early was sacrificed to make turn 4 as reliable as possible. Hence using Cunning Wish as a tutor, for example. It is simply unbelievably convenient to be able to just Wish for whatever you're missing; having played this for a bit, it actually seems insane to me that the deck ever used to maindeck all 4 High Tides.

What are your turn 4 win percentages? How consistent is the deck on turn 4?

[i-never-smile]

I think splashing Green should not be considered taboo, nor should it be considered mandatory. By splashing green, you are declaring that Counterbalance is such prominent hazard to the deck in your metagame, you are willing to sacrifice some of your invulnerability to nonbasic hate for the strongest solution possible to a resolved Counterbalance.

I don't think Autumn's Veil is worth a splash color on its own. It may be strong enough to play out of the board if you're splashing green, but there are already so many good blue cards that solve the same problems, we don't need to splash another color for Autumn's Veil. The same goes for Orim's Chant/Silence/Abeyance; it's not worth dipping into White for those cards, either. You should be able to win stack wars with Solidarity, of all decks. If you're losing counter-wars and you need cheap anti-countermagic, play 1-drop counterspells and such in your sideboard.

Actually, I take it one step further. If you're already splashing green for Grip, there is temptation to run Autumn's Veil or something else in Green with a similar job. But splashing Grip isn't as dangerous as splashing Veil in. If you run a Tropic out there to have access to Grip mana, you can Grip your opponent's CB in response to a Wasteland, accept the land trade, and be fine in the long run because you solved the CB permanently. But, if you need that Tropic for the combo turn, in order to win a counter-war, then you can't afford to have it wastelanded. Or you have to find another one, which will probably also get wastelanded in a relatively long game against control. You know the price you pay when you need to answer CB with Grip. You can set up more lands after you play the Grip, so it alleviates the problem you created by putting a Tropical Island on the table. But if you're going off with Autumn's Veil as a counterspell, you're opening yourself up to a serious strategic hole on the combo turn with that Tropical Island. It's still not a terrible idea to run Veil because it's a powerful effect, but you're practically throwing a land away to do it. It's sometimes necessary to do that against Counterbalance because that engine can be so difficult to break through, but I wouldn't want to make that kind of sacrifice against opposing countermagic, with this deck.

For similar reasons, I really don't like Moment's Peace in this deck. Almost all of the aggro or aggro-control decks that I want to fog are also running Wastelands. That doesn't make Moment's Peace the most strategically sound tool, in my experience. Tangle is a little better in this regard because you know you're going to get the full value of it, even if your land gets nuked...but it's still awkward as balls when you draw a second or third Tangle and one of your few Tropics got Wasted.

You could try to fight against Wasteland by playing a basic Forest or 2 and 4 Misty Rainforests, and possibly even Terramorphic Expanse. That's not outlandish, when you think about it...I know the Forest wouldn't help much on the combo turn, but it wouldn't give the deck additional vulnerability to Wasteland. It honestly might be more stable than Tropical Island, which you know is highly-likely to get Wasted away. And putting a couple of Terramorphic Expanses in the deck wouldn't be entirely horrible, if a splash color provides enough for the deck. After all, it's still valuable if played on the combo turn--it finds you a basic Island that can be untapped and used just like any other Island on the table. Thawing Glaciers used to exist in old-school High Tide decks, and that was a comes-into-play tapped system of fetching. Even in today's brutally-fast metagame, it's possible to get away with 1-2 taplands if you're using it to play Krosan Grip without the risk of Wasteland.

Personally, I don't see the ultimate need to play green unless you expect your opponent to resolve Counterbalance and protect it, a majority of the time. I've been doing fine with 2 Cryptic Commands, a sideboard Wipe Away, and a 2/2 split of boarded Spell Pierce/Spell Snare. I prefer to simply keep it off the table in the first place, or take the risk of trying to resolve a 3-4 mana bounce spell, which is a lot less complicated than putting Green into your manabase. But perhaps I'm not testing against experienced enough counterbalance players, or I've been getting lucky, or something. All I know is my own experience and what I've read online, because there are basically no videos to be found of people playing Solidarity vs Counter-Top (because of Solidarity's lack of popularity).


That's not right. I'm not saying it's not a good strategy, but you will only hit ONE Emrakul with a brain freeze (unless there are 2 or 3 in the top 3 in any moment... very unlikely), because when it goes to graveyard, the ability triggers on top of any copy of brain freeze still on the stack, so the graveyard is shuffled back into the library before resolving the next storm copy.
So the idea is wait for the first Emrakul to be revealed, with the trigger on the stack search for the trap removing all the graveyard so there isn't any card to suffle back when the trigger resolves. Keep resolving copies until the second Emrakul is revealed, and then in response to the trigger, stroke for lethal your opponent.

Actually, this is how I would do it:

We assume your opponent has 4 Emrakuls in his library, you have the ability to go through most of your deck when you combo off, and you haven't already used too many Brain Freezes/Remands/Cunning Wishes in this game. You combo off and set up a situation where you have 3-4 Brain Freezes/Remands available. You freeze your opponent for a lot of storm, until a copy reveals Emrakul #1. You respond to that trigger by casting Freeze #2, which goes copy after copy until your opponent reveals Emrakul #2. Then you respond to that with another Freeze until a copy mills Emrakul #3. Then you play a 4th Freeze until you hit Emrakul #4. Finally, you respond to the trigger by Cunning Wish-->Ravenous Trap. Trap removes your opponent's graveyard, and then you let the 4th Emrakul trigger resolve. It shuffles your opponent's graveyard (which is now nothing) into his library. Then your opponent gets milled by the rest of your 4th Brain Freeze, and you Stroke him in response to the next Emrakul trigger. Or, you could Remand/hold onto one more Freeze, let him keep a very small library, and then mini-combo him for lethal in an upcoming turn. That's also very possible if you stacked and drew your deck.

The situation is complicated. You could also use Stroke to simply force lethal draw in response to the last Emrakul trigger, but that's assuming you have enough mana to do so for enough cards, meaning your opponent didn't hit all 4 Emrakuls about 12 cards before the end of his library and you don't have another 16 mana to Wish+Stroke him for 13 in response (for example). But if your opponent hit Emrakul #4 that quickly, your last freeze should have ample storm count to hit him for the rest of his library after you Trap away the Emrakul-infested graveyard. It shouldn't be hard to force even one card draw with Stroke to end the game at that point, in theory.

Going back to setting this all up, we are assuming your opponent had all 4 Emrakuls in the library...usually it's only 2-3. Some lists just run 3 Emrakuls, and usually they're going to draw one by the time you want to combo off. I know that I would wait until they try for a Show and Tell before even wanting to go off, because what's the point if they don't have a threat? Make it easier, let them draw the Emrakul they want to cheat into play; that way you don't need 4 Freezes to get the job done.

On another level, it's probably a good idea to hold onto Wishes, Remands, and Freezes in a match-up involving 4 Emrakuls. Don't pitch them to Force, if possible. Don't Remand stuff just to cycle, if you can help it. Don't throw away Wishes unless you absolutely need to burn one. It might be really tough to do that in game 1, but in Game 2 I could see the situation being a lot easier if you bring in more resources that control against a Show and Tell/Hypergen/Eureka deck, and save your Freezes/Remands/Wishes/Wish targets for crucial moments during the combo turn. For this reason, it might be correct to board in some of the Wish targets so you don't rely on only 3 Wishes to solve the endgame Emrakul puzzle.

In any case, it's not only possible to combo against a deck with 4 Emrakuls and some number of Progenitus in it--I've done it in test games, and I'm practicing the method for upcoming events. I actually like that it's a somewhat new puzzle to be solved with the High Tide deck. Most of us have comboed through a Gaea's Blessing or 2 before, but how about comboing off through 4? That attacks Solidarity's resources on a new axis, which I think is pretty cool. I love mental challenges like that, be they large or small.

Speaking of challenges...on another note, Saito just won the GP with Merfolk, playing 3 Spell Pierce main. It wasn't a fluke either; he was a good player and he proved at a competive level against both Pros and Legacy experts that his deck was strong and solid. We can assume that Merfolk builds like his with maindeck Spell Pierce will be showing up more at all types of events. What should we be doing to respond to this rise of fish decks? I don't think Merfolk is a hopeless match-up on any level; just a challenging one. The question is what path to take to combat the imminent popularity rise of fish decks.

[Darkenslight]

Hrm....Considering the Ug version, I believe that the manabase can be safely cut down to:

9 Island
2 Forest
4 Evolving Wilds
4 Terramorphic Expanse

And that you should be able to switch the two Forest for two Islands. Because you play most of your game on your opponent's endstep (until you're forced to go off,) I don't see that the tappedness would have much of an impact. Is there any way for someone to test this?

[i-never-smile]

No. I'm sorry, but that's just a terrible configuration of a manabase. Think about it before just throwing the idea on the table. If you were to run Terramorphic Expanse in this deck, it would be as Misty Rainforest #5+. You run 4 Mistys, a Forest or 2, and then add 1-3 more fetchlands if you think you need more access to green mana. Seriously, paying 1 life for a fetch is much lower of a downside than putting the land in tapped. The only reason to run some tapped fetchlands is because you literally need more fetchlands of a specific type, and tapped ones are the next best in existence.

[Olesch]

I think splashing Green should not be considered taboo, nor should it be considered mandatory. By splashing green, you are declaring that Counterbalance is such prominent hazard to the deck in your metagame, you are willing to sacrifice some of your invulnerability to nonbasic hate for the strongest solution possible to a resolved Counterbalance.

I don't think Autumn's Veil is worth a splash color on its own. It may be strong enough to play out of the board if you're splashing green, but there are already so many good blue cards that solve the same problems, we don't need to splash another color for Autumn's Veil. The same goes for Orim's Chant/Silence/Abeyance; it's not worth dipping into White for those cards, either. You should be able to win stack wars with Solidarity, of all decks. If you're losing counter-wars and you need cheap anti-countermagic, play 1-drop counterspells and such in your sideboard.

Actually, I take it one step further. If you're already splashing green for Grip, there is temptation to run Autumn's Veil or something else in Green with a similar job. But splashing Grip isn't as dangerous as splashing Veil in. If you run a Tropic out there to have access to Grip mana, you can Grip your opponent's CB in response to a Wasteland, accept the land trade, and be fine in the long run because you solved the CB permanently. But, if you need that Tropic for the combo turn, in order to win a counter-war, then you can't afford to have it wastelanded. Or you have to find another one, which will probably also get wastelanded in a relatively long game against control. You know the price you pay when you need to answer CB with Grip. You can set up more lands after you play the Grip, so it alleviates the problem you created by putting a Tropical Island on the table. But if you're going off with Autumn's Veil as a counterspell, you're opening yourself up to a serious strategic hole on the combo turn with that Tropical Island. It's still not a terrible idea to run Veil because it's a powerful effect, but you're practically throwing a land away to do it. It's sometimes necessary to do that against Counterbalance because that engine can be so difficult to break through, but I wouldn't want to make that kind of sacrifice against opposing countermagic, with this deck.

For similar reasons, I really don't like Moment's Peace in this deck. Almost all of the aggro or aggro-control decks that I want to fog are also running Wastelands. That doesn't make Moment's Peace the most strategically sound tool, in my experience. Tangle is a little better in this regard because you know you're going to get the full value of it, even if your land gets nuked...but it's still awkward as balls when you draw a second or third Tangle and one of your few Tropics got Wasted.

You could try to fight against Wasteland by playing a basic Forest or 2 and 4 Misty Rainforests, and possibly even Terramorphic Expanse. That's not outlandish, when you think about it...I know the Forest wouldn't help much on the combo turn, but it wouldn't give the deck additional vulnerability to Wasteland. It honestly might be more stable than Tropical Island, which you know is highly-likely to get Wasted away. And putting a couple of Terramorphic Expanses in the deck wouldn't be entirely horrible, if a splash color provides enough for the deck. After all, it's still valuable if played on the combo turn--it finds you a basic Island that can be untapped and used just like any other Island on the table. Thawing Glaciers used to exist in old-school High Tide decks, and that was a comes-into-play tapped system of fetching. Even in today's brutally-fast metagame, it's possible to get away with 1-2 taplands if you're using it to play Krosan Grip without the risk of Wasteland.

Personally, I don't see the ultimate need to play green unless you expect your opponent to resolve Counterbalance and protect it, a majority of the time. I've been doing fine with 2 Cryptic Commands, a sideboard Wipe Away, and a 2/2 split of boarded Spell Pierce/Spell Snare. I prefer to simply keep it off the table in the first place, or take the risk of trying to resolve a 3-4 mana bounce spell, which is a lot less complicated than putting Green into your manabase. But perhaps I'm not testing against experienced enough counterbalance players, or I've been getting lucky, or something. All I know is my own experience and what I've read online, because there are basically no videos to be found of people playing Solidarity vs Counter-Top (because of Solidarity's lack of popularity).



Actually, this is how I would do it:

We assume your opponent has 4 Emrakuls in his library, you have the ability to go through most of your deck when you combo off, and you haven't already used too many Brain Freezes/Remands/Cunning Wishes in this game. You combo off and set up a situation where you have 3-4 Brain Freezes/Remands available. You freeze your opponent for a lot of storm, until a copy reveals Emrakul #1. You respond to that trigger by casting Freeze #2, which goes copy after copy until your opponent reveals Emrakul #2. Then you respond to that with another Freeze until a copy mills Emrakul #3. Then you play a 4th Freeze until you hit Emrakul #4. Finally, you respond to the trigger by Cunning Wish-->Ravenous Trap. Trap removes your opponent's graveyard, and then you let the 4th Emrakul trigger resolve. It shuffles your opponent's graveyard (which is now nothing) into his library. Then your opponent gets milled by the rest of your 4th Brain Freeze, and you Stroke him in response to the next Emrakul trigger. Or, you could Remand/hold onto one more Freeze, let him keep a very small library, and then mini-combo him for lethal in an upcoming turn. That's also very possible if you stacked and drew your deck.

The situation is complicated. You could also use Stroke to simply force lethal draw in response to the last Emrakul trigger, but that's assuming you have enough mana to do so for enough cards, meaning your opponent didn't hit all 4 Emrakuls about 12 cards before the end of his library and you don't have another 16 mana to Wish+Stroke him for 13 in response (for example). But if your opponent hit Emrakul #4 that quickly, your last freeze should have ample storm count to hit him for the rest of his library after you Trap away the Emrakul-infested graveyard. It shouldn't be hard to force even one card draw with Stroke to end the game at that point, in theory.

Going back to setting this all up, we are assuming your opponent had all 4 Emrakuls in the library...usually it's only 2-3. Some lists just run 3 Emrakuls, and usually they're going to draw one by the time you want to combo off. I know that I would wait until they try for a Show and Tell before even wanting to go off, because what's the point if they don't have a threat? Make it easier, let them draw the Emrakul they want to cheat into play; that way you don't need 4 Freezes to get the job done.

On another level, it's probably a good idea to hold onto Wishes, Remands, and Freezes in a match-up involving 4 Emrakuls. Don't pitch them to Force, if possible. Don't Remand stuff just to cycle, if you can help it. Don't throw away Wishes unless you absolutely need to burn one. It might be really tough to do that in game 1, but in Game 2 I could see the situation being a lot easier if you bring in more resources that control against a Show and Tell/Hypergen/Eureka deck, and save your Freezes/Remands/Wishes/Wish targets for crucial moments during the combo turn. For this reason, it might be correct to board in some of the Wish targets so you don't rely on only 3 Wishes to solve the endgame Emrakul puzzle.

In any case, it's not only possible to combo against a deck with 4 Emrakuls and some number of Progenitus in it--I've done it in test games, and I'm practicing the method for upcoming events. I actually like that it's a somewhat new puzzle to be solved with the High Tide deck. Most of us have comboed through a Gaea's Blessing or 2 before, but how about comboing off through 4? That attacks Solidarity's resources on a new axis, which I think is pretty cool. I love mental challenges like that, be they large or small.

Speaking of challenges...on another note, Saito just won the GP with Merfolk, playing 3 Spell Pierce main. It wasn't a fluke either; he was a good player and he proved at a competive level against both Pros and Legacy experts that his deck was strong and solid. We can assume that Merfolk builds like his with maindeck Spell Pierce will be showing up more at all types of events. What should we be doing to respond to this rise of fish decks? I don't think Merfolk is a hopeless match-up on any level; just a challenging one. The question is what path to take to combat the imminent popularity rise of fish decks.

Well, this was the actual discussion that I was looking for. As you can see from the GP, Emrakul decks is quite common and a threat needed to consider and they oftenly have 3+ of them.

The process you described looks well on paper however, is it really doable? You need to seriously think about every moove you do and also you need to have thoose BF/remands and wishes in hand for response and on top of that, you need to consider opponents counters. We all agree that it needs to end with a stroke, but is it doable to have a 20+ stroke with all theese things needed to consider? I am just toying with the thoughts here. It is easy to say oh well then I just answer with another BF and a wish for a trap and then I just do... etc.....

And Hunting pack, well how good is it really? As discussed before Meditate and Hunting pack are awfull togheter.

In the Progenitus case you can't answer to the effect since it is an replacement effect (it doesent use the stack). so all you can do there is to wait untill all the BF has resolved and dropping one mill card for each Progenitus untill there are only Progenitus cards left in the library and then go for a stroke.

In the CB case, you guys which run Cryptic Command. How do you cast it? I assume you just cast it by itself at EOT on turn 4 or do you cast it in part of the comboing? But then you will at 100'% face FOW or dazes or whatever they have in counters. What is the reason not just to rely on Wipe Away? Is it about the cantrip or even the tap function? Or is it the reveal of CB in itself since cc3 is more common than cc4? Well Cryptic looks so slow actually...

[Silent Requiem]

Like FoW, Cryptic is never the best solution. It is, however, a viable solution to a whole range of problems. Few cards are as flexible as Cryptic. It's one of those cards that I side out in nearly every match, but game 1, when I'm sitting across from an unknown opponent, Cryptic is my Mr Fix-it.

-Silent Requiem

[ummon]

First of all, Progenitus is a peace of cake, as you just Brain Freeze him and then Stroke the remaining Progeniti, along with the usual one card. Nothing fancy here.

Second, when you have to deal with multiple Emrakuls or other graveyard reshufflers, I think that though Solidarity has the resources to do the job, Flash of Insight would make things ridiculously easy here. While I was originally inclined to agree with Vacrix that PtD is simply better than FoI, I have to say that FoI also has its uses. Perhaps keeping a FoI in the wishboard is the way to go.

Third, as far as beating Merfolk goes, it looks to me like Vacrix has mastered it. So, I guess his green splash, combining tangle or moment's peace with autumn's veil is effective against Merfolk's aggro-control.

[i-never-smile]

The nice thing about FoI is that it produces card advantage. While it may be a lot slower than PtD, FoI is a 2-for-1 that gets around counterbalance and countermagic. Even grave hate is pretty weak against it because you're going to get card advantage out of FoI if your opponent actually puts grave hate in his deck to fight you.

I agree that Cryptic is a great game 1 card, but I also like to keep 1-2 of them in for control match-ups, some aggro match-ups, and anything with CB in it. It has gotten slightly worse at bouncing Counterbalance since Jace 2.0 has made waves in CB decks, but that's still only 3 cards (and maybe a Moat) out of an entire library to worry about, and people typically won't float it on top of their library for very long anyways. I tend to take Cryptic out against combo decks and some aggro/aggro-control decks, but only because there are more important cards that I need to sideboard in--never because it's bad. Even in combo match-ups, a Cryptic can save your ass from all sorts of ridiculous scenarios. For example, against an army of Goblin tokens, you can use Cryptic and Turnabouts to chain tap-down effects while you dig for an Echoing Truth. Or you can have 3 lands, cast a Tide, and use Cryptic to hard-counter something important...it's a play that trades 2 of your cards for 1 of theirs and a draw off the top of your library, which maintains card parity, but you're also probably getting card advantage from countering Doomsday off a Rit or something like that.

[ummon]

Since I can't afford Forces or Trops, I will test the following deck that aims to play around that handicap:

20 Island
4 High Tide
4 Reset
3 Turnabout
3 Meditate
2 Brain Freeze
4 Brainstorm
4 Impulse
4 Peer Through Depths
2 Flash of Insight
3 Cunning Wish
3 Spell Pierce
2 Spell Snare
2 Remand

//Sideboard:
1 Brain Freeze
1 Stroke of Genius
1 Meditate
1 Turnabout
1 Three Wishes
3 Wipe Away
1 Echoing Truth
1 Repeal
1 Hurkyl's Recall
4 Merchant Scroll

Any thoughts or suggestions?

[Vacrix]

Are you liking Spell Pierce? I loathe the card in Solidarity. Its never worked out for me. If people see it in game 1, they just let High Tide resolve in game 2, and can always pay the 2 because they have several untapped Islands. Spell Snare is great against quite a bit, but IDK if its maindeck material. Also, Mindbreak Trap is superior to both. Run a few, maybe even in the MD. You know how much I dislike FoI but if you want it, suit yourself.

[igormagic]

In my opnion, Spell Pierce is a better card for substitute FOW in this deck .Is good against duress,hymn tourach, chalice void, trinisfera, CB,.......
The only disadvantage is turn of combo in counterwar, but is only use twincast,remand, thats solved.

[ummon]

Are you liking Spell Pierce? I loathe the card in Solidarity. Its never worked out for me. If people see it in game 1, they just let High Tide resolve in game 2, and can always pay the 2 because they have several untapped Islands. Spell Snare is great against quite a bit, but IDK if its maindeck material. Also, Mindbreak Trap is superior to both. Run a few, maybe even in the MD. You know how much I dislike FoI but if you want it, suit yourself.

Would +3 Mindbreak Trap +2 Remand -3 Spell Pierce -2 Spell Snare be good MD? Without Force, I'm having trouble finding good disruption. The problem is compounded by the fact that I'm back home from college and don't have any control decks to test against. Also, with only Brainstorm and High Tide as 1cc spells, the deck doesn't seem to pack anything useful first turn. I know this is where Opt traditionally is, but I don't like its randomness. After using Preordain, Opt seems extraordinarily underpowered.

EDIT:


In my opnion, Spell Pierce is a better card for substitute FOW in this deck .Is good against duress,hymn tourach, chalice void, trinisfera, CB,.......
The only disadvantage is turn of combo in counterwar, but is only use twincast,remand, thats solved.

Now that I think of it, Force of Will serves two functions: pre-combo disruption and start-combo protection. Thus, maybe I should keep Spell Pierce to disrupt everything that can hose this deck, while using Mindbreak Trap to protect the combo in a counterwar.

[i-never-smile]

I wouldn't even waste my time playing Solidarity without Force of Will. I like boarding out 1-2 of them in certain match-ups, and depending on whether I'm on the play or not, but I would never run this deck without 4 in the main. It's too central to the way this deck operates, IMHO. If you can't afford Forces, just proxy them and then gradually trade for them/look for good deals online.

I personally board Spell Pierce and Spell Snare for the same reason I board Hydroblast: to have cheap countermagic that solves important problems which usually resolve before I can combo off. Hydroblast is good because it counters/kills Goblin Lackey on turn 1, buying you a vast amount of tempo via slowing your opponent's goldfish drastically. Spell Snare and Spell Pierce, for me, are there to stop fast starts involving Counterbalance, heavy discard, and combo decks. I'm running a split because Snare can hit some nuisance creatures as well as many problem cards, whereas Pierce can hit Doomsdays and Duresses and Vials, etc.

Mindbreak Trap has my respect to the point where I certainly have one in my sideboard as a wish target, but I am uncertain about going so far as playing multiples. I know how awesome the card is against storm combo decks and Belcher, but I would probably rather add a third Pierce before the second Mindbreak Trap...it would make the board more well-rounded against multiple different archetypes, as opposed to shoring up just one group of combo decks. Or am I incorrect in this assessment?

Plus, how many cards can you really sideboard, anyways? If you board too much out, the deck loses combo tools that give it a reasonable fundamental turn. I want to play control with this deck as long as possible, in many match-ups. But there is a point in time when you have to (and downright should) win the game due to opportune timing and imminent opposing threats.

[cjva]

When I board in Mindbreak Trap I tend to board out 3-4 Force of Will. The matches Trap is useful (heavy control) you also gets a lot of time to build up before combo. The usefulness of the trap in combo mirror is just splash damage.

Regarding green splash. I agree that the mono-u build is overall better. Mono-U with Cryptic Command is what I would play in an unknown meta.

Green splash for grip us useful in a CB heavy meta.
Green splash for tangle is useful in a meta with lots of tribal aggro that also have wasteland.
Green splash for Moments Peace is useful in a meta with lots of Zoo, and not so much tribal aggro, or other decks using wasteland.

I used green splash for K-grip + Moments Peace when my meta had lots of CB and lots of Zoo but did not have tribal or other wasteland decks.

What we need to understand about solidarity in a modern sense is that its a heavy meta dependent deck. It is a tier 3 (or something like that) deck, and in order to win with it we need to exploit current trends in our local meta. The only reason why I would recommend someone to play solidarity is for the learning experience. My personal reason for playing solidarity from time to time is cause I love complex combo decks, its one of the few ways I actually enjoy playing Legacy. Now I have switched to doomsday and try to learn that deck. Its pretty much the same as solidarity with the difference that seems like a valid deck.

[i-never-smile]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that Solidarity was good at winning counter-wars long before Mindbreak Trap was printed. And I was also under the impression that Mindbreak Trap is mainly used for avoiding quick rape by opposing combo decks, not for superfluous sideboarding against Landstill or MUC. I am thoroughly confused by the idea of using MBT to beat "heavy control" decks, since the only "heavy control" deck that I fear is the one with Counterbalance, really cheap permission, and a reasonably-fast clock.

[Silent Requiem]

I have never used Mindbreak Trap, for the reasons you outlined above. Some people swear by it, though, so I'm picking up a few copies to give it a try.

Fans of the card claim that Mindbreak Trap essentially works as multiple counter spells, providing card advantage where FoW would provide card disadvantage. A sample play might be:

Them: Anycard
You: High Tide
Them: FoW
You: Reset
Them: Daze (to use up your mana)
You: Mindbreak Trap

You now get all your previously countered cards back, so you probably win.

Now, I see a couple of problems with this. First, you are relying on your opponent playing three spells. Mindbreak Trap does not help you fight through a single FoW (typically targeting your High Tide). Second, it still doesn't help you if they have more than three counters. Mindbreak Trap can be countered as easily as anything else.

I think it's probably a useful spell against faster storm combo, and it can turn your Cunning Wish into a hard counter in many situations. Nix does the same thing though, and is probably more useful overall if you want to win counter wars for zero mana.

-Silent Requiem

Edit: Stupid Futuresight frames - Nix costs U

[ummon]

Wow I have never seen Nix before... I think I will keep Nix as my MD protection subbing for Force.

[mans0011]

Wow I have never seen Nix before... I think I will keep Nix as my MD protection subbing for Force.

I think this is a mistake.

Force of Will stops anything. Nix only stops things like other Forces, Submerges, etc. ( Although, I just realized that it stops the Emrakul+hideaway land combo).

The problem is that the scariest things happen in the first couple of turns. Nix does not stop Goblin Lackey, for example. Hydroblast does, but that's also a narrow card.

You are trading a card for 5 mana... do you realize how efficient that is? That's better than black lotus, even. And you get to do this at instant speed. Cadaverous Bloom only gets you 2 mana per card....

Solidarty has card advantage and quality through Meditate, Brainstorm, Impulse, etc. It doesn't need to win off of back-breaking card advantage, it just needs to survive to turn 4. Guess what helps you do this....

Edit: Also, if people are still so scared of Counterbalance, wouldn't Wipe Away be a better response for the enchantment? I think you could get them to put a non-3cc card on top, then try to combo out. Just Wipe Away and ride it to victory.

[ummon]

First of all, Force of Will in and of itself is not hyper-eficient or anything. 5cc for a counterspell is ridiculous to begin with. Really, you should say that you are paying a card in exchange for the 2 mana of a Counterspell. That's worse than a Black Lotus, but still a lot better than the other artifacts.

Nevertheless, I fully understand Force's strength as a catch all answer to all problems. However, at the moment my budget restricts me, and I am trying to find the best possible mix of MD and SB counters to fill in for it. So, I have decided to use Spell Pierce and Remand to keep my opponent from doing anything annoying, and throw in Nix to help protect the combo.

As for Counterbalance, it looks to me like Wish->Wipe Away is the standard way of dealing with a resolved Counterbalance, though you should try to not let your opponent resolve a Counterbalance in the first place.

[Valtrix]

I think it's probably a useful spell against faster storm combo, and it can turn your Cunning Wish into a hard counter in many situations. Nix does the same thing though, and is probably more useful overall if you want to win counter wars for zero mana.

Nix

It still costs you :u: to play, so it's a very conditional 1 mana counter for force of will esentially...Maybe mindbreak trap if somebody boards it in against you too? Seems pretty terrible to me. You might as well run disrupt instead if you want a 1cc answer. If they know you have it you can buy time or kill a burn spell or brainstorm, and if not, well it still cantrips. I still don't think that's really a great choice either, but I'd probably play it before nix.


Force of Will stops anything. Nix only stops things like other Forces, Submerges, etc. ( Although, I just realized that it stops the Emrakul+hideaway land combo).

Shelldock isle
Emrakul, the Aeons Torn

Shelldock casts the spell, but Emrakul can't be countered, so nix won't do anything for the combo in this case. That said, a hardcast mindbreak trap can actually get rid of a cast emrakul, which makes me laugh.

[jrsthethird]

Shelldock isle
Emrakul, the Aeons Torn

Shelldock casts the spell, but Emrakul can't be countered, so nix won't do anything for the combo in this case. That said, a hardcast mindbreak trap can actually get rid of a cast emrakul, which makes me laugh.

Correct me if I'm wrong, this is how the deck goes off after setting up with Doomsday:

Cast Brainstorm, putting back Emrakul and something else
Play Shelldock Isle, exiling Emrakul
Cast Cloud of Faeries, untapping Shelldock
Activating Shelldock, casting Emrakul

So even if they pass the turn after casting Doomsday to set up, at a bare minimum they have cast just enough spells for the trap cost of Mindbreak Trap, so you can exile Emrakul for free. They still get their extra turn though, so they can bash for 1 before you laugh at them. :D

[Seraphus]

A QUICK return to Solidarity (mono-u) do you think thirst for knowledge is a good in put for main deck or not?

(please justify your oppinion)

Thanks to you all

[ScatmanX]

Correct me if I'm wrong, this is how the deck goes off after setting up with Doomsday:

Cast Brainstorm, putting back Emrakul and something else
Play Shelldock Isle, exiling Emrakul
Cast Cloud of Faeries, untapping Shelldock
Activating Shelldock, casting Emrakul

So even if they pass the turn after casting Doomsday to set up, at a bare minimum they have cast just enough spells for the trap cost of Mindbreak Trap, so you can exile Emrakul for free. They still get their extra turn though, so they can bash for 1 before you laugh at them. :D

Ooooooor, he could be playing Aeon Bridge.
But all of this is irrelevant. We beat those decks anyway.

@Seraphus: Thirst is an option in Solidarity. Check out the #1001 post here, by IBA.

[ummon]

Yeah it is that second turn that I think makes Emrakul a bannable card.

Anyways, ScatmanX, what budget substitutes for Force of Will would you suggest? Right now I'm thinking Spell Pierce with Mindbreak Trap and extra Remands.

[Vacrix]

Eh Emakrul probably isn't bannable. Remands are honestly MVP in sooo many games. I'd fly with x4 if I were you. Remanding your own High Tide and just going off against next turn is pretty sweet if you ask me. You replace the Remand too with the draw. Especially when you have lots of lands out, manipulating whats going on with Remands and Mindbreak Traps is pretty ridiculous. I'd definitely run with those. The opponent will pick up on the 'lack of FoW' and just let High Tide resolve in game 2/3, making your Spell Pierces worthless.

@ Thirst for Knowledge. It might be decent while going off. Throwing away some lands looks cool. Even so, I think Three Wishes is much stronger and I actually look forward to test it.

[ScatmanX]

Well, there is no sub for FoW but, I certainly wouldn't use NiX. Pact of Negation is way better while going off, being free, and also countering stuff like Daze or Spell Pierce.
I agree with Spell pierce not being optimal, but I think it is a good card. G1 you have good chances of countering a Counterbalance. G2 you can even board them out, and board Wipe Away and Pact of Negation in.
I think the best more budget counters you could have are 3-4x Remands, and 3-4 SB Pacts (you can and should wish for them G1 if you predict a counter more counters than you can out-stack).

Also, not a counter, but I loved playing as a 2 off in a tournament I went: Repeal. If you're on the play, it is great against Lackey/Vial/Nactl, etc, also being good versus counterbalance and other stuff, meaning you don't have to counter them right away, if you can bounce it later. While going off, it usually cantrips for 2 or 3 mana...

If I had to take out FoW from my list (#997), I'd put 2 Remands and 1-2xRepeal, 0-1 Cunning wish in its place, and SB -9 green cards, +4Wipe Away, +5 Pact/Trap.

[i-never-smile]

I found what I was missing and basically built the entire Tide deck yesterday, and I'm going to a local tournament on Sunday to get some tournament practice in (and get used to Legacy as a format, again). I'm going to run this:

18 basics/fetches

4 High Tide
4 Brainstorm
4 Opt

4 Reset
2 Brain Freeze
3 Remand
4 Impulse

2 Flash of Insight
3 Cunning Wish
3 Meditate

3 Turnabout
2 Cryptic Command

4 Force of Will

Sideboard:
1 Stroke of Genius
1 Meditate
1 Turnabout
1 Brain Freeze
1 Rebuild
1 Wipe Away
1 Echoing Truth
1 Mindbreak Trap
1 Ravenous Trap
2 Spell Pierce
2 Spell Snare
2 Hydroblast

I like the maindeck the way it is, and this seems like a good starting point for the sideboard in some tournament testing. Any suggestions for the board?

[Seraphus]

Thanks folks, i was the one some time ago that suggested three wishes (arround the time i start to play Stifle), i can say that it didn´t work very well, i'll explain: since the begining of times there is men and womem - wow sorry wrong explanation lol - since the begining of solidarity deck one of the main problems that the deck presents is fail to land drop every turn from trun one to forth, and many times we mana screwed at 2 lands wich meaning that we only have 3 choices for playing cards that actually find land - brainstorm, opt/peek, impulse (and a 4th that is to awfull: foI to zero and than flash back it...).
The use of Thirst for Knowledge/ three wishes leave us so vunerable in that cases because :

1- with 2 lands only is impossible to do it a profit from it (no one is crazy enough to use high tide reset to cast a card for finding land)

2- use 3 mana, on special case with Three wishes, isnt that good at all, since you can't use any of the card (except FoW) that you draw from it.

3- and if you use it would you lose what card from the standard build? opt? i don't think it is any worth replace opt for any of this cards because opt usually helps more on mana screw helps using mana resource and a 1 mana see two cards is really good...


this is my oppinion, thanks for replying

regards

P.S: I-never-smile do you know what decks usually compose your metagame?

[i-never-smile]

I have no idea what my metagame will look like--I haven't played a local Legacy event in a couple of years. I imagine there will be tier 1 and tier 2 decks and a lot of variety, and possible a good chunk of Zoo and Merfolk. I want a very balanced sideboard. Also, in a few weeks, I will be traveling with a group to the SCG Denver 10k weekend, and playing Solidarity there as well...I think that metagame will also be pretty varied but with a swath of Merfolk/Goblins/Zoo based on what happened at GP: Columbus.

[ummon]

Ahh I finally feel happy with the list I have come up with:

20 Island
4 High Tide
4 Reset
3 Turnabout
3 Meditate
2 Brain Freeze
4 Brainstorm
4 Impulse
4 Peer Through Depths
3 Cunning Wish
3 Spell Pierce
2 Repeal
4 Remand

//Sideboard:
2 Hydroblast
3 Mindbreak Trap
2 Wipe Away
1 Echoing Truth
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Brain Freeze
1 Stroke of Genius
1 Meditate
1 Turnabout
1 Flash of Insight
1 Ravenous Trap

Of course about 6 Islands will make way for Zendikar fetchlands once I get the money.

G1 Repeal, Spell Pierce and Remand will work decently against both aggro and control. G2 Trap and Wipe Away can come in against control and combo.

[Vacrix]

What is heavier in your meta? Aggro or control? You might want to roll with the full playset of Repeals, and maybe add in one Three Wishes or something. Honestly Spell Pierce is really weak. I'd even run Spell Snare over it.

[ummon]

It is actually a roughly even split between control and aggro. There are a couple of decks that run Chalice and Counterbalance, and I was just worried about that MU. However, I like Repeal, as it isn't a dead card against aggro like Spell Pierce. I think I will do as you suggested, and test to see if I really miss the Spell Pierces.

[i-never-smile]

ummon: You should definitely replace the Hurkyll's Recall in your sideboard with a Rebuild. It does the same job, but for 1 more mana you have the ability to get around Chalice at 2. It also cycles, so it can be brought in against a Chalice aggro deck and simply used as a cantrip if you don't need to bounce anything.

[Dark Ritual]

If I were to play solidarity, I would probably always have at LEAST 2 spell snare's in the MD for counterbalance and other spells like gaddock teeg, counterspell, even tarmogoyf against fast aggro decks. Spell pierce is okayish as a SB card but I feel with so much aggro in the meta game as it is it is a suboptimal choice in the MD.

I would play rebuild over hurkyl's recall in the board for the cycling ability and chalice on 2 can be done and will be if they suspect you have only hurkyl's to answer it. You can go off through a chalice at 2 but it is VERY difficult and requires a lot of the right cards since you lose remand and reset as well as impulse and peer through depths.

[Silent Requiem]

Ahh I finally feel happy with the list I have come up with:

20 Island
4 High Tide
4 Reset
3 Turnabout
3 Meditate
2 Brain Freeze
4 Brainstorm
4 Impulse
4 Peer Through Depths
3 Cunning Wish
3 Spell Pierce
2 Repeal
4 Remand

//Sideboard:
2 Hydroblast
3 Mindbreak Trap
2 Wipe Away
1 Echoing Truth
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Brain Freeze
1 Stroke of Genius
1 Meditate
1 Turnabout
1 Flash of Insight
1 Ravenous Trap

Of course about 6 Islands will make way for Zendikar fetchlands once I get the money.

G1 Repeal, Spell Pierce and Remand will work decently against both aggro and control. G2 Trap and Wipe Away can come in against control and combo.

A couple of possible changes:

1) If you are not running FoI then you should drop down to 1 Brain Freeze in the maindeck. It's a dead precombo draw without FoI.

2) Consider moving one High Tide to the wishboard and replacing it with Cunning Wish #4.

3) I run Hurkyl's Recall and Rebuild in the sideboard whenever I have the space. Rebuild stays in the wishboard, because if I can wish for it I can also cast it (same cc), and HR goes into the maindeck. It gives me a very strong Stax/Affinity/Artifact Hate matchup.

-Silent Requiem

Edit: I was thinking about Gigadrowse. If all you want to do is stall for time, it seems like a spell that can be cast early, but get's more powerful as you make land drops. So on turn three, against straight aggro, you can tap down their three creatures.

But it's also more flexable than that. You could equally tap out your opponent's mana sources during their upkeep. You can tap out their Aether Vials before counters go on them. It's also hard to counter effectively, because it is actually a number of different spells - unlike Tangle or Moment's Peace; my testing shows those spells to be very unreliable against aggro control (ie, Merfolk).

Anyone tried testing Gigadrowse as a way to slow your opponent?

[Seraphus]

@Silent: giga drowse doesn't really helps (too much mana spended to be effective) but turnabout played at end of second main phase tapping all lands of your opp and than eot combo of really helps...

[Silent Requiem]

I'm not convinced that Gigadrowse is great, but I don't follow what you are saying.

You suggest using Turnabout (4 mana) on somebody's lands before going off. I can't think of many occassions that my opponent has more than 4 lands out when I go off (Stax, perhaps? Why tap them out anyway?), so Gigadrowse does the same thing for the same cost - less if they have missed a land drop.

Gigadrowse is nothing more than a "slow them down" card. It can tap out a Lackey on turn 1 (slowing them down). You can tap out a Zoo player's lands on turn 2 (slowing them down). You can tap out a Merfolk players Vial and Islands on turn 3 (slowing them down). Etc.

In that respect it is similar to Cryptic and Turnabout when used on your oppenent (albeit narrower, as it has no other function), but it can be used from turn 1 onward.

Oh, how I wish it said "Tap or untap target permanent"!

-Silent Requiem

Edit: Meh. Figured it out for myself. Although Gigadrowse can hit lots of targets, it only buys you one turn. Bouncing something often buys you two turns (if they can't recast that turn).

[Seraphus]

I use sb 3 Snap making the deck faster agaisnt all the beatdown decks. I only use the strategy of tap all lands agaisnt landstill or non counterbalanced decks meaning that there is only the 4 fow to be played against us...

[GoldenCid]

Reading the last posts i'm glad to see that you have cut cryptic command. I did so in favour of peer through depths making my deck really stronger (i gave of FoI too). Here's my list to make disccussion (i'm really considering to cut 1 tide to wishboard as someone mentioned above):

// Lands
12 [4E] Island (1)
4 [ON] Flooded Strand
2 [ON] Polluted Delta

// Spells
3 [TE] Meditate
2 [SC] Brain Freeze
3 [US] Turnabout
4 [RAV] Remand
4 [LG] Reset
3 [JU] Cunning Wish
4 [AL] Force of Will
4 [BD] Impulse
4 [FNM] Brainstorm
3 [IN] Opt
4 [FE] High Tide (2)
4 [CHK] Peer Through Depths

// Sideboard
SB: 1 [TE] Meditate
SB: 1 [SC] Brain Freeze
SB: 1 [US] Turnabout
SB: 1 [DS] Echoing Truth
SB: 1 [SC] Stifle
SB: 1 [M10] Twincast / H. Tide
SB: 3 [IN] Disrupt
SB: 1 [TSP] Wipe Away
SB: 1 [US] Stroke of Genius
SB: 3 [FUT] Pact of Negation
SB: 1 [OD] Words of Wisdom

I'm also thinking if 4 remands are really needed, but sincerely i don't know what cut it for.

Comments are very welcomed.

[KevinTrudeau]

Hello, my name is Jack! I have for you all a tourney report.

Deck: Mono U Solidarity
Location: Dreamers
Decklist:

17 Island
2 Misty Rainforest
19 land

4 High Tide
4 Reset
4 Force of Will
4 Impulse
4 Brainstorm
3 Peer Through Depths
3 Remand
3 Turnabout
3 Cunning Wish
3 Meditate
2 Opt
1 Peek
1 Twincast
1 Flash of Insght
1 Brain Freeze

Sideboard:
1 Mediate
1 Mindbreak Trap
1 Turnabout
1 Echoing Truth
1 Rebuild
1 Twincast
1 Pact of Negation
1 Stroke of Genius
1 Brain Freeze
3 Wipe Away
3 Spell Pierce

Round 1: New Horizons
Game 1: He wins the roll and plays first. I T2 Impulse, but he Dazes, which I am fine with. I believe a Misty was Stifled on T4, but I can't remember if it was this game or another. Unable to find enough land by turn 5 or so, I lose to a Tarmogoyf and Terravore.
Game 2: Peer Through Depths finds me a High Tide on T2 or so, and I am able to combo out with virtually no resistance around T5 with a lone Knight of the Reliquary on the board.
Game 3: He mulls to 6. I Force a T3 Tarmogoyf with Twincast backup, which I believe was a mistake because Goyf will generally be a 3/4 for the majority of the game. He doesn't Force back, so I hold onto Twincast. He lays a T4 Knight and I immediately regret my previous move. I try to combo out on T6 when he has lethal on board. I don't Twincast my first Meditate because I am unsure if I will have enough mana to Turnabout later on, and for fear of him countering Meditate and making the situation very awkward. I cast Meditate alone, followed by a Turnabout. I eventually Peek at his hand, and find a bunch of Stifles and only 1 Force. I continue going off, but around spell 13, I don't have an untap effect, with 5 mana floating and Twincast still in my hand. I Meditate, but don't find Reset and lose. I made some huge play mistakes, not Twincasting Meditate early on or Twincasting a Reset or Turnabout to generate more mana, and I paid for it. Hopefully with more experience, I will not make those same mistakes in the future.

Match Record: 0-1
Game Record: 1-2

Round 2: B/R Megrim
Game 1: He lays the new 2 CMC Megrim and casts Burning Inquiry. I luckily hold onto my High Tide and win around T6.
Game 2: Pretty much the same as game 1. He casts the new Megrim, Inquiries, and I get lucky again, only losing a Meditate. I Remand a Blightning, and discard two Islands the next turn to it being recast. Around T7, he casts another Blightning for lethal, but I have six Islands in play and combo off.

Match Record: 1-1
Game Record: 3-2

Round 3: Mermen
Game 1: He mulls to six. I Remand a T2 Adept, but he Dazes. He lands a Lord of Atlantis I believe, and beats me down to 7 over the next few turns. He only has 2 cards in hand IIRC, which makes it unlikely for him to have a grip of countermagic, so I try to go off. I Freeze him for the win since he doesn't have lethal on board.
Game 2: He mulls to six again. He drops a T1 or T2 Vial (can't remember). On T2, I attempt to Impulse but he sacs a Cursecatcher. He beats me down to 5 with a Merman and two Mutavaults. He attempts to cast Standstill, but I remand it with Remand. He declares attacks next turn with lethal, and I attempt to go off. I High Tide, he Forces, I Twincast the High Tide and face no more resistance. I eventually get to a situation with storm around fourteen, eleven mana, a Wish, a Turnabout, and a Brain Freeze. I cast the Wish for Brain Freeze, Turnabout his creatures, and cast both Freezes for the win.

Match Record: 2-1
Game Record: 5-2

Round 4: Hypergenesis
We agree to split the prize packs (3-1 gets three packs, 2-2 gets one normally) and play for fun and ratings.
Game 1: He Outbursts on T3 but I have the Remand for Hypergenesis, which is an amazing card in this matchup. He eventually Show and Tells Emrakul into play. On T6 or so, I go off in the beginning combat step and, thanks to multiple Peers finding me four High Tides, Stroke him for lethal.
Game 2: He gets manascrewed. On his T5, he casts Ardent Plea. I Remand the Hypergenesis. He Misdirects it, but I have a second Remand for the Hypergenesis. I wait a few more turns until he Show and Tells Terastodon into play, and with the destroy triggers on the stack, go off with three High Tides because of the long setup due to his manascrew. I play a few more spells, and he asks if I have a Cunning Wish in hand. I show it to him, and he concedes.

Match Record: 3-1
Game Record: 7-2

In one of the prize packs, I open a foil Archmage Ascension and Marsh Flats!

Things I liked about the list: The one-of Flash of Insight, nineteen lands, Peer Through Depths (didn't give it nearly enough credit), only two Opts and one Peek, one-of Brain Freeze, not playing Cryptic Command (too slow).
Things that could be improved on: Twincast in the main (probably should have been a fourth Peer), sketchy sideboard (Pact, Spell Pierce), only two fetchlands (I don't have the money right now).

I feel that the Twincast in the main certainly has a role to play and isn't necessarily a bad card, but a fourth Peer Through Depths might make the deck faster and more consistent. A fourth Cunning Wish main could also be used, cutting a High Tide and moving it to the sideboard. I used to play Flash pf Insight as a two-of, but I cut one in place of a nineteenth land and never regretted it; it serves its purpose as a late game Demonic Tutor, but you should never need more than one. The sideboard needs a lot of work, and could probably be without either the Pact of Negation or Mindbreak Trap in the wishboard and the Spell Pierces, which never got sided in.

[Seraphus]

Congrats friend nice to see a good report...


I still dealing with the resistance of losing one Flash of insight and the 2 cryptics since they are the key to win vs counterbalanced decks... With that said and since your sb isn't finished why not adding 1 or 2 cryptic there?

Spell pierce isn't any good against most decks only vs discard decks wich normally we win...

Mindbreack trap - u would find yourself in need it against for example landstill decks specially second game when they boarded in more counters like red elemental blast or/and spell pierce, i would suggest adding more 1 or 2 to the sb in order to side in game 2, btw, Saito merfolks is using Spell pierce so it would be a good ideia using mindbreack trap vs merfs...

I don't know how is your matches vs pure beatdown like zoo but doesn't seam very favored to you, at least it was'nt for me until i packed in Repeal...


Congratulations and regards

Ps: since Colombus it's just obvious that ant doesnt die if there's no Mistycal and an important fact: Counterbalance it's back to the game and Wipe way isn't the same since they pack at least 6 cards with cmc 3. Cryptic is going to work really hard this days lol

[ummon]

Congratulations and thanks for the report! How useful are the two Opts when you are playing with 19 lands? I've proxied with no Opts and 20 lands, and I don't think I need any Opts. What are your thoughts?

[Silent Requiem]

Congrats on the finish and thanks for the report.

Personally, I think you either need 2 Brain Freeze and 2 FoI, or 1 Brain Freeze and no FoI - if you do decide to Freeze yourself you want to know that you will hit FoI before you put everything of any value in the graveyard. With only one FoI, I think it would be too risky.

Similarly, if you want decking yourself to be an option, you need to actually pull a Brain Freeze, so you want more than one.

As ummon has suggested, you might want to try dropping the Opts for an extra land and some more powerful cards. I've been testing 20 lands no Opt (I replaced them with Peer Through Depths) and I've been loving it. If you want to stay at 19 land, you may want to use Telling Time instead, as this can still grab you land when you need it.

As for Zoo, I have been testing against it a fair amount, and I can honestly say that the matchup is pretty solid for us. Even on the play they rarely have lethal on the table until we have 4 lands down, and with Tide in the wishboard putting the combo together without disruption is pretty trivial.

I should say, though, that the green splash for Hunting Pack (which I have also been testing) is a very nice extra against Zoo. Hands with Tide and loads of draw (no untap) often work, because you can use your draw spells to find untap. Tide and loads of untap (little/no draw) is rough, because you have loads of mana and nothing to spend it on. Hunting Pack in the wishboard makes those hands (and they are very easy to identify early in the game, so you can use what little draw you have to find Wish) absolutely lethal. Adds a great deal of stability to the deck.

-Silent Requiem

[Vacrix]

As for Zoo, I have been testing against it a fair amount, and I can honestly say that the matchup is pretty solid for us. Even on the play they rarely have lethal on the table until we have 4 lands down, and with Tide in the wishboard putting the combo together without disruption is pretty trivial.

I should say, though, that the green splash for Hunting Pack (which I have also been testing) is a very nice extra against Zoo. Hands with Tide and loads of draw (no untap) often work, because you can use your draw spells to find untap. Tide and loads of untap (little/no draw) is rough, because you have loads of mana and nothing to spend it on. Hunting Pack in the wishboard makes those hands (and they are very easy to identify early in the game, so you can use what little draw you have to find Wish) absolutely lethal. Adds a great deal of stability to the deck.
Have you replaced the Moment's Peace's with post-board Hunting Pack then? Whats your board looking like ATM?

[GoldenCid]

Well...hi! I was in my first local tounament with solidary and i was awfull. Really i couldnt make it. I'm counscious that i took some bad decissions and luck was with my but i'm not sure about my construction. Here it is:

// Lands
12 [4E] Island (1)
4 [ON] Flooded Strand
2 [ON] Polluted Delta

// Spells
3 [TE] Meditate
2 [SC] Brain Freeze
3 [US] Turnabout
4 [RAV] Remand
4 [LG] Reset
4 [JU] Cunning Wish
4 [AL] Force of Will
4 [BD] Impulse
4 [FNM] Brainstorm
3 [IN] Opt
3 [FE] High Tide (2)
4 [CHK] Peer Through Depths

// Sideboard
SB: 1 [TE] Meditate
SB: 1 [SC] Brain Freeze
SB: 1 [US] Turnabout
SB: 1 [FE] High Tide (2)
SB: 1 [DS] Echoing Truth
SB: 1 [SC] Stifle
SB: 3 [IN] Disrupt
SB: 1 [TSP] Wipe Away
SB: 1 [US] Stroke of Genius
SB: 1 [OD] Words of Wisdom
SB: 3 [IA] Hydroblast

Some points:

Opt is a good first turn drop but i really doen's trust on it. Maybe -3 opt +1island +2 cryptic command is a good call. What do you think??
Peer and impulse were the other points. Ok, i wasn't very lucky (i looked 6 lands with 2 consecutives peers) but sometimes impulse reveals lands which are nasty when you're comboing off during the opponent turn. It's useful at fisrt to get the 3rd/4rd land for the combo but well...i don't know. I think that they are good cards for getting what you need on the top so replace them is very difficult.
In the side i was thinking seriously about the usefullnes of hydroblast, why not pact of negation??
I made this analisys:

Suppose that we are playing agaist burn. And we are at 3 lifes for example. He must to play an spell or something to beat us down, so pact of negation followed by the combo would be great. Beside you play everything in answer to others spells he could play.
But now suppose that you are playing agaist goblins, you are in 3 lifes and he has an horde of gobbos to attack. Well, you could use hydroblast for reduce the damage and combo off or just combo off without anything. i mean, the permanent control could be usefull in the first turn but later is not so good. Even today i smashed some gobbos with hydroblast but a non countered mindbreak trap killed me. In this case pact of negation would has given me the victory.

Thoughts?

[ummon]

Regarding replacing the Opts, I think +2 Three Wishes +1 Island works well. When I tested goldfishing with Solidarity, the biggest problem I had was card draw, which Three Wishes helped a lot with. Stuff like Thirst for Knowledge and Telling Time help supplement Impulse and Peer, but don't provide any card advantage, unlike Three Wishes.

[GoldenCid]

Regarding replacing the Opts, I think +2 Three Wishes +1 Island works well. When I tested goldfishing with Solidarity, the biggest problem I had was card draw, which Three Wishes helped a lot with. Stuff like Thirst for Knowledge and Telling Time help supplement Impulse and Peer, but don't provide any card advantage, unlike Three Wishes.

3 wishes seems great, but do you fell the 1UU effect on mana cost???

[ummon]

Yes, the mana cost can be somewhat prohibitive. Still, from the limited testing I have done, it felt worth it. I wish Ideas Unbound was instant speed.

[Vacrix]

Once you are going off I don't see why the 1UU would be prohibitive. Solidarity usually has more mana than it knows what to do with. I'd just see them as x4 more Meditates. Actually... has this been tried? x7 Meditate build sounds pretty good to me. It might be faster than the builds we've been running lately.

[i-never-smile]

I'm all for cutting down on the Opts. I had enormous failure experiences with that card today at a small tournament. I would mull no-landers or almost all-landers into 5-6 card hands, keep a 1-lander with Opt and a Force (and random blue spells), and then proceed to never draw my second land in 6-7 turns. Or I would be comboing off, Impulse into 3 lands and an Opt, take the Opt, put a land from the top into the bottom, and then draw another blank. Granted, I had awful luck (and I wonder if it was due to the new sleeves I bought on Saturday), but I would like to be able to manipulate my deck to the point where I can have a strong chance to win through the unlucky situations.

I also found that I really missed Peer Through Depths--not because it was specifically good in this deck, but because Brainstorm was often really terrible at digging, in the middle of the combo turn. If I had at least 2 Peers in my deck, I would have had more potential Impulses to synergize with Brainstorm. Peer is very good in this deck, but the selling point for me is seeing how terrible Brainstorm can be, when you don't find a spell to manipulate the 2 bad cards to the bottom of your library. Opt doesn't do that very well....

I'm definitely putting land #19 into the deck, too. 18 lands is just stupid. A deck that wants to hit its land drops in every single game is a deck that shouldn't skimp on its mana count.

This recent talk about Three Dreams is intriguing. I have not been testing with this card very much at all, but after today I am ready to put the 4th Meditate main. I Cunning Wish for Meditate at least 80% of the time I resolve a Wish.

One last thing: What is the consensus on the untap effect in the sideboard? Cunning Wish should definitely be able to become an untapper, but I wonder if it's just better to be playing a Reset in the board. 7 mana is a ridiculous amount of mana to pay for a mid-combo untap effect, but 5 pretty reasonable. I'm not happy about having a full set of Turnabouts in the deck, since it will probably force me to cut one or both Cryptics for mana curve purposes...but maybe it's worth it.

[Olesch]

Once you are going off I don't see why the 1UU would be prohibitive. Solidarity usually has more mana than it knows what to do with. I'd just see them as x4 more Meditates. Actually... has this been tried? x7 Meditate build sounds pretty good to me. It might be faster than the builds we've been running lately.

Well, in replacing the Opts with Three Wishes are 19 lands really enough? The reason for having Opt is to ensure the land drops. Three Wishes in itself is of course played at erliset turn three and is at most useful during comboing off.

[i-never-smile]

I propose this for testing:

13 Island
7 Various Fetchlands

4 Brainstorm
2 Peek
4 Impulse
3 Peer Through Depths

4 Meditate

3 Cunning Wish
1 Brain Freeze

4 High Tide
3 Reset
4 Turnabout

4 Force of Will
3 Remand
1 Cryptic Command

Wishboard:
Stroke of Genius
Three Wishes
Brain Freeze
Reset

[Seraphus]

I am sorry im not going to do this in order to glorify myself or in a bad way just to remember:

Van said:

4) How to play the deck - Tips and Tricks:

The gameplan of Solidarity consists of two steps:

a) Setup:

At the beginning of the game you try to hit at least four landdrops (three can be sufficient) and to build a hand consisting of (at least) one High Tide, some carddraw, some untap effects and a way to play around counters if your opponent plays any. The options here are: Force of Will, Twincast or multiple copys of the spell you expect your opponent to counter (...)"

Three wishes or thirst for knowledge are both very good cards mid-combo, and three wishes is very good vs discard decks but both are 90% useless to build a hand in the current format here decks like merfolks zoo and etc have a 4 turns clock...


Did my argument makes any sense to you?

[Vacrix]

I would never cut the Opts. x8 1cc Cantrips are necessary IMO. I think that in the U/g version... maybe it would be better to play them in place of the Remands, considering that Veil prevents us from using it in the first place.

Meditate doesn't help us set up either. Think about it like this. Adding in Three Wishes allows us to find Resets and High Tides to go off against aggro. Meditates and Three Wishes are in a higher frequency so we will likely draw into them during our draw step if we don't already have it in the opening 7 (we should draw 1 every 8 cards or so if we add in the full playset). This will allow us to go off sooner rather than later against aggro and that is really the problem right now.

As much as I like Remand in this deck, Three Wishes might help us go off faster. We'd be boarding them out anyway to fit in Veil post-board. We'd also be losing the BF + Remand trick. Then again, Three Wishes will allow us to play a higher density business version of Solidarity, allowing us to consistently dig deeper into the deck than we could before. More thoughts on this approach?

[Vacrix]

U/g Solidarity
Land
2 Flooded Strand
4 Misty Rainforest
11 Island
2 Tropical Island

Spells
4 Brainstorm
4 Opt

4 High Tide
4 Reset

4 Impulse
3 Peer Through Depths

4 Three Wishes
3 Meditate

3 Cunning Wish
3 Turnabout

4 Force of Will
1 Brain Freeze

SB:
1 Echoing Truth
1 Meditate
1 Turnabout
1 Rebuild
1 Brain Freeze
1 Stroke of Genius
2 Krosan Grip
3 Hunting Pack
3 Autumn’s Veil

Post-board against control:
-2 Force of Will
-1 Three Wishes
+3 Autumn's Veil
(Post-board against CB +1 Krosan Grip, -1 Three Wishes)

Against control, you usually need to deal with more than one piece of countermagic. Force doesn't get there as protection. You can afford to slow down, hit more land drops, and use a single G (maybe even at the expense of a Wasteland), to stop X countermagic. Against CB, you have access to Grip if they can land a CB, but you ought to keep in Force and cut some Wishes in this case.

Post-board against aggro:
-3 Force of Will
+3 Hunting Pack
You raise the threat density and increase the chances of an Early Hunting Pack.

I'll be testing it this week against Zoo and New Horizons.

[Silent Requiem]

Well, here's what I have been using for the past month or so. It's performed well at all my playtesting sessions, as well as my own guantlet.

Land

12 Island
4 Misty Rainforest
2 Flooded Strand
1 Tropical Island
1 Forest

Mana/Untap

3 High Tide
3 Turnabout
4 Reset

Draw

3 Meditate
2 Flash of Insight
4 Impulse
4 Peer Through Depths
4 Brainstorm

Protection

4 Force of Will
2 Cryptic Command
1 Remand

Other

2 Brain Freeze
4 Cunning Wish

SB

1 Stroke of Genius
1 High Tide
1 Meditate
1 Turnabout
1 Brain Freeze
1 Hunting Pack
1 Ravenous Trap
1 Rebuild
7 Other

As I say, I've been very happy with this build, though I toy with switching the Cryptics for Remand or Echoing Truth in the maindeck. Spanish Inquisition has just moved into my meta (and Belcher showed up a month back) and I am feeling the need to improve my fast combo matchup.


-Silent Requiem

[GoldenCid]

Yes, the mana cost can be somewhat prohibitive. Still, from the limited testing I have done, it felt worth it. I wish Ideas Unbound was instant speed.

I thought so...mmm...well. I think that cryptic command may improve the versatility of our deck while 3 wishes is full procombo. I noticed that the silent requiem's list runs just 1 remand! Isn't this too poor?? I think that 2 / 3 copies helps us for the aims of the combo and to slow the opponent.

Could be this counterwall viable?

4 Fow
2 Remand
2 Cryptic command

[Vacrix]

Remand is a great trick when combined with BF. Its unplayable though if you want to include Autumn's Veil has protection. Veil beats X countermagic for G. I'd forego Remand for that. Once I can get my hands on Three Wishes I'm going to test them at my local meta. It will probably run more like SI, chaining D3's and D4's together, but I can deal with that cause I play SI all the time. The counterwall just isn't good against much when you can play better cards. You usually don't need to worry about what your opponent is playing unless its really fast aggro, or disrupts you (exception = stax as you can just comfortably set up and then Rebuild). So aggro, combo, or countermagic. Aggro, Hunting Pack looks like a strong SB option. I practically want to make room for the 4th one. It functions as a virtual Fog as you can surprise block your opponents team with Hunting Pack on turn 3/4, and then beat face. Against combo, you actually lose Mindbreak Trap if you opt for Veil instead. But countermagic is a joke with access to Veil. How is Hunting Pack working out for those trying it? Even Hunting Pack for 4/5 beasts looks like a pretty strong offensive wall, especially when you can chump attackers, and then build up into another spell chain if need be.

Silent Requiem, how often is your Cunning Wish into High Tide? It looks good having that option, opting for a more consistent turn 4. I guess you would board out -1 Cunning Wish, and +1 High Tide if your goal was to get a fast Hunting Pack (T3 ideally) post-board against aggro. I just might do this. Then the first few cantrips can be put toward hitting land drops and finding Meditates/Resets. Turn 3, Wish --> High Tide, Turn 4, go off.

[Silent Requiem]

I'm certainly a fan of Remand, and I have run builds with 4 Remand. However, if I want to go up to 20 land I have to lose something. The obvious candidates are Remand, Cryptic Command, and Brain Freeze.

I decided against dropping down to one Brain Freeze on the basis that I find Freezing myself to be a broken play when forced to go off with a less than ideal hand (or because I have Meditated into something awful). Two Brain Freeze makes that reasonably possible. It also means I can safely pitch an early Freeze to FoW, knowing I can draw into another.

So it came down to Cryptic v Remand. It was a tough choice, but in the end I felt Cryptic was more valuable. It's slow, but it makes for a very strong late game. It also deals with all sorts of random stuff after it has resolved.

Remand, on the otherhand, is dead against Vial aggro (which I see a lot of, especially Merfolk) and I don't feel it is as good as it used to be. The format has gotten faster, and many threats can be recast on the same turn, which turns Remand into a 2 mana cantrip. And because the format is faster, Remand is less useful for baiting counters - often there is simply no "next turn" to try comboing off on.

Varicx has rightly pointed out that Remand does not go well with Autumn's Veil. I'm not really testing Veil right now, but he makes a good point. And while some people will remind me that Remand lets you get off a lethal Freeze earlier, I would suggest that I have never had any difficulty storming up to 17, and that two Brain Freeze acheives exactly the same effect as Remand and Brain Freeze (and with four Cunning Wish getting two Brain Freeze is pretty trivial).

So I dropped down to 1 Remand for the time being. It's definately something I'm keeping under review, though.

As for Wishing for Tide, I can honestly say that I do so only rarely. I run 4 Impulse and 4 Peer Through Depths, which is a ton of digging power. Add to that the fact that I generally don't need to dig for land, and I don't have too much problem finding a maindeck Tide. When I can't, however, wishing for it is absolutely golden. Perhaps even more importantly, having the additional Wish makes my wishboard more accessable, which can also turn the game around when you need a solution "right now". A typical example might be Wishing for Grip in response to Counterbalance, and casting it the following turn.

Although I tried some maindeck Hunting Packs in Bahamuth's build (where they worked beautifully, btw), I leave mine in the SB now. I actually want to wish for Pack because it helps me build storm (Tide, untap, untap, Wish, Pack = GG). However, that's just a personal preference. I certainly think that a more Pack focused build could be viable, although I don't know where I would find room in my sideboard for all those Packs.

-Silent Requiem

[Darkenslight]

For Merfolk, is Trickbinding their Coralhelm Commander a strong stalling plan? It seems like it would be because they won't be able to Level it during that turn.

[Bahamuth]

For Merfolk, is Trickbinding their Coralhelm Commander a strong stalling plan? It seems like it would be because they won't be able to Level it during that turn.

Preventing a whopping one damage.

[4eak]

It could be a lot more than one damage. If your opponent already had 3 counters on it and also had additional merfolk in play, the difference between having the 4th counter and not would be a lot more than 1 damage. That said, nobody is going to be wasting slots or a Cunning Wish for Trickbind, and the majority of the time there are better things to do with a card in hand and two mana.

As to dropping Remands, I find it awkward even though I agree that the card falls short in some matchups (Merfolk, for example). I really want tempo-plays (which cantrip) on turns 2 and/or 3 because I think it is necessary for getting to at least turn 4 against some decks. The best replacement I've tried is Repeal (discussed in this thread many times already). It cantrips and buys tempo in the early game (when we need it most). Cards like Vial can't play around Repeal like they can Remand. End-step Repeals can even buy a bit more tempo than Remand if the opponent would have enough mana to recast the spell. That said, there are so many cases where Repeal just isn't even close to Remand in power level--this ranges from the array of Stack tricks, to enabling the combo, to sheer mana efficiency.



peace,
4eak

[i-never-smile]

After testing, my updated build:

13 Island
6 Fetches

4 High Tide
4 Reset
3 Turnabout

4 Brainstorm
2 Peek (or maybe 1/1 Opt/Peek)
4 Impulse
4 Peer Through Depths

4 Meditate
1 Flash of Insight

3 Cunning Wish

4 Force of Will
3 Remand
1 Cryptic Command

Sideboard:
2 Brain Freeze
1 Stroke of Genius
1 Turnabout
1 Three Wishes
1 Cryptic Command
1 Wipe Away
1 Echoing Truth
1 Rebuild
1 Ravenous Trap
3 Hydroblast
2 Spell Pierce

I no longer have the problem of drawing a dead Brain Freeze because I just have them in the sideboard. One FoI main has been excellent, even without ever freezing myself for more gas.

I hate builds with 4 Cunning Wish. You shouldn't need to use Cunning Wish to set up your combo; you should just use cantrips to sculpt your hand. Cunning Wish is just so slow, it's not really good for sculpting the necessary collection of Tide/untap/draw, if you're under pressure. It's good to have an untap effect and a cheap draw spell in the board, so you won't fizzle if your hand is just Cunning Wish. But beyond that, I really think Cunning Wish is more for solving hate cards (or getting hate cards) or simply finding Brain Freeze FTW. The only reason why I run 3 Cunning Wish instead of 2 is that the third Cunning Wish is better than a maindeck Brain Freeze in a mid-combo situation where you need to avoid fizzling.

The only green card worth splashing is Krosan Grip, which is something you can accept getting Wastelanded over. Any jank like Autumn's Veil or Hunting Pack (in a deck based on Meditate? wtf?!?!!!) just doesn't warrant getting a land raped by the plethora of Wastelands in the metagame.

[Scordata]

I've been playing this deck for a while now, and I've noticed that the majority of lists don't run MD bounce.
Due to the prevalence of aggro in my meta, I decided that 2 x Repeals were the answer.
All I can say is they've been wonderful, especially mid-game.
I don't run Cryptic, because I feel its too slow. I just bounce whatever is causing me headaches and
draw a card.
Its pretty awesome, Turn 2 bouncing vials, lackeys, or whatever. In games like that, a turn two Repeal can be similar to a time walk,
and I find that this really helps the clock.

[dahcmai]

I had tried an odd card while in Columbus for my Landstill build and it worked so amazingly well, I instantly thought about this deck since it has that problem of being just a turn too slow for things like Zoo, Goblins, and Merfolk when the have the nuts or even a decent quick draw.

I played Drop of Honey. It worked quite well. I had a lot of games like this.

1st turn - They drop Steppe Lynx or some other annoying creature that hits hard. I drop Drop of Honey.
2nd turn - They stare at Drop of Honey and re-read it a few times. <I love any card that does that> Then they swing and say go. I take my turn, Drop dies along with whatever they had played.

So when you stop and think about this scenario, I managed to Innocent Blood 2nd turn and Fog my third turn due to the fact no one wants to play into it and have more than one dude die to it. That's pretty damned solid for a single G. Now this is taking into account that they are smart and play around it. If they just try to play through it, it's basically playing under an Abyss that came out 3 turns quicker. Good luck with that.

Against Goblins, they seemed to have no choice, but to play into it. It probably killed 3 goblins before going away due to them being out of creatures. Seems ok. Hasty guys were annoying, but I didn't mind too much considering the investment I had into this card.

Seems like a good fit into this deck to buy those much wanted turns. I know a couple of you run green anyway for that flashback fog. What do you think of this one? I might give it a shot, but it's been a long time since I picked up Solidarity and figured people who still play it could answer it better.

[Vacrix]

I tested this board today. My MD was -1 High Tide +1 Cunning Wish

SB:
1 High Tide
1 Meditate
1 Turnabout
1 Rebuild
1 Brain Freeze
1 Stroke of Genius
2 Krosan Grip
3 Autumn’s Veil
4 Hunting Pack

Against aggro:
+4 Hunting Pack
-4 Force of Will

In short, it was pretty amazing, but I still want to cut my playset of Remands down to 0. In practically every game, it would have been better as a Three Wishes. And... I wanted the 19th land on occasion.

Against Zoo, Hunting Pack was phenomenal. Against Goblins... it was much weaker. It took a few hands to figure out how best to approach that matchup. Post-board Bloodmoons and Pyroblasts combined with a fast clock AND MD Wasteland is not a fun matchup. I still managed to go like 50/50 against gobos today, despite limited experience with this build. I'll keep on top of testing and see how things go. Also, 4th Cunning Wish with High Tide in the board is just phenomenal. I wish for it all the time now and feel much more comfortable finding WC when going off.

[GoldenCid]

@I never smile: Is 1 cryptic really useful?? I'd run 1 addtional FoI instead.

And i liked very mucho the idea of including 3 wishes in the MD or in the side. I'll test 4 meditate MD and 1 3 wishes in the board!

[kicks_422]

While I see the merits of splashing green, I'm iffy on cutting Remand. That card alone does so many tricks for the deck, and has proven to be very valuable to my personal style in playing with the deck.

[i-never-smile]

I think 1 Cryptic main is good. It's card advantage, an answer to most anything, and a tap-down effect. If you're playing against Counterbalance (which most of the games vs CB are, these days), it's good to have a 4th bounce spell maindeck, alongside the 3 Cunning Wishes. I like that it's another hard counter for counter-wars. It somewhat fills in a blank spot where I would otherwhise have the 4th Cunning Wish or FoI, which are both basically slower tools for similar jobs (bouncing stuff, winning counter-wars, providing card advantage, etc.). I'm currently running a second one in the board because I love it in a number of match-ups, and it's actually a pretty good wish target. The main reason why I'm just not maindecking both of them is space--I'm trying to keep the mana curve in check, and keep the maximum ability to sculpt a combo-rrific hand quickly.

@Drop of Honey: This is the kind of card that gets worse against players who know what they're doing. Bad aggro players will get destroyed by it. Good aggro players will play right through it. And it clearly is not a good answer for turn 1 Lackey because your opponent will always get a swing before you get to destroy a creature of his. Regardless of whether you kill the lackey or not, one swing is all it takes for the proverbial damage to be done...in most cases.

If you're going to splash for some kind of anti-aggro card, wouldn't red serve those needs better? You have the following options:

Bolt
Fire/Ice
Firespout (I don't care if this is a sorcery; the answer is insane and it can't be Red Blasted)

In addition, you gain Pyroblasts, and I'm sure there are other good red cards that I missed. If you're willing to splash a color just to really hammer down on aggro decks, at least play a color with great removal. Or if you're going to splash green, just board in Goyfs.

[Silent Requiem]

I feel much the same about Cryptic. It's much like FoW, in that there are loads of cards that duplicate any given effect more efficiently, but none that duplicate ALL the effects. In one game it might be to tap creatures swinging for lethal, in another it's a hard counter, and then in the next it bounces hate. Sometimes I even find myself doing two of those at once. It's such a flexible card.

With four Cunning Wish and a very diverse meta, I am toying with making my most of my sideboard into a wishboard. At the moment I only have three cards in the side that would actually come in to the main in a matchup (Krosan Grip and GY hate). Sor far it seems to be working.

I agree that the red splash would be stronger if it actually answered counterbalance. Being able to gain card advantage through uncounterable removal (or even just 1:1 trades) would be very strong. But that's just not where the deck needs the most help.

-Silent Requiem

[Van Phanel]

After testing, my updated build:
The only green card worth splashing is Krosan Grip, which is something you can accept getting Wastelanded over. Any jank like Autumn's Veil or Hunting Pack (in a deck based on Meditate? wtf?!?!!!) just doesn't warrant getting a land raped by the plethora of Wastelands in the metagame.

Agree about Autumn's Veil, but you couldn't be more wrong about Hunting Pack. Test it. I had the same initial reaction that you had, then I tested it. Trust me, I know what I'm talking about.

[Seraphus]

Van Phanel do you thinks mono-u solidarity is dead?

I think since the banning of Mystical Tutor Solidarity just gets more powerful, however the deck is the deck in the entire Magic the deck that is most skill required and the deck that needs a lot of dedication and daily training (in order to do high performance tournaments with it) ...

[KevinTrudeau]

Another tourney report for yall.

Deck: Mono U Solidarity
Location: Monster Den- the competition here is fierce like Tarvaris Jackson. I know of at least seven Monster Den regulars that made day two at GP: Columbus, so the level of play here is very high. It is a special 1.5 tournament today, as the top eight win prizes such as Goyfs, FOWs, duals, etc., entry fee being $15. I hope to make top eight so I can win duals, which will allow me to play other decks.

Decklist:

17 Island
2 Misty Rainforest
19 land

4 High Tide
4 Reset
4 Force of Will
4 Impulse
4 Brainstorm
4 Peer Through Depths
3 Remand
3 Turnabout
3 Cunning Wish
3 Meditate
2 Opt
1 Peek
1 Twincast
1 Brain Freeze

Sideboard:
1 Mediate
1 Mindbreak Trap
1 Turnabout
1 Echoing Truth
1 Rebuild
1 Twincast
2 Pact of Negation
1 Stroke of Genius
1 Brain Freeze
3 Wipe Away
2 Repeal

Round 1: Jake with Hypergenesis
Game 1: I am forced to counter an early Hypergenesis with Remand. He counters with Force, I Force back. He plays Show and Tell next turn, which I have no responses to since I spent up all of my countermagic the previous turn. Proggy gets to me three turns later after a Turnabout prolongs the game a turn.
Game 2: The details of this game are unclear to me after a long day of Magic, but I believe I am able to fully Stroke him to death without the help of Brain Freeze.
Game 3: He goes for an early Show and Tell with mana acceleration; I Force, and he thankfully has no responses. I Remand Hypergenesis a few turns later, and Force another Show and Tell a few turns after that. At this point, I have a lot of lands in play and am able to go off. I cast Brain Freeze and then counter it with Remand. He reveals a few cards until Emrakul is shown. I Freeze again, another Emrakul a few cards down. I Stroke him for the rest of his library.

Match Record: 1-0
Game Record: 2-1

Round 2: Bearmon with Zoo
Game 1: He gets a T1 Nacatl, and gets me to 5 with three Islands out. I combo off and am successful, casting a Wished and maindecked Freeze to get his whole library. Unfortunately, he takes his first Meditate turn and upkeep dub Bolts me. I don't have a counter and die.
Game 2: He lands a QP on turn two, Knight on T3 which I Repeal on T4. He recasts it next turn along with Lavamancer. Next turn he gets me down to 2 life and Bolts in his second main phase. I go off in response. I get to a point with four mana floating and two Resets in hand. I cast one of them, he Fireblasts in response. I cast the other one in response and win with Freeze and Stroke a little bit later.
Game 3: He gets me down to 5 by around T4 with Nacatl and Loam Lion. I try to go off but don't have a lot of gas. I cast my lone card drawer, Meditate, with a generous amount of mana floating. I draw Island, Force, Turnabout, Turnabout, so he wins next turn.

Match Record: 1-1
Game Record: 3-3

Round 3: Angela with Belcher
Game 1: I Force a turn two or three Seething Song after she plays a lot of gas beforehand. She tries to go off again, but I Cunning Wish for Mindbreak Trap. I win a few turns later as she is unable to fill her hand in time with more Belcher goodness.
Game 2: I open a hand with no lands, but two Force of Wills. I think about it for a minute and decide to mulligan; this could have been a mistake, but it seemed foolish to keep a hand with no lands. My new hand is okay, but without Force of Will, Mindbreak Trap, or Echoing Truth. I probably should have mulliganed down to five here, but don't. She gets twelve goblin tokens out on turn one. I dig for Echoing Truth with Brainstorm, but come up unsuccessful.
Game 3: She mulligans, I keep. She leads with a turn two Xantid Swarm, which I counter with Force of Will. Nothing happens for a few turns until she tries another Swarm, but I Force again. She casts Land Grant, which allow me to see her hand and plan accordingly. I counter something, and Remand her Duress later to protect my only High Tide. At this point, I am in somewhat of a sticky situation as I don't have much gas. I get storm up to seven next turn in response to Duress and Brain Freeze her, countering it with another Remand. The ninth card she reveals is a sideboarded Kozilek, which throws me for a loop. She tries to shuffle her library in with her graveyard, but I tell her I have responses. I get to a situation after a tough Impulse and Peer with thirty-five cards in her deck, ten mana, Cunning Wish, and Brain Freeze with storm at ten. I wish for Stroke, cast Stroke for 2 for the twelfth spell and respond to it with Brain Freeze without passing priority as the thirteenth spell. She doesn't understand how Kozilek's trigger works with the stack and calls Grant, the guy at the desk who is the acting judge you could say. I am very worried at this point that something will happen to make me lose the match, but Grant understands everything I did with stacking Stroke under Freeze and I win.

Match Record: 2-1
Game Record: 5-4

Round 4: Gerry Thompson with U/R/g Pyromancer Ascension
Gerry built a ballin ass deck for the tournament. It included playsets of Ponder, BStorm, Preordain, Manamorphose, Bolt, AK, and Regrowth. The deck tries to Intuition for AK, cast it EOT and begin the next turn with eleven cards in hand trying to combo off with Ascension/Regrowth/Bolt or Grapeshot, drawing cards and adding mana with copies of Manamorphose and filtering with the aforementioned 1 CC draw spells.
Game 1: I am blessed with three High Tides over the course of the game. After finding the necessary parts with Impulses, I High Tide at end of turn after he's built up storm a bit with Preordains. He Forces, I lay another one. He casts Accumulated Knowledge in response, I lay another one, which resolves, and then follow up with an untap effect. I Wish for Mindbreak Trap and exile his two spells. I build storm up to fifteen and cast Wish, to which he concedes.
Game 2: Things go very similar to game one the first few turns, him playing Brainstorms and Ponders, me playing Impulses and Peers. I Remand a turn 4 Ascension to try to tap him out, but he doesn't recast it and ends his turn. Eventually, I try to go off but he as a lot of counterspells, including sideboarded Dispels. I let him have my High Tide so I can hold on to Force. The next turn, he goes off. He draws around fifteen cards with a copy of Accumulated Knowledge and some Ponders and Brainstorms. I try to Brain Freeze him with the storm at around nine in response to a draw spell since he only has around fifteen cards left, but he plays a Force of Will and a Pyroblast, which along with his three Ascensions counters pretty much all of the Freeze copies. He Grapeshots for the win shortly afterward. This was a very intense game that I feel a more experienced Solidarity player could have won, but it was a deck I had never played against so I didn't know exactly what to expect.
Game 3: I am a little low on lands by turn five, but it's okay because he hasn't done much either. The cause of his slow start is revealed after I Peek at his hand to find three Force of Wills, a Dispel, an Ascension, an AK, and a Regrowth. I am not able to overcome his countermagic and lose.

Match Record: 2-2
Game Record: 6-6

Round 5: Tom with Saito Mermen
Game 1: He starts off fairly slow due to only having one blue land. I take advantage of this and get a lot of lands out. I am able to eventually push through some countermagic and Freeze his library the turn before lethal.
Game 2: He gets a turn one Cursecatcher out, followed by a Lord of Atlantis not long after. I halfheartedly attempt to go off, with a Remand in hand to rescue my High Tide if need be. I High Tide, he Spell Pierces. I pay 2, he Pierces me again, with me only having three untapped lands remaining. Instead of casting Reset to continue going off, I resign to Remand the High Tide, but if memory serves, he has the Force. I am beaten by vile Mermen in short order after a valiant chaining of four Resets and various draw spells, unable to find another High Tide.
Game 3: He has another early Cursecatcher, but it's his only Merman for the first few turns. Afterwards, he plays Standstill. Just like game one, he doesn't have much blue mana available due to drawing Wastelands. Catcher gets me down to 16 before I break Standstill on his end step with Impulse with him having six cards in hand. He allows it to resolve and discards down to size. Next turn, Catcher is followed with longtime Merman companion Silvergill Adept, revealing Reejerey. I Peek at his hand to find two Dazes, two Extirpates, a Force, and a Vial. I get rid of one of the Dazes by casting Cunning Wish with no untapped lands. My life is plummeting as I pull off a successful High Tide/Remand trick the following turn, taking his Force and second Daze. At this point, he only has once black source in play, an Underground Sea. I know he's waiting to Extirpate High Tide and an untap effect. He thankfully doesn't Extirpate Cunning Wish at the end of my turn and is still bottlenecked at one black source after drawing his card for the turn. With me at 3 life, I try to combo off in the beginning combat step, playing High Tide in response to another so he can't Extirpate like he wanted. I cast Reset, which he Extirpates, removing three from my library. I draw four good cards and am able to Freeze him to death with Turnabout to tap his critters.

Match Record: 3-2
Game Record: 8-7

Round 6: Nyles with 4-color Countertop, similar to the list Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa played at GP: Columbus
At this point, two 4-2 records will make top eight, and since Nyles got paired down to face me at 3-1-1, I am hoping that a win will give me good enough breakers to win a Tropical Island.
Game 1: He cracks two fetches in the first few turns to get a Tundra and a Tropical Island. I am nervous that he is about to play the dreaded enchantment, but instead plays a 2/3 Tarmogoyf. Goyf hits me for a bit, and when he tries to play a Counterbalance, I try to go off. He Forces my Reset, but I have a Force of my own and am able to win via Brain Freeze. He shows me the three Firespouts he was holding at the end of the game, but hey, Solidarity needs to get lucky to win this matchup.
Game 2: He plays turn one Top, and gets stuck at three lands for a while. I build up lands, but don't have enough gas to go off just yet. He plays CB eventually, and I faux go off at the cost of a High Tide to get all of the countermagic out of his hand to Force the enchantment. He plays another one next turn and says go. I Wipe Away at his next end step, but don't have enough gas to go off yet. I Wipe Away again next turn with the second one I was holding, and Wish for Repeal the following turn to bounce it again. Repeal is not countered the turn after that. As I type this, I am now realizing how horrible it was to just waste Wipe Away like that. I should have held this precious resource until the turn before going off, but I was very tired from the day of Magic to understand the possible consequences of my actions. Enough about that, back to the game. I have enough card-drawers at this point to combo off. He is only holding one Force of Will, so I am able to combo off with relative ease in response to the recast Counterbalance.

Match Record: 4-2
Game Record: 10-7

I ended up in ninth :frown:. I really liked the maindeck, replacing the last Flash of Insight with a fourth Peer Through Depths, and wouldn't change a thing about it if I were to go to another tournament in the near future. The sideboard Repeals were okay. I'm sure that there's something better against Zoo in mono-U Solidarity, but it did its job just fine. Pact of Negation is also okay as a counter for when you are going off, similar to Autumn's Veil, but seems very limited in its use and could probably be something else as well.

[Seraphus]

Congrats again for the your victories and for the great report...

I am going to make one suggestion: instead of 1 mindbreack trap and 2 pact of negation try to use 3 mind breack trap...

And i have a question: why only 2 fetchs?

[ummon]

Well Kevin, congrats (or not) on the 9th place finish.

I noticed you still play the traditional 3 Cunning Wishes and 4 MD High Tides. Since everyone in this thread who has moved the High Tide to the sideboard and played a full set of wishes has liked it, what is your opinion on that?

[Seraphus]

Not everyone moved the 4th high tide to sb because is common sense (and especially to someone how played in the judgement block) that Wished based decks are slower than the decks that don't use it.

Cunning Wish in Solidarity play the role of a card that almost never playable before combo , that although is a combo deck use control cards - not disruption like ant but control cards - and in the current state of things especially since the banning of Flash beside Solidarity only one deck use counters as control the show and tell/emrakul deck... (if someone by now is confused by my argument just ask) Btw Reanimate doesn't use the Counters as control - only agaisnt 2 matches: cb and ant, reanimate counter only counters...

My point is: Time, after all it's only possible to put one land per turn... So facing this fact if time is shorted by some treat that our control face (or control profile that later turns into combo) can't deal the cunning wish is like a stone in the shoe, not one spell can't be played for less than 4 mana passing through Cunning wish (ex: High Tide + Cunning wish = 4 mana or a wasted reset...)
Think like this: if your cunning wish Turn 3 was an high tide would that be better?

To prevent that someone point that they had never lost on turn 3 or if they did it's very unlikely i m going to point out some matches that you will die on turn 3: Goblins, zoo (fireblast version), Ant, Dredge, mono red burn, honorable mention to merfolks that can't kill turn 3 but can give enough damage to prevent a turn 4 solution since counters and treats for letal are their special... Is this all that i mention that unlikely?

After that pointed out ( i am hoping that it turns out that someone share my point of view), one of the most difficult aspect of this deck is sb building since it requires a tool box of 4 cards at least...

Referring to the reason (lack of finding one) that High tide Should be put in the sb: 16 draw spells? Anyone?! The only card that could be a good high tide Tutor in tight matches was Mystical Tutor...

[ScatmanX]

Well Kevin, congrats (or not) on the 9th place finish.

I noticed you still play the traditional 3 Cunning Wishes and 4 MD High Tides. Since everyone in this thread who has moved the High Tide to the sideboard and played a full set of wishes has liked it, what is your opinion on that?

I also have tested the 4 Wish version, and didn't like it...

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Playing 4x Wish and putting High Tide in the sb undoubtedly make the deck slower. It also makes it more consistent and resilient, and those qualities are really the reason to play Solidarity at all. In terms of raw speed it'll never catch up to Tendrils decks or even most Emrakul decks, but it makes up for that by being consistent against combo-hate and beating control decks that can't put on serious pressure.

[4eak]

@ Seraphus


Not everyone moved the 4th high tide to sb because is common sense (and especially to someone how played in the judgement block) that Wished based decks are slower than the decks that don't use it.

Some of the fastest decks in the game use Wish boards. TES and Belcher would definitely be slower (and, extremely related, less consistent) without Wish.

Additionally, adding :u::2: to the cost of anything in your board isn't that large a deal when you are playing draw go. If you didn't need to counter, you can utilize unused mana at the end step for things like Cunning Wish with hardly any drawback (although, there is opportunity cost with regards to digging for other cards). I agree that some sorcery-speed Wish-based decks experience tempo loss, but Cunning Wish's instant speed often bypasses tempo loss in control decks through draw-go style play, whereby you very well may have nothing better to do with that mana in the first place.

You are going to be hard-pressed to convince me that 3x High Tide + 4x Cunning Wish is going to be slower than 4x High Tide (assuming you are playing 3x Wish usually) in attaining the (basic ideal hand for) combo. I made the switch a long time ago, and I've been very pleased with it. Improvements in consistency will directly affect the average speed of the deck -- Cunning Wish for High Tide is an improvement on this front.


Cunning Wish in Solidarity play the role of a card that almost never playable before combo

You aren't using the card correctly. It certainly can and should be used pre-combo in many cases.




peace,
4eak

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

I should say that rather than making the deck slower on average, it simply reduces the odds of being able to go off turn 3. But it's certainly worth the trade off from my testing.

[Silent Requiem]

Well, I placed 5th in a local tournament on Sunday. My local meta has become progressively larger, as well as better, as the "Legacy culture" becomes more established. Really wide range of decks; I saw several storm combo, including Belcher & Spanish Inquisition, 4 or 5 tribal decks (mostly goblins & merfolk), some Counterbalance decks, Show and Tell decks, Stax, etc. Also a surprising number of Suicide Black/discard decks - I suppose mono black discard, along with Burn (which was also present, although in smaller numbers) is a cheap and easy way for new players to put together a moderately competitive Legacy deck.

We played 5 rounds of swiss, cut to top 8. I ran the deck list from my recent post.


Land

12 Island
4 Misty Rainforest
2 Flooded Strand
1 Tropical Island
1 Forest

Mana/Untap

3 High Tide
3 Turnabout
4 Reset

Draw

3 Meditate
2 Flash of Insight
4 Impulse
4 Peer Through Depths
4 Brainstorm

Protection

4 Force of Will
2 Cryptic Command
1 Remand

Other

2 Brain Freeze
4 Cunning Wish

SB

1 Stroke of Genius
1 High Tide
1 Meditate
1 Turnabout
1 Brain Freeze
1 Hunting Pack
1 Ravenous Trap
1 Rebuild
1 Plummet
1 Mindbreak Trap
1 Echoing Truth
2 Krosan Grip
2 Tormond's Crypt

In round 1 I faced off against mono green Stompy. He was a new player, and this was his first Legacy tournament. While his deck was fast enough for the format, he didn't have a disruption package for the combo matchup.

Game 1: He swung for 13 damage on turn 3, and had lethal on the board on turn 4. I let him declare his attackers, and then went off into Hunting Pack. I cleared his board, and swung for lethal on my turn.

Game 2: His hand was a little slower this game, and he did not put lethal on the table until turn 5. I went off in the usual way. It's worth noting that Cryptic Command really saved the day in this game; a bad Meditate had left me with no draw other than Cryptic Command. Cryptic drew me into a Brainstorm and I was off again.

1-0

In round 2 I faced BW Rock. Good player, and he knows my deck inside and out from local testing (while he likes playing a new deck every tournament or so). I've only played a couple of playtest games against this deck and I know that the match is difficult but winnable. My primary concern going into the match is the amount of discard he can through at me while generating card advantage with Dark Confidant.

Game 1: I missed my third land drop, and a resolved Dark Confidiant allowed him to Vindicate one land per turn for four turns. I managed to keep dropping a land each turn, but it meant that I only had three lands in play when I was forced to go off, and I couldn't do it, especially after I had used most of my draw to try and keep putting lands into play. Despite losing, I felt good about the game; I didn't feel that I lost to play errors, but rather just good luck on the part of my opponent, who had the right disruption, in the right amount, at the right time.

Game 2: He mulls into THREE Layline of Sanctity. My only way of dealing with so many laylines will be wishing for Echoing Truth. He knows this too, though. So his turn one play is Thoughtsieze for Cunning Wish. He follows that up with Extirpate a turn or two later. Again, I'm not sure what I could have done differently during the game, but it is clearly a lesson in playing too much of a wishboard against players smart enough to target your Cunning Wishes.

1-1

Round 3 is against an Eldrazi deck. Not Show and Tell, exactly, but a similar idea.

Game 1: I win, but it takes forever. I know there are multiple shuffle effects in his graveyard, so I storm up to thirty or so sculpting the hand I need to put the game away.

Game 2: I stupidly spend far too much time trying to win a game that was always going to be a loss. I have two Islands and a Forest in play and I need to play around multiple shuffle effects... I just couldn't make it happen. It's worth noting that this was the only game I lost all day due to not being mono-blue; even then, it's not clear that three Islands would have given me the win.

Game 3: We go to time, and if I had not wasted so much time in game 2 I would easily have won this game. Instead, we go to a draw.

1-1-1

Round 4 finds me sitting down against Dredge, and I'm pretty sure that I'm out of the running at this point.

Game 1: He tries to go off on turn 2, but he does not dredge into the business. By the time he dredges again, I am sitting comfortably behind a Cunning Wish > Ravenous Trap, but this proves unnecessary. He again does not find any business (and I feel a little sorry for him, because I have SO been there), and I am able to go off when he eventually does find what he needs.

Game 2: I keep a hand with Tormond's Crypt. His turn 1 Cabal Therapy guesses the wrong hate. On my turn I topdeck a FoW and play the Crypt. He plays Ichorid turn 2, which I Force. At this point, it's really over for him, although we do play it out.

2-1-1

Round 5 sees me sitting across from 5 colour control. I don't recognise the deck, but as he had gone 3-1 he was clearly doing well with it. He nearly made top 8 - came in 9th - despite losing this match to me, so his tie breakers must have been good too.

Game 1: He tips his hand a little by casting a Silence in response to multiple draw spells - he must have thought I was going off, when actually I was just sculpting my hand. I bait another Silence the following turn with High Tide/Remand. The turn after that I go off around another Silence and a Counter Spell; I had 3 Reset in hand. I was suprised to see an Eldrazi in his deck when I Brain Freezed him, but I had the Cunning Wish for Ravenous Trap.

Game 2: Much of the same, but he had less disruption and more gas. This time, though, he had the Eldrazi in his hand, which made decking him much easier.

3-1-1

The cut to top 8 finds me in 4th place. We have Dredge, Merfolk, Countertop, Solidarity, StifleNought, RB Goblins, Landstill, and another deck I don't recall - I think it was either SI or Belcher.

Matchups are posted and I sit down across from RB Goblins.

Game 1: Duress takes High Tide, and Earwig Squad removes the other two from my deck. However, Reset, Cunning Wish, High Tide, Turnabout, Turnabout, Cunning Wish, Hunting Pack gets me there.

Game 2: His disruption (discard & Gutteral Response) targets my cantrips, preventing me from sculpting my hand. I go off with only one draw spell (Mediitate) and find only 3 lands and a Force.

Game 3: Again, his well chosen disruption forces me to go off with a far from ideal hand. In this case I had no untap, and High Tide, Meditate, Brainstorm (with two mana floating for Reset) did not get me there.

Again, I felt good about this loss. I lost to my opponent having the right disruption and making the right choices (along with a healthy dose of bad luck) rather than to play errors on my part. Sometimes it's just not meant to be, and I can accept that much more easily than knowing that I threw away an otherwise winnable game.

Final score was 3-1-2 for 5th place.

Observations:

1) 1 Tide in the wishboard was great all day. I could not have won game 1 against RB Goblins without it, and there were several other games where being able to wish for Tide made a difficult hand into a great hand. I don't think I'm going back on this one.

2) I was happy with the 2 Cryptic/1 Remand split. Remand is randomly broken, but sucks in multiples. Being able to dump a ton of creature tokens also makes being able to Brain Freeze half a dozen times less important. Cryptic was fantastic in a number of games.

3) I won two games off Hunting Pack, and lost 1 game due to having to play a Forest - although I was also on three lands, and there is no guarentee that the monocoloured deck would have been able to win under those conditions against an Eldrazi deck. I also managed to dodge Counterbalance all day, so I can't evaluate Krosan Grip. Overall I think the green splash is a plus, but not so much so that I think the mono-blue version is clearly inferior. I think its very likely a meta/playstyle call.

4) 20 lands was great. I was mana screwed in three games. One of those games was due to land destruction, which I discount. One of theose games I won anyway. That leaves me with one game lost to manascrew. All told, my mana base felt quite stable, so +2 land -4 Opt seems to be working for me.

5) My sideboard has become too much of a Wishboard, and if opponents realize that it makes me vulnerable to disruption targeting my Wishes. I need to simplify and focus more on winning my (mainstream) bad matchups.

-Silent Requiem

[ScatmanX]

Congratulations there! That goblins with MD Duress and SB Guttural Response must have been tuff...

Have just some questions here:
- The Ravenous Trap/Eldrazi trick will only work if they have just 1 Eldrazi in the deck, right? Did you knew he only had one when you used it, or you couldn't Stroke for lethal?
- I know is a meta call, but those Crypts was really worth the SB space?
- Was the Forest/Tropical better than just 2 Tropical? (against the decks you played who had Wastelands)
- Did you feel FoI and the 4 Wish config made the deck slower?

congrats again!

[i-never-smile]

I have been giving some serious thought to the 3 Wish/4 Tide vs 4 Wish/3 Tide debate.

An important, and yet neglected fact is that your sideboard has only 15 slots. When you replace your 4th Tide with a 4th Wish, you don't magically gain an extra card slot. You added a card to your sideboard; a card that doesn't bounce problematic permanents, counter problematic cards, or get you out of sticky situations. That slot could be a(nother):

Spell Snare
Hydroblast
Wipe Away
Repeal
Twincast
Mindbreak Trap
Krosan Grip

In Legacy, the most wide-open format, every sideboard slot is worth its weight in gold. Solidarity already has to eat about 5 slots from mandatory Wish targets, so sideboard space is very limited. The builds with 4 Wishes not only put another mandatory wish target (High Tide) into the board, they also tend to force out more space by pushing in other wish targets. If you're running 4 Wishes, your intention is to have the toolbox and compensate for your increased tempo losses by having more silver bullets. But your sideboard cards are so valuable...you will always have to play at least half of your games post-board, and against post-board hate. It seems uncanny to me that people are willing to destroy another third of their sideboard by pushing the envelope with Cunning Wish.

In any case, I have been pondering another, related thought:

Does the deck actually need a 4th Turnabout? Does it need to take up a sideboard slot? I've been very tempted to take it out and put another actual sideboard card in there. I've used it to sculpt my hand by directly tutoring an untap effect pre-combo, but otherwise I've gotten zero value out of the boarded Turnabout. I will play some test games without it, and see how often it's worth Wishing/sideboarding in. Honestly, 7 mana is a ridiculous price for a mid-combo untap effect.

[Vacrix]

I Wipe Away at his next end step, but don't have enough gas to go off yet. I Wipe Away again next turn with the second one I was holding, and Wish for Repeal the following turn to bounce it again. Repeal is not countered the turn after that. As I type this, I am now realizing how horrible it was to just waste Wipe Away like that. I should have held this precious resource until the turn before going off, but I was very tired from the day of Magic to understand the possible consequences of my actions.
Or you could play Krosan Grip, and not sink most of your mana each turn + card disadvantage...

Also, Autumn's Veil is about 300 million times better than Pact of Negation. Veil can counter X countermagic while Pact can only counter one. Wasteland is a horrible horrible reason not to play this card. It is gods gift to Solidarity guys. It says I control the stack right on the card. Besides, Hunting Pack and Moment's Peace are fantastic in the aggro matchup, while Krosan Grip is great in the CB matchup.


Playing 4x Wish and putting High Tide in the sb undoubtedly make the deck slower. It also makes it more consistent and resilient, and those qualities are really the reason to play Solidarity at all. In terms of raw speed it'll never catch up to Tendrils decks or even most Emrakul decks, but it makes up for that by being consistent against combo-hate and beating control decks that can't put on serious pressure.
I don't think its that much slower. Our turn 3 win percentage happens so infrequently that I would much rather slow down and run High Tide in the board. Seriously, the 4 Wishes version is amazing. Being able to Wish for Tide gives you 7 virtual copies of it. Combined with running MD Three Wishes, you can consistently go off turn 4 more often than you could before. Meditates and Three Wishes often just end up in your hand after Brainstorms or your draw step, while you can use cantrips and digging power to find Resets, and Cunning Wish for High Tide.

[nayon]

Forgive me if this has been answered before, but there are 57 pages in this thread so it is rather difficult to go through them all.

What is the plan against combo (or other) decks that run mainboard Emrakul (or multiples of it)?

[Vacrix]

Its fairly simple. You BF as far down as you can go, and then Stroke of Genius. In the green versions, you also have access to Hunting Pack.

[Silent Requiem]

- The Ravenous Trap/Eldrazi trick will only work if they have just 1 Eldrazi in the deck, right? Did you knew he only had one when you used it, or you couldn't Stroke for lethal?
The way Ravenous Trap worked in that matchup was as follows:

I Brain Freeze, and about halfway through his deck we turn over Emrakul.
I think about it and Wish for Ravenous Trap. Sometimes it is better to let the shuffle effect occur and keep the Brain Freeze going (ie, you have only turned over 6 cards, etc)
Brain Freeze now continues to resolve and I deck him without further problem. If there had been another Emerakul I would have needed to use Stroke of Genius.


- I know is a meta call, but those Crypts was really worth the SB space?

Crypts are not my first choice of GY hate. I usually use Ravenous Trap when I expect Dredge. However, there is a discard deck in the meta that abuses Raven's Crime without triggering Ravenous Trap, and I wanted a hate card that could deal with all kinds of GY abuse. I thought it might also be useful against Madness.

Still, I drew the card exactly when I needed it and it did exactly what I wanted it to do; I won a game that put me back into contention for top 8 because of a turn 1 Crypt, so I was pretty happy with it. I'm still not sure it's ideal, though.


- Was the Forest/Tropical better than just 2 Tropical? (against the decks you played who had Wastelands)

Can't really answer that. I only ran into one set of Wastelands in the tournament, and he was busy Vindicating my basics anyway. :P


- Did you feel FoI and the 4 Wish config made the deck slower?

Yes, and no. It makes the turn 3 (ie, fastest) win even less likely, but it makes the turn 4 win far more likely. It brings down the max speed by one turn, but it probably brings up the average speed by half a turn or so.


It seems uncanny to me that people are willing to destroy another third of their sideboard by pushing the envelope with Cunning Wish.

Spot on. Especially when you start putting in Hunting Pack and the like. The sideboard is very, very tight, which is why I went with a 13 card wishboard, in effect. I now think that was the wrong move and that I should focus on having general maindeck answers (in my case, Cryptic Command) and focus on a sideboard for only those matchups that my maindeck answers cannot handle. I still feel a Tide in the wishboard is the right move, though.


Does the deck actually need a 4th Turnabout?

Quite possibly not. I never wish for it. 7 mana for a (typically) 8 mana return is just not good enough. Untap is also the easiest part of the combo to find, with 7 of them in the maindeck. If you are not playing Cryptic, however, it may be more important - you could find yourself Wishing for a way to tap their creatures... though the same amount of mana gets you a Stroke for 1 which will probably win the game even faster.

As for Autumn's Veil, I really do need to give that a proper testing.

-Silent Requiem

[nayon]

Its fairly simple. You BF as far down as you can go, and then Stroke of Genius. In the green versions, you also have access to Hunting Pack.

You mean Stroke in response to the Emrakul trigger?

[Vacrix]

Sure. It depends on the situation though. If you are playing green, sometimes Hunting Pack will be a better out.

[Tammit67]

@Vacrix- With the testing you stated a page or so back, what list would you recommend running? Did the moment's peace get dropped in favor of Hunting pack, and is that storm spell really that worth it?

Basically looking for a list to run at a local shop. I have some experience with the deck on the whole. Expect practically no CB lists, some Blue based aggro in the form of excalibur/new horizons, 2 zoo decks, 2 dredge, lands, and chaff

[Vacrix]

My Three Wishes just came in the mail. Can't wait to test em out.

@Tammit67
This is the list I'm running ATM:
U/g Solidarity
2 Flooded Strand
4 Misty Rainforest
12 Island
2 Tropical Island

4 Brainstorm
4 Opt

3 High Tide
4 Reset

4 Impulse
3 Peer Through Depths

3 Three Wishes
3 Meditate

4 Cunning Wish
3 Turnabout

4 Force of Will
1 Brain Freeze

SB:
1 High Tide
1 Brain Freeze
1 Meditate
1 Rebuild
1 Wipe Away
1 Stroke of Genius
1 Turnabout
1 Krosan Grip
3 Autumn’s Veil
3 Hunting Pack

20 lands, 4 Wishes, High Tide in the wishboard. I'm not dropping Moment's Peace for good. I'm just testing Hunting Pack a lot that way I can get a feel for it. In general though, its been great against Zoo. The turn they have lethal damage on the table, or the turn before that turn (burn) you storm off for however much, block your opponent's team, and then swing in for lethal on your turn.

So far, Stifle has really been killing me vs. New Horizons. For some reason I've been drawing an absurd amount of fetches during testing.

If you expect that sort of metagame, PSI would be pretty good too. I just developed a post-board plan that has been wrecking aggro control like New Horizons, at least in the limited testing I've done. Anyway, thats for another thread. Solidarity might not be the best choice for that meta. I think its better suited for SI.

[Tammit67]

I agree, PSI sounds better. But people have been talking shit about one of my favorite decks, I can't just let that go :p. And by blue based aggro I mean only 2 decks with force, if they show up. 20-25 people expected, the zoo players will beat pretty much anything they come across. Skill level.

List looks solid, though 20 lands is 2 more than I ran before. Has it ever been a problem?

[Endrju]

Sure. It depends on the situation though. If you are playing green, sometimes Hunting Pack will be a better out.

Just wondering: had anyone tested black in a place of green, for Extirpate against Eldrazi? It solves the problem of multiple Emrakuls pretty well. Sure it's 1 mana more expensive, but as you were able to storm up to ~30 and still have mana for SoG, it doesn't look like making a real difference... Or having both black and green, would it be good option?

[ummon]

Just wondering: had anyone tested black in a place of green, for Extirpate against Eldrazi? It solves the problem of multiple Emrakuls pretty well. Sure it's 1 mana more expensive, but as you were able to storm up to ~30 and still have mana for SoG, it doesn't look like making a real difference... Or having both black and green, would it be good option?

I think the reason for the green splash is that it gives you good cards against aggro and control decks. The ability of Hunting Pack to sidestep the Emrakul problem is simply an extra benefit that the green splash gives. I can think of Tendrils of Agony perhaps being useful with a black splash, but can't think of anything else in addition to Extirpate that is useful. Any thoughts?

[KevinTrudeau]

Splashing black in Solidarity does not seem good to me. Emrakul is very easy to play around- just Freeze and Remand, Freeze again, then Stroke for the kill. If you're looking for a sideboard card to circumvent graveyard shenanigans, try a one-of Ravenous Trap. Tendrils of Agony should not go into Solidarity simply because it is not an instant and therefore cannot be wished for.

[ummon]

Oh, my mistake. I didn't realize Tendrils is sorcery speed... :D

[Scordata]

I disagree.
I think the black splash is worth looking into, and I have been testing the following cards:

Ravenous Trap
Shadow of Doubt
Slaughter Pact
Slay
Suffer the Past
Cremate
Darkness
Entomb
Extirpate
Fade from Memory
Headstone
Imp's Mischief


I'll let you guys know how its working.

[ScatmanX]

I disagree.
I think the black splash is worth looking into, and I have been testing the following cards:

Ravenous Trap
Shadow of Doubt
Slaughter Pact
Slay
Suffer the Past
Cremate
Darkness
Entomb
Extirpate
Fade from Memory
Headstone
Imp's Mischief


I'll let you guys know how its working.

The 1st 3 cards you linked can be used without a splash...
Also, if I were to splash black, I'd certainly consider Bubbling Muck...

[Seraphus]

5 colors control beat down solidarity how about that? next week you can try Solidarity brown with metalworker...

Please let's focus on the deck?! the one with instants and lands and only one color?! ok?!

[ScatmanX]

Please let's focus on the deck?! the one with instants and lands and only one color?! ok?!

Can I just post one other one?
Feel free to ignore it.

So, After getting my ass kicked by Counterbalance and goblins in a f****g lot of games yesterday, I decided to try to tune the deck to beat them, since I realized I was focusing more on the already good MU's, than the bad ones.
I'll just start posting what, for me, it's the core of the deck:

18 lands

4 High Tide
4 Reset
3 Turnabout

4 Impulse
4 Brainstorm
3 Meditate
3 Cunning Wish
4 Force of Will
1 Brain Freeze
(if you change +1 Wish, -1 Tide, thats ok. I just want the extra SB slot)

That leaves us with 12 cards to toy around.
I've been cutting down on the Opts, and upping the land count, so, 2 of those 12 are 2 other lands now.
The rest can be a split of PtD, Remand, Repeal, Cryptic Command, Three Wishes, FoI, BF, whatever...
What I'm currently testing (after reading that it have already been tested and discussed in this thread by Mystical and Valcrix, if I recall) is: +4 Merchant Scroll, +4 Quicken.
The other 2 cards I really don't know now, but are Three Wishes for the record.

So, why Scroll and Quicken?
Really, I'm trying to see if the deck can be faster.

But this is not really the reason I'm writing this.
On to the SB.

Again, Core:
1off: Meditate, Stroke, Truth, Rebuild, Turnabout, Brain Freeze.
That leaves 9 slots. I take 1 Ravenous Trap for random Ichorid. So there's 8 now.

What do I want out of those 8 cards?
- Something to deal with CB, and have some utility.
- Something to deal with Agroo, and have some utility.

My choices, for the sake of testing, are:
4- Pyroblast
4- Firespout/Pyroclasm

Pyroblast:
- Gives us 8 hard Counterbalance counterspells in the MU. Thats a lot.
- Is great against Merfolk, not only protecting the combo, but killing they're guys, if you need more time.
- Works against the unsuspected Mindbreak Trap, so you can bring it in g3.
- Makes the deck even better against Storm combo, and those new SnT decks...

Firespout/Clasm:
- Slow down Goblins considerably.
- Slow down Folk considerably.
- Slow down Zoo, while also getting rid of annoying Teggs/Cannonists...
- Can be cast at instant speed with Quicken (ok, not a pro, but Fallout costs 1RR, witch is dangerous.

Considering that a normal U Solidarity has Wipe Away to deal with CB, and nothing to deal with fast agroo (just some 1/2 useful stallers), and Ug has Grip for CB, Moment's Peace for Agroo and Veil for Counters, I'm guessing that being more flexible than monoU, and use only 1 card where Ug has to use 2 (Blast instead of Grip and Veil) can be a very good thing.

So, I guess this is it.
Anyone think this might be a good idea, or just a big chunk of waste of time?

[Silent Requiem]

While Extirpate is cool, it's also very situational, and should ideally be paired with discard, which largely happens at sorcery speed. I really don't see what else we want in black (although being able to hardcast Ravenous Trap would be pretty useful in some niche cases).

I've tried Scroll and Quicken, by the way, as I suspect many people have. Quicken was disappointing even when it was an alternative to Opt (the effects do not stack, btw), and now that Opt doesn't make the cut (in my list) I just don't see it being viable. Scroll, of course, is very, very powerful as a setup card, but with a Tide in the sideboard there is no longer anything that I can't Cunning Wish for instead. That's a turn slower, of course, but it's also more flexible because I can cast it while comboing.

-Silent Requiem

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

I have been giving some serious thought to the 3 Wish/4 Tide vs 4 Wish/3 Tide debate.

An important, and yet neglected fact is that your sideboard has only 15 slots. When you replace your 4th Tide with a 4th Wish, you don't magically gain an extra card slot. You added a card to your sideboard; a card that doesn't bounce problematic permanents, counter problematic cards, or get you out of sticky situations. That slot could be a(nother):

Spell Snare
Hydroblast
Wipe Away
Repeal
Twincast
Mindbreak Trap
Krosan Grip

In Legacy, the most wide-open format, every sideboard slot is worth its weight in gold.

It is a frankly unusual situation that any other card you could Cunning Wish for would be better for your chances of winning than a High Tide. High Tide, Reset, and Meditate are the deck's backbone, and the reason I run 4 Wishes and 1 of each of these in the board. The number of games you lose for not having the gas to go off are far out number the number of times you lose to some bizarre lock position that requires more narrow answers in the board. Even against, say, Enchantress, High Tide will be a more frequent Wish target than Hibernation.

[Vacrix]

I'm with IBA on the 4 Wish debate. I wish for Tide so much now. Also, Three Wishes has been working out really well for the record.

I did quite a bit of testing against Zoo.. and my opponent figured out that Sylvan Library is amazing if you keep it in. You'd think that it would be slow, but they can use their life total as a resource to dig quickly through their deck for Burn and their Storm hate. Since my opponent started doing this, Hunting Pack has become significantly harder to use since I'm running into Teeg more often. I put the matchup as less than 50/50 now against a competent Zoo player, but before that it looked pretty good. I might switch back to Moment's Peace because that worked extremely well. I'll probably hold on to a single Hunting Pack anyway just because 4 Wish config allows you to setup that play more often.

Also, I used Hunting Pack with a similar success rate against Goblins. I just set up the turn so that I have a fetch, and can go off in response to my opponent's Wasteland trigger. I've made as few as 5 tokens and won, but usually its somewhere between 6-8.

@Black Splash
I wouldn't bother with it. The green splash has the best selection of cards if you want to play a splash. Krosan Grip --> CB, Autumn's Veil --> Countermagic, Hunting Pack --> Aggro, and Moment's Peace/Tangle --> Aggro.

[ummon]

Can I just post one other one?
Feel free to ignore it. The traditional mono-blue instant speed list is not good enough in today's legacy, so we need to try innovating. Post as many ideas as you like. :)


So, After getting my ass kicked by Counterbalance and goblins in a f****g lot of games yesterday, I decided to try to tune the deck to beat them, since I realized I was focusing more on the already good MU's, than the bad ones.
I'll just start posting what, for me, it's the core of the deck:

18 lands

4 High Tide
4 Reset
3 Turnabout

4 Impulse
4 Brainstorm
3 Meditate
3 Cunning Wish
4 Force of Will
1 Brain Freeze
(if you change +1 Wish, -1 Tide, thats ok. I just want the extra SB slot)

That leaves us with 12 cards to toy around.
I've been cutting down on the Opts, and upping the land count, so, 2 of those 12 are 2 other lands now.
The rest can be a split of PtD, Remand, Repeal, Cryptic Command, Three Wishes, FoI, BF, whatever...
What I'm currently testing (after reading that it have already been tested and discussed in this thread by Mystical and Valcrix, if I recall) is: +4 Merchant Scroll, +4 Quicken.
The other 2 cards I really don't know now, but are Three Wishes for the record.

So, why Scroll and Quicken?
Really, I'm trying to see if the deck can be faster. Finding both a Merchant Scroll and Quicken pre-combo is quite unlikely. Thus, I find that Merchant Scroll is a bad setup card since you lose the flexibility of seeing what your opponent plays. I think the draw-landdrop-go style of Solidarity is a big strength, and I wouldn't lose that ability just to be a turn faster.


But this is not really the reason I'm writing this.
On to the SB.

Again, Core:
1off: Meditate, Stroke, Truth, Rebuild, Turnabout, Brain Freeze.
That leaves 9 slots. I take 1 Ravenous Trap for random Ichorid. So there's 8 now.

What do I want out of those 8 cards?
- Something to deal with CB, and have some utility.
- Something to deal with Agroo, and have some utility. Yes, fast aggro and CB are the biggest weaknesses of this deck. Any proposed build has to address these.


My choices, for the sake of testing, are:
4- Pyroblast
4- Firespout/Pyroclasm

Pyroblast:
- Gives us 8 hard Counterbalance counterspells in the MU. Thats a lot.
- Is great against Merfolk, not only protecting the combo, but killing they're guys, if you need more time.
- Works against the unsuspected Mindbreak Trap, so you can bring it in g3.
- Makes the deck even better against Storm combo, and those new SnT decks... Good counter against Counterbalance, but being 1cc, useless if you draw/cantrip into it. As for the Merfolk and Mindbreak Trap MUs, Autumn's Veil is more powerful but useless against Mindbreak Trap. On the whole, Pyroblast is certainly a card that good benefit Solidarity.


Firespout/Clasm:
- Slow down Goblins considerably.
- Slow down Folk considerably.
- Slow down Zoo, while also getting rid of annoying Teggs/Cannonists...
- Can be cast at instant speed with Quicken (ok, not a pro, but Fallout costs 1RR, witch is dangerous. This is inferior to Moment's Peace or Tangle. Sorcery speed and higher cc (if your opponent is playing first, by the time you cast it, you might be within burn range).


Considering that a normal U Solidarity has Wipe Away to deal with CB, and nothing to deal with fast agroo (just some 1/2 useful stallers), and Ug has Grip for CB, Moment's Peace for Agroo and Veil for Counters, I'm guessing that being more flexible than monoU, and use only 1 card where Ug has to use 2 (Blast instead of Grip and Veil) can be a very good thing.

So, I guess this is it.
Anyone think this might be a good idea, or just a big chunk of waste of time? My feeling is that the green splash is more useful, especially because of Moment's Peace and Hunting Pack. I certainly plan to splash for green once I get enough fetches. But you can't know for sure until you try the red splash in a tourney. ;)

[cjva]

several pages back I talked about 3 High Tide, 4 Wish MD, and played it for like a year or so until I switched to Mystical in SB and the good old 4/3 High Tide / wish md.

My experience with High Tide in SB and 4 wishes MD was that it made for a more stable turn 4 win, on the cost of lowering the odds of turn 3 wins with the deck.

Still think that is a good choice, cause the odds of spinning turn 3 is rather slim anyway. But is this not a big problem for solidarity, that its a fundamental turn to slow, and the SB High Tide just lock this slowness in stone?

And yes, people should rely stop talking about adding sorcery's in solidarity. Stop contaminating the thread and go post in the spring tide thread instead.

[sillysam71]

Ok, I know this doesn't help the deck, but here's a sweet T-shirt from the band Enter Shikari that you can wear while playing it. lol

http://www.gomerch.com/xrx/body.php?module=product_details&pid=2704&id=95

As for productiveness, I also have a hard time seeing sorcery speed cards in this deck. Although, i think that Merchant Scroll may have potential since it would be played as a setup card, much like Impulse or Peer through Depths, but unless you are pitching it to Force, it is dead mid-combo. Still need to test, though.

[Darkenslight]

What about things like Harm's Way? Going for a W splash adds in disruption to Aggro, leaving CB as a weak point.

[ScatmanX]

What about things like Harm's Way? Going for a W splash adds in disruption to Aggro, leaving CB as a weak point.

Ok, now I agree with Vacrix/cjva... MonoU or Ug is the way to go...

@Dark: white does not offer anything that green offers better.

[Valtrix]

What about things like Harm's Way? Going for a W splash adds in disruption to Aggro, leaving CB as a weak point.

If you really want to prevent two damage from aggro, consider instead tangle that does a whole lot more. Heck, even a card like fog will do more for you. If you splash at all, green is the way to go. Best CB hate, best aggro-hate, and best counter-hate (autumn's veil).

[cjva]

Ok, now I agree with Vacrix/cjva... MonoU or Ug is the way to go...

@Dark: white does not offer anything that green offers better.

@ ScatmanX: Im not saying that discussion about splash color except green should be taken elsewhere. I think that discussion of that sort can and should be discussed in this thread as long as it stays true to the essence of Solidarity (combo going off in opponents turn).

@thread: What we should do when we discuss splash in solidarity is work in a couple of steps.

1: Identify a problem.
2: Motivate why mono-u is not sufficient in order to solve the particular problem.
3: See if there is another color who contribute spells in order to solve the particular problem.
4: See if the gain of splashing is worth it, comparing the new problem that comes from playing with a splash with the old problem.

The problem I see for solidarity in the new meta is:

1: Aggro decks that are faster then our combo (Zoo in particular, but also goblin in some respect)
2: Control decks with a fast aggro clock (merfolk)
3: Counterbalance who prevent us from playing the game

I'v been playing against people who starts to laugh when I go off, telling me that I cant win. They boarded in a blessing. Playing around 1-4 Emrakul's are as easy as playing around 1-4 blessing. So Emrakul is not a problem.

Other combo decks is not a problem, at least not in my experience. (I pack 3-4 Twincast between SB and MD and 3 Mindbreak Traps in SB).

I can't see what use other colors have in solidarity except the green splash who offers us Tangle/Moments Peace and helps us to tackle aggro and with the help of Krosan Grip helps us handle the CB match up, leaving merfolk as the last unsolved problem, who will be a bit easier to tackle if Saitos build takes a hold, more counters from their part turns on our Mindbreak Traps.

[ummon]

several pages back I talked about 3 High Tide, 4 Wish MD, and played it for like a year or so until I switched to Mystical in SB and the good old 4/3 High Tide / wish md.

My experience with High Tide in SB and 4 wishes MD was that it made for a more stable turn 4 win, on the cost of lowering the odds of turn 3 wins with the deck.

Still think that is a good choice, cause the odds of spinning turn 3 is rather slim anyway. But is this not a big problem for solidarity, that its a fundamental turn to slow, and the SB High Tide just lock this slowness in stone?

And yes, people should rely stop talking about adding sorcery's in solidarity. Stop contaminating the thread and go post in the spring tide thread instead.

Getting a consistent turn 4 win is imo better than a turn 3-5 win, especially when you have access to things like the green splash to slow down aggro. In fact, the turn 3-5 win is really a turn 4-5 win with occasional turn 3 wins, so we are actually making it a bit faster by putting the last High Tide in the SB.

[cjva]

Getting a consistent turn 4 win is imo better than a turn 3-5 win, especially when you have access to things like the green splash to slow down aggro. In fact, the turn 3-5 win is really a turn 4-5 win with occasional turn 3 wins, so we are actually making it a bit faster by putting the last High Tide in the SB.

Thats my view as well, but I don't know if I consider that enough thou. Our turn 4 might mean their turn 5, and most modern decks goldfish faster than that. Green splash is good, and can slow down post SB. But that also mean that we have a rely hard MU pre board against aggro.

[Seraphus]

After all points consider about splashing a color can someone mention and show me that Mono-u Solidarity doesn't work? Point it out or whatever, but show me with clear statements that Solidarity-u does not work...

Regards to you all

[cjva]

After all points consider about splashing a color can someone mention and show me that Mono-u Solidarity doesn't work? Point it out or whatever, but show me with clear statements that Solidarity-u does not work...

Regards to you all

mono-u is still probably the version of Solidarity I would sleeve up for an unknown meta. It's the most stable version of Solidarity as far as I can see it. But in a meta where I expect lots of CB, I think that G-splash for Krosan Grip has a slightly better MU. In a meta with lots of Zoo a G-splash for moments peace has a slightly better MU.

Splash in Solidarity is not, in my view, a replacement for mono-u solidarity that is the right choice in all cases, but a way to adept to a particular meta.

Solidarity "doesn't work" as it is. Its a low level tier deck and it is about a turn to slow to be considered a strong contender in the general legacy meta.

[Seraphus]

Cjva i understand your point but there are adjustments that you can do to Solidarity-u for example i played 2 Repeals maindeck since it's a card that deal with a great number of troubles - even ca deall with counterbalance it self - for example: Nacatl, Lackey, Vial and etc. and it draw a card logically it's always a 2 per 1 card...

Against aggro decks like Zoo or Gobos (since everyone have so much slots in there sb) you can even improve the deck by using Snap (i use 2);

Against Combo and control decks Mindbreack trap really does the job (i use 3) and combined with Force it improves the Reanimator match, and you can add dispel that also works vs Zoo since they sb in REB and Pyroblast (sometimes even Mindbreack trap), dispel is also useful against Mono Red Burn...

Echoing truth and Trickbind (1 copy of witch) can work vs combo (empty the warrens) or vs aggro, and vial decks... Not to mention that both are great vs dredge...

But The most Important point is: Every deck has their bad Match Ups, accepting that is part of playing Magic...

[GoldenCid]

At this point i see a lot of side cards spread everywhere. I think that green splash is the better if splash is what we need. But can anybody post a Ug side completely to start the discussion on a solid basis??
Thx!

[cjva]

Yea, I have also played around with Repeal etc. They are good. Problem with bounce is that it does not take care of for example counterbalance the same way Krosan Grip does.

To point out once again, Im not arguing for Ug Solidarity to be the ultimate answer to its shortcomings, but a way of adapting the deck to a specific meta.

I have never had any good experience with Hunting Pack, but my Ug Solidarity board looked like this.

3 Moments Peace
3 Mindbreak Trap
2 Krosan Grip
1 Tolarian Winds
1 Turnabout
1 Stroke of Genius
1-3 bounce
1-3 Twincast

I used to play 1 Mystical Tutor in the SB pre banning.

[Seraphus]

And exposing the deck to Wasteland and less power (if you use a forest instead of an island like Van suggest it) when you start to combo out isn't important?

[ummon]

And exposing the deck to Wasteland or less power (if you use a forest instead of an island like Van suggest it) when you start to combo out isn't important?

Corrected.

[Vacrix]

Seriously why is everyone so afraid of Wasteland? Just keep responding to the trigger when they try to get rid of it, or use a fetchland to 'protect' it. The opponent often forgets you can just keep responding.
Yes, you get more power out of the deck at the expense of making the mana base a little less stable against Wasteland.

Aside, has anyone else tested Three Wishes? I've enjoyed it so far and haven't missed Remand much.

[cjva]

And exposing the deck to Wasteland and less power (if you use a forest instead of an island like Van suggest it) when you start to combo out isn't important?

Read my posts about the subject again and think for a minute why I would sleeve mono-u in an unknown meta. Zoo does not play Wasteland, CB rarely play wasteland, and the G-splash is in my view there to better these MU's.

[ScatmanX]

Seriously why is everyone so afraid of Wasteland? Just keep responding to the trigger when they try to get rid of it, or use a fetchland to 'protect' it. The opponent often forgets you can just keep responding.
Yes, you get more power out of the deck at the expense of making the mana base a little less stable against Wasteland.

Aside, has anyone else tested Three Wishes? I've enjoyed it so far and haven't missed Remand much.

I'm playing 2 Three Wishes in my build, and really liking them so far.

[ummon]

Seriously why is everyone so afraid of Wasteland? Just keep responding to the trigger when they try to get rid of it, or use a fetchland to 'protect' it. The opponent often forgets you can just keep responding.
Yes, you get more power out of the deck at the expense of making the mana base a little less stable against Wasteland.

Aside, has anyone else tested Three Wishes? I've enjoyed it so far and haven't missed Remand much.

I was playing Three Wishes, but in my Forceless build, which includes Remand and Repeal instead, card advantage isn't as big a problem, so I might switch to Telling Time if it feels like I'm not getting anything out of the other two cards that I draw, but need a setup card.

[Silent Requiem]

Another tournament report, this time from the Legacy side event at the London Nationals. 66 players, 7 rounds & cut to top 8. I played against combo in every round.

Every. Single. Round.

My matchups were against Scapeshift, Belcher, Reanimator & Hypergenesis. I went 4-3. Rather than focusing on the matches I won, I'll focus on the matches I lost and then give a summary of my thoughts.

The list:


Land

12 Island
4 Misty Rainforest
2 Flooded Strand
1 Tropical Island
1 Forest

Mana/Untap

3 High Tide
3 Turnabout
4 Reset

Draw

3 Meditate
2 Flash of Insight
4 Impulse
4 Peer Through Depths
4 Brainstorm

Protection

4 Force of Will
1 Cryptic Command
2 Remand

Other

2 Brain Freeze
4 Cunning Wish

SB

1 Stroke of Genius
1 High Tide
1 Meditate
1 Brain Freeze
1 Hunting Pack
1 Rebuild
2 Ravenous Trap
2 Mindbreak Trap
2 Echoing Truth
3 Krosan Grip

I went from 2/1 Cryptic/Remand to 1/2, which was an excellent choice, given my matchups. My sideboard was a best guess at the meta while shoreing up my obvious bad matchup (Counterbalance). I had considered Reanimator, but decided to just try and dodge, as the online and local opinion was that Reanimator was basically dead, and where it was played it was slower and inconsistent. I let these views override my visceral fear of graveyard decks, and it was to cost me in a huge way.

Loss number 1 - Reanimator.

I go into round 2 fairly upbeat, having stomped all over a Scapeshift deck.

Game 1: He plays Underground Sea. I play Island. End of my turn he Entombs. I Force, but so does he. He Exhumes Iona on his turn and I scoop.

Game 2: I play Island. He plays Underground Sea. I play Island, and at the end of my turn he Entombs. I Force, but so does he. I Impulse, but don't find another Force. On his turn he Exhumes Iona. I scoop.

I played 3 turns of Magic in the entire round. Slow and inconsistent my @ss.

Loss number 2 - Reanimator.

I shake off my funk from round 2. After all, I just faced my Reanimator for the day, right? Apparently not. I win game 1 because he has his Ionas in the board. Games 2 & 3 play exactly like games 1 & 2 from the previous round.

Loss number 3 - Hypergenesis

Game 1 - I Forced his first two Hypergenesis, and went off in response to the third. However, by then he had drawn into his Forces, and he shut me down.

Game 2 - I decided to be clever, and kept an unprotected hand with everything I needed (4 land, Tide, Reset, Meditate). I let his Hypergenesis resolve, and play my lands, intending to go off. However, he plays something which destroys three of my lands, and I die. As a side note, he told me that the comes into play effect happened during the resolution of the Hypergenesis, but in hindsight I don't think that can be right - surely Hypergenesis must resolve completely, and then the CitP effects go on the stack. Which means I could have gone off in response? A play error on my part against a deck I was unfamiliar with.

Right, so that was my run of losses. From there I managed to turn things around and win three more games, putting me in 27th out of 66. Not a good showing, I admit, but I would only attribute one of my losses to poor play (Hypergenesis); the other two were poor/unlucky sideboard building. I did not feel there were any games where the deck let me down - I never needed to mull more than once to find Force of Will, and my hands were all pretty decent.

So what did I take from the tournament?

1) I hate Reanimator even more than I hate Dredge. I would appreciate input on the best 4 sideboard cards for this matchup - yes, I'm going to dedicate more cards to GY hate than even to Counterbalance. I hate GY decks that much. My guess is Leyline of the Void, because Reanimator ALWAYS has Force of Will. Another option would be Extirpate, but that requires splashing black. I might even consider that if Extirpate would truly be the better choice.

2) Hunting Pack won me two games. It's just so unexpected. It's not something I do every game, or even every match, but a couple of times per tournament it just comes out of nowhere and wins.

3) Echoing Truth was sideboard MVP. Wishing for it saved me from EtW in two of my Belcher matchups.

4) Mindbreak Trap is underwhelming. Every combo player and his dog sides in Xanthid Swarm, which makes siding in Mindbreak Trap largely pointless. Perhaps that's just because I did not draw into it sufficiently often. I had wanted to run 3 (so I could move 2 to the main and leave 1 in the wishboard), but I cut one Trap at the last minute. You probably want to move 3 or so to the main (if you are going to use it) while still mulling into the Force. Force the Swarm/Silence, and then try and draw into the Trap.

5) I did not miss the Turnabout I removed from the Wishboard. I was really wary of taking it out (sure that I would start wanting it every game) but that's just not what happened.


Feedback, especially about GY hate, would be appreciated.

-Silent Requiem

[kicks_422]

Game 2 - I decided to be clever, and kept an unprotected hand with everything I needed (4 land, Tide, Reset, Meditate). I let his Hypergenesis resolve, and play my lands, intending to go off. However, he plays something which destroys three of my lands, and I die. As a side note, he told me that the comes into play effect happened during the resolution of the Hypergenesis, but in hindsight I don't think that can be right - surely Hypergenesis must resolve completely, and then the CitP effects go on the stack. Which means I could have gone off in response? A play error on my part against a deck I was unfamiliar with.


Yes, the triggers only go on the stack once Hypergenesis finishes resolving. You could have gone off on response to the Terastodon triggers.

[heroicraptor]

If you're scared of Force, Faerie Macabre gets rid of GY stuff nicely.

Sucks you got cheated out of a win, but you should've called a judge.

[Silent Requiem]

Well, he seemed a nice enough guy, and I don't think he was cheating - not understanding the stack properly is pretty common. I suspect that if I had not been so distracted & angry at myself about my Reanimator matchups I would have caught it. Nobody but myself to blame, really.

As for Faerie Macabre, it certainly does get around Force, but I'm not sure it's better than Leyline. Faerie seems weak to Thoughtsieze, whereas they need to board in and dig for a specific answer to Leyline. Unless that answer is Grip, I can probably counter it; if it is Grip, they need three turns just to get the mana out, meaning that they can't combo off until turn 4 - when I actually stand a chance of going off.

It also occurs to me that they can just try and power through Faerie. They can either dump multiples in the GY, or more likey, just keep trying to go off. Slow them down, sure, but they might just muscle through it.

On the flip side, I don't need to mull as agressively; A Force and decent dig for the Faerie might be a keeper.

-Silent Requiem

[ummon]

This is why I think entomb should never have left the ban list.

[ummon]

Slightly off topic, I've been thinking about the deck name "Solidarity". It has no relation to the actual deck other than through its creator, David Gearhart. Now that Gearhart no longer plays Solidarity, I think it would make sense to rename it. I can rationalize it thus: the original lists that Gearhart played (which was called Solidarity) ran many different cards than the lists we play nowadays. Now, the decks we play might be evolved from the same archetype as Solidarity (high tide based instant speed storm), but Solidarity is the name for his decks, not an archetype. Thus, I contend that we should be free to name the archetype whatever we want. Thoughts?

[cjva]

or we just keep the name until he says he don't want us to use it anymore?

I kinda like the name as well.

[ummon]

or we just keep the name until he says he don't want us to use it anymore?

I kinda like the name as well.

Hehe I kinda don't like the name, so I'm trying to come up with an excuse to change it...

[sillysam71]

Another problem is that EVERYONE knows this deck as Solidarity. I personally don't mind the name. Do you have any suggestions?

[ummon]

Another problem is that EVERYONE knows this deck as Solidarity. I personally don't mind the name. Do you have any suggestions?

How about The Tempest (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_tempest)?

[Silent Requiem]

I don't think the deck needs a new name - none of the innovation really creates a new deck. Only Hunting Pack even comes close, and that's still a backup win condition.

Still, if the deck did need a new name, the Tempest would be a good one, especially if the deck had a heavy green splash. After all, Prospero and his daughter lived on a Tropical Island .

-Silent Requiem

[GoldenCid]

Aside, has anyone else tested Three Wishes? I've enjoyed it so far and haven't missed Remand much.

I'm testing 1x of 3 wishes as the "4th meditate" in the main with the real 4th meditate in the side. I works good!!

[cjva]

I'm testing 1x of 3 wishes as the "4th meditate" in the main with the real 4th meditate in the side. I works good!!

Have you tried Tolarian Winds in SB?

I run 1 Winds in the board instead of the meditate. And winds are great.

[Silent Requiem]

Not when you want to Wish into a powerful draw spell the turn before going off.

-Silent Requiem

[ScatmanX]

Tolarian Winds is great, but not in place of Meditate.
Also, SB now is just to clogged, and it got cut a long time ago.

[Vacrix]

Have you tried Tolarian Winds in SB?

I run 1 Winds in the board instead of the meditate. And winds are great.
Really? How does that work out actually? x4 Meditate MD seems unconventional. Have you tried Three Wishes? I basically play x7 'Meditates' MD and x4 via Cunning Wish. Going off has never been easier.

I stopped playing Tolarian Winds because the U/g board is really tight for space. Otherwise, I'd probably play a copy if I switch back to Mono-U.

[Seraphus]

http://www.deckcheck.net/event.php?event=G%E1rgula+-+Liga+Legacy+08%2F10

Just leaving my result from my last tornament ;)

[cjva]

http://www.deckcheck.net/event.php?event=G%E1rgula+-+Liga+Legacy+08%2F10

Just leaving my result from my last tornament ;)

congratz. Hope you played the lifedeck. =)

[Seraphus]

nop i played agaisnt the ant, the new horizons, the elf (4th place), the second place counterbalance and a zoo...

[Vacrix]

Nice job Seraphus. Its always good to see that the classic lists with the old tech can still put up results.

Can you treat us to a tournament report?

[Seraphus]

I don't remember all the details

My 1st round was vs zoo:

The game 1 was quick since i had 2 remands and 1 repeal in hand along with reset, he startes nacatl i bounce after get 6 from it and he played sylvan library before i bounce nacatl... at the time i get 4 mana i response to the enchantement triggered and he died from it...

The second game was pretty the same i borded out fow's and 1 FoI and borded in the snap, echoing thruth and the 2 dispel... the game goes in almost the same way of the first one... repeal and remand + dispel blocked almost everything he try to punched me with... 4 or 5 land drops and gg for him...

2nd round New horizons:

Game one i lost, because i didn´t see a single force of will whoever he had to really forced himself to find a solution to my combo start: th high tide, because i eot use cunning wish to get Mindbreack trap facing 2 Knights...

Game two was easy Mindbreack Trap was like Heaven on earth but i even risk to echoing thruth two Goyfs in order to get more one land drop... Because i fake used Impulse in my turns to simulate Land searching...

Game three again Mindbreack trap but this time was FoI that save my life since i use brain freeze on me and stacked the deck as i pleased...

3rd round TES/ANT:

Game one was like no chance for wim he try to play chant but i forced even that chant forced he starts to combo out at turn 4 so i kill him in response to Infernal Tutor...

Game two he silenced me at turn 3 (i had two lands and an insane hand of high tide 2 reset 1 brainstrom brain freeze and some other things) i know that i top decked the silence so i in response to it brianfreeze him for 30 and lost...

Game three Remand, Trap and force were the holy saviors but if we had played faster i would kill him, because i had the combo cards in hand but he make me spend my mana on beating the silence (i was mana screwed)... we draw...

4th round vs countertop bant:

Once again Trap was amazing but i didn't sb and i win 2-0...

The first was a stack war in by (guess who?) Mindbreack trap via cunning wish

The second one was win by remand on 2nd forced on high tide: high tide he forced i forced he force leafting no cards in hand and 1 land untaped so i remand is force and go on with my life...

And this was pretty much it... ;)

[igormagic]

you recommend play only with 2 turnabout in MD?why?
And Comand Cryptics?you dont think is very slow?
Congratulations for results

[Seraphus]

Cryptic deals with, at the final step of the combo, creatures. It can bounce treats always doing 2 per one (draw + other effect) you can even use it like a force of will for example: reset (3 lands) + cryptic or high tide + cryptic but the real use for cryptic is vs couterbalance. Btw cryptic saved me vs new horizons, he had 2 knights in play and they were big...

With preventive disruption like repeal and remand (and this is one of the reasons why i didn't use the 3rd Turnabout) cryptic is real good for example vs goblins it's amazing... Turnabout is like a 4 cmc and with cryptic it does nothing but untap (in almost the times), i always get it when i need it even if i have to use cunning wish...

[ummon]

http://www.deckcheck.net/event.php?event=G%E1rgula+-+Liga+Legacy+08%2F10

Just leaving my result from my last tornament ;)

Wow congratulations!!! Great result!!!

[igormagic]

I'm playing with 2 Merchant Scroll in MD and 1 Quicken in SB.
Before combo, Scroll is wonderfull, perfect.
In combo, scroll is pitch for fow. Too can use wish for Quicken and use Scroll.
What do you think about?

[Seraphus]

loool whould you try to run in olimpic atheletics champs if you have a limp leg?

i don't think so... instant speed mean always lands or instant cards in the deck... rarelly you need something you don't have when you start to combo out if you do need something is because you suck and can forsee the turns head of you... i advice something: thsi deck is the most hard to play deck ever... train test skilled your self learn about turns steps learn about priority learn about the deck it self (is impossible to know or see someone capable to know this deck in 100%) know the legacy decks (at least the majority of it) and then if you mastered all this "minor" things you don't even need to talk about the deck...

[ummon]

I'm playing with 2 Merchant Scroll in MD and 1 Quicken in SB.
Before combo, Scroll is wonderfull, perfect.
In combo, scroll is pitch for fow. Too can use wish for Quicken and use Scroll.
What do you think about?

Well, using Quicken just so you can play Scroll instant speed is a waste of a slot imo. As for Merchant Scroll, I think the main problem is that it keeps you from being able to respond to your opponent's plays on his next turn. I much prefer the idea of 4 Wishes and a high tide on the wish board, as it keeps the flexibility of solidarity.

[Silent Requiem]

The thing I like about Seraphus' list is the number of maindeck answers to permanent based hate (2 Cryptic & 2 Repeal). I've long been a fan of the two Cryptics, and it looks like Seraphus took that a step further. They all stand a reasonable chance of dealing with Counterbalance, too.

What's interesting is the way that Turnabout has been reviewed recently. I, and others, have tried dropping it from the sideboard, and now we see it being reduced in the main deck. I'm not sure I'm comfortable with that, but the decision (along with staying at 18 lands) is what makes Seraphus' protection suite possible. A clear sacrifice of combo pieces (PtD/Opt/draw & Turnabout/lands/untap) for protection. In this case it obviously worked.

-Silent Requiem

[Seraphus]

So do you think that after all the green splash isn't worth?

[Vacrix]

loool whould you try to run in olimpic atheletics champs if you have a limp leg?

i don't think so... instant speed mean always lands or instant cards in the deck... rarelly you need something you don't have when you start to combo out if you do need something is because you suck and can forsee the turns head of you... i advice something: thsi deck is the most hard to play deck ever... train test skilled your self learn about turns steps learn about priority learn about the deck it self (is impossible to know or see someone capable to know this deck in 100%) know the legacy decks (at least the majority of it) and then if you mastered all this "minor" things you don't even need to talk about the deck...
This would imply perfect design, which is demonstrably false. The deck has a long way to go before its truly competitive again. The discussion is meant to stimulate thought experiments about which direction to take the deck because trying to adjust to a faster metagame is difficult for a combo deck that has to hit all of its land drops.

[ummon]

This would imply perfect design, which is demonstrably false. The deck has a long way to go before its truly competitive again. The discussion is meant to stimulate thought experiments about which direction to take the deck because trying to adjust to a faster metagame is difficult for a combo deck that has to hit all of its land drops.

+1. Nothing should be dismissed from the deck too easily. Clearly, the deck is no longer tier 1, so any suggestions should be handled with respect.

[Silent Requiem]

So do you think that after all the green splash isn't worth?

My preference will always be for a mono-blue list; it simply has the strongest mana base, which is absolutely critical for a High Tide deck.

That said, in any given meta a splash may be necessary or desirable. Right now, green gives me an answer to CounterTop, plus the randomly broken Hunting Pack. For others, it gives them answers to counter wars and fast aggro.

Despite the numerous advantages green brings, I think the splash is only worthwhile because of the ability to permanently answer CounterTop. That's why I found your list so interesting; it has a strong maindeck response to CounterTop in mono-blue. Of course, you had to make (to my mind) significant sacrifices to do so, but your choices are definitely thought provoking.

One thing to remember is that other decks evolve too. I have found that both Merfolk and CounterTop have been getting steadily weaker against us as they evolve to deal with other decks. Many Merfolk decks, for example, no longer run Stifle as they are instead splashing black or white for removal, which is dead against us. It may be that CounterTop no longer truly requires a green splash to be favorable, and I think the deck is certainly seeing less play (although the meta has not really settled from Mystical Tutor yet, so we shall have to see).

-Silent Requiem

[Firefraise]

Hello good sirs,

Being very interrested in this tread since a couple of month I decided to participate in the discussion. While I definitely lack any competion experience. My wish is to improve my magic skills in order to be able to do right at least in the most modest events. In this very purpose, and since I had many (if not all) of the needed cards I decided to build a Solidarity deck. Being one of the most difficult deck to pilot, I thought it might be the needed tool to re-learn to play magic after some years lenght interruption.

I have read this post and some parts of the old one and appreciated your insight, especially Silent Requiem's regimen of experimentation. I understood that the deck lacks some tools to be on the top again, and in this regard I'd like to submit some ideas.


. Nothing should be dismissed from the deck too easily. Clearly, the deck is no longer tier 1, so any suggestions should be handled with respect.

This is why I allow myself to do so.

While I do not have some ideas about a way to deal with the counterbalance problem, I concentrate my attention on the consistency and eldrazi/gaia problems even if we already have some valuable answers for the last one.
My conclusion is that putting Stroke of genius main deck while keeping one in the sideboard might be something to consider.

This is my current list, keep in mind that it is untested and that i didn't play magic since Torment. I did many goldfishes with it but I have yet to test it on the field.

6 fetches
12 islands

2 remand
4 opt
4 reset
3 turnabout
2 twincast
3 cuning wish
1 stroke of genius
3 peer through depths
4 impulse
3 meditate
4 high tide
4 brainstorm
1 brain freeze
4 force of will

SB
2 flash of insight
1 echoing truth
4 ravenous trap
3 mindbreak trap
1 brain freeze
1 wipe away
1 meditate
1 turnabout
1 stroke of genius

With this build, I often use Twincast on high tide, reset or turnabout, it often gave me 12 to 25 mana to spare for a stroke, and with that much cards to draw i usually have all i need to either kill the opponent the classic way, or decking him with a stroke at 60+ cards.
I have the feeling that this build is consistant, but I tend to kill more with the strokes than with brain freeze, making the build maybe more vulnerable to counter magic.

I also have no idea if it is better in the couterbalance match-up since I do not have any experience with it.

Finally i'd like to know if you think it is a build solid enough in general.

[ummon]

The problem with twincast is that it does nothing to make an otherwise bad hand good. Unlike cantrips or actual business spells, it requires another business spell in your hand to be useful. Thus, it is subpar as a combo piece. As for stroke, I have never had trouble just wishing for it if I need to. I wouldn't worry about the Aeon's Bridge matchup as it is just so rare. Really, what this deck needs is three things: 1) ways to win stack wars against control heavy decks, 2) ways to deal with counterbalance, 3) and ways to slow down aggro.

Seraphus' list for example, uses mindbreak trap in the board to win stack wars, MD repeal for counterbalance (can also be used against aggro, but this is the most important usage) , cryptic command to slow down aggro (this has other uses too, but this is the biggest one). Vacrix's green splash gives autumn's veil for stack wars, krosan grip for counterbalance, and moment's peace to slow down aggro. igormagic, on the other hand, suggested merchant scroll to speed up solidarity rather than try and slow down aggro. I don't think twincast speeds the deck up enough to use here.

Anyways, thanks for the input. As always, we can use a healthy discussion of the deck. :)

[Seraphus]

My preference will always be for a mono-blue list; it simply has the strongest mana base, which is absolutely critical for a High Tide deck.

That said, in any given meta a splash may be necessary or desirable. Right now, green gives me an answer to CounterTop, plus the randomly broken Hunting Pack. For others, it gives them answers to counter wars and fast aggro.

Despite the numerous advantages green brings, I think the splash is only worthwhile because of the ability to permanently answer CounterTop. That's why I found your list so interesting; it has a strong maindeck response to CounterTop in mono-blue. Of course, you had to make (to my mind) significant sacrifices to do so, but your choices are definitely thought provoking.

One thing to remember is that other decks evolve too. I have found that both Merfolk and CounterTop have been getting steadily weaker against us as they evolve to deal with other decks. Many Merfolk decks, for example, no longer run Stifle as they are instead splashing black or white for removal, which is dead against us. It may be that CounterTop no longer truly requires a green splash to be favorable, and I think the deck is certainly seeing less play (although the meta has not really settled from Mystical Tutor yet, so we shall have to see).

-Silent Requiem

You are very right mentioning that others decks are weakened against solidarity, in my opinion solidarity, well piloted, is the most consistent combo in legacy (it offerer the power of protection and the power of dead in one turn) - the problem is that not everyone can play this deck, it requires an enormous quantity of skill, concentration, rules knowledge, metagame knowledge, preparation and etc...

As the question of unbalancing the equation of lossing cards like 1 turnabout and adding another card like remand or repeal initially it creates problems, the fizzle rate was enormous, my solution was adding one Brain Freeze... That improves the matches vs zoo, goblins and even tes/ant... basically the matches here you need to run faster than your opponent...

Other than this problem were solved since i practiced every day, i understand that the other problems were generated at wrong choices....

The deck demands to much from the pilot and demanding the same from the deck is essencial, remember that it's not a normal deck since it runs exclusively at instant speed... This deck need literally to predict the future... (so why didn't i run peek after saying this) I don't run Peek because almost (if not all) other options are two per one (opt normally see 2; impulse 4; remand counter draw; repeal bounce draw; cryptic; brainstorm see 3 - brainstorm + fetch amazing - and etc) the "predict the future" i mention start by Knowing the field of legacy - constant update on decklists, knowledge about the cards, and an important one, playing with other decks (i have, along with my team, like a bag full of proxied decks)... Other important thing is try to clarify your doubts, i am friend with the 2 most skilled judge in Portugal and every time i had some doubt i run to one of them and ask, their are very accessible sure your local store have some judge attending to it...
Having the principles and a strong rules and field foundation knowing the play the step to take play this card this turn because next turn i will play this one is easy when you don't have to deal with doubts...

I hope that players show why this deck is good - because the deck IS good...

As counterbalance it self the deck can be overpowered (focusing on my on build) repeal and cryptic + wish with wipe away can solve it...

Regards to you all ;)

[KevinTrudeau]

I played in a small ~8 man tourney today, went 1-3. I was expecting a lot of Enchantress and Vengevine Survival, but in its place was a lot of CB/Top. I made two changes to the maindeck from my previous list- -1 Twincast, -1 High Tide for +1 Thirst for Knowledge (no Three Wishes available), +1 Cunning Wish- and they were great. Once I order two Tropical Islands in a month or so after I get my paycheck, I will be sure to test the U/g builds; Krosan Grip is much better than Wipe Away and could have won me a match today. Autumn's Veil also seems good, and would force a maindeck change of Remands to Three Wishes/TfK, which would also make the deck fizzle less. Until then, my sideboard needs improving. Any suggestions?

Wish:
Brain Freeze
Stroke of Genius
High Tide
Rebuild
Mindbreak Trap
Meditate
Turnabout
Echoing Truth

Non-Wish:
3 Wipe Away
4 Repeal

[ScatmanX]

Ok, so here goes my current list, with sb setup against the decks I face the most.


// Lands
13 [PT] Island (4)
2 [ZEN] Scalding Tarn
4 [ZEN] Misty Rainforest

// Spells
4 [BD] Impulse
2 [US] Turnabout
3 [TE] Meditate
2 [SC] Brain Freeze
4 [LG] Reset
2 [RAV] Remand
4 [FE] High Tide (2)
4 [5E] Brainstorm
3 [IN] Opt
3 [JU] Cunning Wish
4 [AL] Force of Will
1 [JU] Flash of Insight
2 [CHK] Peer Through Depths
2 [GP] Repeal
1 [LRW] Cryptic Command

// Sideboard
SB: 1 [US] Turnabout
SB: 1 [TE] Meditate
SB: 1 [SC] Brain Freeze
SB: 1 [JGC] Stroke of Genius
SB: 1 [DS] Echoing Truth
SB: 4 [ZEN] Spell Pierce
SB: 1 [UL] Rebuild
SB: 1 [ZEN] Ravenous Trap
SB: 1 [SOK] Twincast
SB: 2 [UL] Snap
SB: 1 [TSP] Wipe Away

SB Plans:
(-- very bad MU / - Bad / +/- so-so / +Good / ++Very good)

+/-Goblins: Play: +2 Snap; +1 E.Truth; +1 Twincast/ -4FoW
Draw: +2 Snap; +1 E.Truth; +1 Twincast / -1 Command; -2 Repeal; -1 PtD
(On the Play, Repeal, Snap and E.Truth can answer Lackey, so I think that Fow is not needed. Twincast is to go off faster.)

--Merfolk: Play: +2 Snap; +1 Twincast / -1 Command; -1 PtD; -1 FoI
Draw: +2 Snap; +1 Twincast; +4 Spell Pierce / -2 Repeal; -1 FoI; -2 Remand; -1 Command; -1 PtD.
(I think that Spell Pierce is more useful on the draw, while some other cards lose their effectiveness…)

+Zoo: Play: +2 Snap; +4 Pierce / -4 FoW; - 1 Opt; -1 Command
Draw: +2 Snap; +4 Pierce / -2 Remand; - 4 FoW

-CB/Top: Play/Draw: +4 Pierce; +1 Twincast / -1 High Tide; -1 Reset; -1 Opt; -1 BF; -1 PtD.

++Bant: Play: +1 Twincast / -1 Command
Draw: +1 Twincast; +2 Snap / -1 Command; -2 Repeal

+Rockguy: Play: +4 Pierce; +1 Twincast / -4 FoW; -1 PtD
Draw: +4 Pierce / -1 Command; -2 Remand; -1 PtD

++DnT: Play/Draw: +2 Pierce / -2 Remand

++SnT: Play/Draw: +4 Pierce; +1 Twincast / -2 Repeal; -1 Opt; -1 FoI; -1 BF

+TES: Play/Draw: +4 Pierce; +1 Twincast / -2 Repeal; -1 Turnabout; -1 FoI; -1 Command

+Vengevival: Play: +4 Pierce / -1 Command; -2 Repeal; - 1 Opt
Draw: +4 Pierce / -1 Command; -2 Remand; -Opt

+Belcher: Play/Draw: +4 SP; +2 Snap / -1 Command; -1 FoI; -1 Turnabout; -1Opt; -1 BF; -1 PtD

+Elfs: Play/Draw: +2 Snap; +1 Twincast / -2 Remand; -1 Command

--Dredge: Play/Draw: +2 Snap; +1 Twincast / -2 Remand; -1 Command

?Stax: Play: +4 Pierce / -1 FoI; ???
Draw: +???? / - ????

+AgrooLoam: ???

?Lands: ???

I’m really liking both Snap, that can sometimes slow down agroo, without slowing me down, also giving +2 untap effects when needed. Spell Pierce is proving to be great to me. It comes in against so many decks, and with this new UG Madness thing, I’m going to run the hole 4 here…

Does anyone have suggestions about my siding?
Remember, that if I see anything different G1 or G2 in my opponents deck, the sideboarding will be changed appropriately.
Please comment anything you’d do differently.
Thanks.
ps: I've played Ug, but really want to stay U this time...

[Vacrix]

Is Folk really that bad? I've put the matchup at around 50/50 if not better. They must come up with a clock or they are screwed. Countermagic is irrelevant when you have access to Mindbreak Trap or Autumn's Veil. I find UGw variants to be more difficult, namely the versions like New Horizons that pack MD Stifles. U destroy target land is pretty dam good against us.

Against Aggro Loam you have to watch out for Chalice @ 1. I wouldn't board anything in though as their clock is slow as balls.

Lands is a joke for Solidarity. Its like asking a morbidly obese paraplegic to run the mile with his shoes tied.

[ScatmanX]

Is Folk really that bad? I've put the matchup at around 50/50 if not better. They must come up with a clock or they are screwed. Countermagic is irrelevant when you have access to Mindbreak Trap or Autumn's Veil. I find UGw variants to be more difficult, namely the versions like New Horizons that pack MD Stifles. U destroy target land is pretty dam good against us.

Against Aggro Loam you have to watch out for Chalice @ 1. I wouldn't board anything in though as their clock is slow as balls.

Lands is a joke for Solidarity. Its like asking a morbidly obese paraplegic to run the mile with his shoes tied.

I really dont have a good Folk MU. Maybe I'm playing it wrong, but Trap did not helpd me at all. I always have to wait until the last moment to go off, so I cant go off in response to any spell. Then, (and this may be some bad luck for me) but one of this two scenarios always happens: They have 2 Cursecatchers, and only 1 counterspell, making Trap irrelevant; or they have 4+Counters... I prefer having FoW here, so when they don't have Vial, and I'm kind of slow, I can counter their 2nd turn Coralhelm Commander, and buy myself 2 turns...

Despite that, I find Ugw to be rather easy, because their clock is so much slower, I have enough time to shape up. Did not test against N.H though, but against Bant with MD Snares and SB Pierce....

@Loam: I just save my counterspell for D.Dreams. Even Remand is great here. If they drop an early threat, I just try to go off faster.
@Lands: Yeah, they're just awfull against us...

[entity]

For those splashing green: do you think 6 fetches (from 20 lands, 2 of them green) total are enough? Is it hard sometimes to find the green source?

[Vacrix]

6 fetches should be enough. Hell, I only play one Tropical Island at the moment and I can find it just fine. Just be careful with your cantrips and you should have a green source when you need one.



Aside, Frantic Search and Gush were recently unrestricted in Vintage. I'm more optimistic about Frantic Search being unbanned in Legacy now.

[ummon]

6 fetches should be enough. Hell, I only play one Tropical Island at the moment and I can find it just fine. Just be careful with your cantrips and you should have a green source when you need one.



Aside, Frantic Search and Gush were recently unbanned in Vintage. I'm more optimistic about Frantic Search being unbanned in Legacy now.

Sweet. I should order a playset of Frantic Search just to save a dollar or two in case it gets unbanned.

[entity]

Last weekend tried soli with green splash (11 islands, 7 fetches(coudn't find another beautiful Island, so had to go with additional fetch), 1 shockland (don't play often enough to invest in tropicals yet), 1 forest, the rest of decklist might be posted this weekend). Experience is kind of mixed. Didn't faced a single deck with counterbalance, so had no use for Krosan Grip, beast tokens were almost always not sure win enough (won these games with freeze instead - meditate makes tokens a somewhat risky win condition sometimes), moment's peace was useful. Finished in top8 out of 16 players.

Deadguy 1-2 (one game lost due to meditate for 3 lands, another due to my own mistake - used echoing truth to bounce confidant on turn2, couldn't find bounce for hate played later)
NinjaStill 1-2 (pretty much the same)
Deadguy 2-1
TES 2-0
Dragon Stompy 2-0
Top8: Ichorid with LED 1-2

Picked up the deck after a long time, and it runs pretty good with green splash, except maybe sometimes had to lose to my own mistakes and meditates drawing to much land. However at least there were no manascrews almost whole tournament - that happened often enough even with 8 1cc spells when playing 18 lands previous years.
Also, 4 wishes plus SB Tide is awesome. Deck is much more consistent. The only problem is that now I devote to much SB space to Wish targets, have to work on finding more sideboardable slots. Will post decklist this weekend most likely (too much work to do now).

Sad thing is that it seems metagame (at least mine) is quite full of bad matchups. However, I like that even vs Ichorid my deck was not hopeless. So there's still hope.

Question for those playing Three Wishes - what do you take out for them and does it hurt that with them too much cards are unplayable before combo (wishes, tide, in a lot of cases - meditate)?

Also I remember there was a forum dedicated for Solidarity solely. Haven't visited it for a long time - is it still alive and maybe someone could give me link?

[Vacrix]

That forum is pretty much dead. I wouldn't bother with it as this forum is actually quite active considering the low frequency of Solidarity players.

Good to hear that at least the green splash can perform, provided you play it optimally.


If you expect a lot of Ichorid, you could try playing more Hunting Packs. I can usually combo off with Hunting Pack around turns 3-4.

I cut Remands for Three Wishes in the green splash as you aren't really able to use them post-board with Autumn's Veil.

[TheyCallMeTim]

Aside, Frantic Search and Gush were recently unrestricted in Vintage. I'm more optimistic about Frantic Search being unbanned in Legacy now.


What!?! No way! Do you have a link or other proof of some kind?

[Dissolution]

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/feature/109a

On a related noted, Frantic Search is very busted in Legacy, I wouldn't hold my breath for it getting unbanned.

[ummon]

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/feature/109a

On a related noted, Frantic Search is very busted in Legacy, I wouldn't hold my breath for it getting unbanned.

No it isn't. The only deck that it is exceptional in is Solidarity. For other decks it is too slow to be broken. A Brainstorm is preferable to Frantic Search in most decks.

[Dissolution]

Have you seen Survival Madness? Any blue version of that deck would run 4 Frantic Search. As would Spring Tide.
Granted, that's not a lot of decks, but it's still something. I would hate to see what survival could do with it.
-T

[ummon]

Have you seen Survival Madness? Any blue version of that deck would run 4 Frantic Search. As would Spring Tide.
Granted, that's not a lot of decks, but it's still something. I would hate to see what survival could do with it.
-T

Spring Tide would finally become competitive (but certainly not broken, as there will still be faster combo decks like TES). As for Survival Madness, I don't see Frantic Search being much stronger than Careful Study (which isn't an auto-include).

[Grollub]

Frantic Search is pretty subpar in anything but Tide or Replenish.


Spring Tide would finally become competitive (but certainly not broken, as there will still be faster combo decks like TES). As for Survival Madness, I don't see Frantic Search being much stronger than Careful Study (which isn't an auto-include).
If speed was everything SI and Belcher would be king and queen of combo decks, as everyone knows that is not true. Given the consistancy and strength of being a mono-chrome combo/control deck, that Tide is, going off turn 2 will be too easy - so TES' redeeming factor, speed, would be considerable smaller. Remember Tide was a force in Extended when Academy was legal too!

That's not to say it would shatter the metagame. Which I honestly don't think it would, considering all the options for hate we have. But it'd surely make it quite possible the best combo deck. I wouldn't mind seeing Tide as a tier 1 deck again, as I loved playing it in the Tide vs. Pox vs. Sligh extended era. ;-)

[ummon]

Frantic Search is pretty subpar in anything but Tide or Replenish.


If speed was everything SI and Belcher would be king and queen of combo decks, as everyone knows that is not true. Given the consistancy and strength of being a mono-chrome combo/control deck, that Tide is, going off turn 2 will be too easy - so TES' redeeming factor, speed, would be considerable smaller. Remember Tide was a force in Extended when Academy was legal too!

That's not to say it would shatter the metagame. Which I honestly don't think it would, considering all the options for hate we have. But it'd surely make it quite possible the best combo deck. I wouldn't mind seeing Tide as a tier 1 deck again, as I loved playing it in the Tide vs. Pox vs. Sligh extended era. ;-)

Uhhm Solidarity will not be able to reliably go off before turn 3. We will still see a lot of turn 4 wins cause Solidarity still has to find a high tide to go off, which it can't always do by turn 3 (even with Frantic Search). But this speed boost will be enough to make it tier 1 again (Solidarity would simply have caught up to the rest of the format in speed again). As for Spring Tide, to have a shot at turn 2, it would need to keep its Cloud of Faeries/Snap engine. Which opens it up to creature removal. And it would be no stronger against CB. This makes it slightly weaker than TES (though certainly a playable deck).

[Dissolution]

Slightly offtopic, but I was testing Frantic Search in Spring Tide, and it was turn-3 all day. You don't need Snap, just Cloud of Faeries and Frantic Search. Given that the deck runs 4 Merchant Scroll, it only needed 8 untap effects.

[largebrandon]

Slightly offtopic, but I was testing Frantic Search in Spring Tide, and it was turn-3 all day. You don't need Snap, just Cloud of Faeries and Frantic Search. Given that the deck runs 4 Merchant Scroll, it only needed 8 untap effects.

Frantic Search is Banned in Legacy and has been for a long time. If it was unbanned, it would be an auto 4 of in every high tide deck.

[ummon]

Slightly offtopic, but I was testing Frantic Search in Spring Tide, and it was turn-3 all day. You don't need Snap, just Cloud of Faeries and Frantic Search. Given that the deck runs 4 Merchant Scroll, it only needed 8 untap effects.

It already is turn 3. The problem is giving it a consistent turn 2. Cause turn 3 just ain't fast enough to outrace a CB, Chalice, etc.

[Seraphus]

how about if mind's desire and others were unbanned it wasn't legacy!

[Vacrix]

how about if mind's desire and others were unbanned it wasn't legacy!
Way to make sense man!



Honestly, I can see Frantic Search being unbanned in the not so distant future. Its certainly not a format warping card anymore like in the days when it was abused with Tolarian Academy.

[entity]

So, I finally found time (not really, but sad to see the thread inactive. Also, procrastination ftw) to post my decklist from last tournament.

11 Island
1 Breeding Pool
1 Forest
4 Misty Rainforest
2 Polluted Delta
1 Scalding Tarn

4 Brainstorm
4 Impulse
3 Meditate
4 Cunning Wish
4 Peer Through Depths
1 Flash of Insight

4 Force of Will
3 Remand
1 Cryptic Command

4 Reset
3 High Tide
3 Turnabout
2 Brain Freeze

SB:

3 Echoing Truth
2 Hunting Pack
1 Krosan Grip
1 Turnabout
1 Moment's Peace
1 Ravenous Trap
1 Brain Freeze
1 Meditate
1 Trickbind
1 High Tide
1 Stroke of Genius
1 Rebuild


Would like suggestions for metagame filled with Deadguy and Merfolks (without Stifle MD). We're having a tournament with better prizes soon, not sure if I'll be able to participate, but Soli would be one of my main choices- just because it's fun and last tournament convinced me to keep playing it.
What I dislike about my deck:
20 lands were sometimes too much (meditate for 3-4 lands happened twice during combo). However, they are very good - no manascrew.
Would like to fit Autumn's Veil SB. Don't know what to take out - Truths are definitely there to stay, second Hunting Pack can be sideboarded vs black decks to fight extirpate, and the only card I really think could be taken out from Wish targets is Trickbind, as I still beat other combo decks without using it.
Remands sometimes aren't great, but often they're awesome. If Veils would be SB-ed in, Remands would be taken out it 2nd and 3rd games, so there is no problem with them maindeck.
Any suggestions? :)

[Silent Requiem]

Your list is very similar to mine. Assuming Breeding Pool = Tropical Island, I am +1 FoI, +1 Cryptic, -2 Remand. None of those changes will particularly change how the deck plays, I suspect (I've messed about with the number of Command v Remand a fair amount).

I've definitely found the build to be strong. I have occasionally Meditated into too many lands, but I've done that on 18 lands too. The difference is that I don't have to burn my draw spells looking for land in the early game, so it tends not to be terminal the way it is with an 18 land build.

What I AM debating, though, is the green splash. Since adding green I have not faced CounterTop even once, which takes away a large part of the reason to play green (though if this is some kind of talisman that wards off CounterTop, it may be worth keeping :D ). That leaves Hunting Pack, which, no doubt about it, is randomly broken. It allows you to just look at your hand every tenth game or so and say, "Huh. I win."

On the other hand, I hate drawing a Forest in my opening 7/6/5. It can make going off with even four lands quite tricky. Now, I could switch it out for another Tropical Island, but getting Wastelanded is even worse.

Dropping green would give me more room in my sideboard (the Grips and the Pack could come out), which would be really nice.

Thoughts?

-Silent Requiem

[ScatmanX]

Since Counterbalance has really shifted away, at least fro my meta, and I realized Folks was beatable, I drpped green from my testing, and have been toying with 5 sb slots.
I do not think that green is necessary without counterbalance.

[entity]

ScatmanX: would you share your decklist and strategy vs merfolk?
As for green splash, Moment's Peace is another SB card. Especially in aggro metagame - you get 2 additional turns to set up combo.

Edit: one thing I dislike about Hunting Pack is that if you Meditate before casting it, opponent has additional turn to kill you or find an answer. Anybody found the same thing troubling and maybe has an answer? I know that it's quite likely to draw FoW and a blue card during combo to protect your beasts, but that's not possible everytime.

[Silent Requiem]

Aggro also plays wasteland, meaning you have to drop a Forest, which slows you down.

Playing Moment's Peace also taps out turns 2-3/3-4. So they are not exactly "full" turns. You basically get to see two more cards, which makes Moments Peace some kind of weird green draw spell.

I over simplify, of course, but I've always preferred to simply race aggro or stall them with Remand/FoW/Cryptic, depending on my hand.

-Silent Requiem

[entity]

I see Peace more as an additional stall to Remand etc., a Wish target - you wish for it end of turn3, play it t4-5 and have 2 free mana on each of these turns. It certainly made my Deadguy matchup winnable - if he has no Confidant, he won't get enough disruption in comparision to what I can get during that time.
Forest slows me down a bit, yes, but 2 additional turns are 2 more land-drops (or at least one), so I don't see a big problem here.
I'm not saying Peace is great, but it has use and I do like it in a metagame infested with decks that attack your hand.

[TheyCallMeTim]

Frantic Search is Banned in Legacy and has been for a long time. If it was unbanned, it would be an auto 4 of in every high tide deck.

Frantic Search and Gush were just unrestricted in Vintage. Perhaps this is an indicator of possible changes to Legacy? It's unbanning might put Solidarity into the higher levels again, too bad it's also huge for Madness, Reanimator and Dredge.

[ScatmanX]

Frantic Search and Gush were just unrestricted in Vintage. Perhaps this is an indicator of possible changes to Legacy? It's unbanning might put Solidarity into the higher levels again, too bad it's also huge for Madness, Reanimator and Dredge.

When you see Dredge going up to 3 mana? and 0 Islands.
Madness doesn't play Careful Study, why would it play Frantic? It needs Forests to combo, so no Gush here I guess...
Reanimator could actually use a boost after Tutor banned. It could probably use both cards.

But I want Frantic Search to be unbanned. Solidarity would became way better.

[Dark Ritual]

Dredge wouldn't play frantic search. It costs 3 mana, nigh unattainable in that deck. Reanimator as well couldn't because of its low count of lands. Madness would for sure use that card though. Frantic search in solidarity and spring tide is insanely good. I hope they unban it. Gush, however, should never get unbanned in legacy. Just saying.

[Tacosnape]

You guys do realize that the entire last page of this thread has been spent debating the viability/possibility of unbanning a card, rather than any productive discussion involving possibly making the deck work, right?

Just saying.

If any card will ever make this deck viable again, it's Spell Pierce. If you're going to try it in the modern metagame, maindeck 4. It answers Discard, Countermagic, Counterbalance, Chalices, whatever.

[ScatmanX]

If any card will ever make this deck viable again, it's Spell Pierce. If you're going to try it in the modern metagame, maindeck 4. It answers Discard, Countermagic, Counterbalance, Chalices, whatever.

I'm using 4 in SB, and bringing it in in so many MU's, but never considered MDing them.
Lets see how that do...

[entity]

I have thought about using Spell Pierce, and it seems like a quite good idea, however current metagame locally is more aggro-ish. So if I would use another counter, it would be Spell Snare - it answers a lot of hate and otherwise dangerous cards. The last time I finished in Top4 was with monoU Soli and 3 or 4 Snares MD. They were really good, but I wouldn't maindeck them for the same reason I wouldn't like to maindeck Spell Pierce - it makes 3-4 more cards useless during combo, and that really hurts.

Another thing I noticed that even though I really do like Flash of Insight, playing only one does not enough good - it's to risky to Brainfreeze myself, which was one of the greatest things about it. So I'm thinking about addind one Repeal MD - it can win some time vs aggro or deal with hate (haven't seen Teeg for awhile).

[Seraphus]

Eternal Weekend 2010 Madrid 293 players:

Solidarity 1st place after 9 rounds...

Congratulations to Juan (whoever he is =P )

[igormagic]

^^
decklist?

[Seraphus]

I don't know when it will be put online but i'll keep looking and then i post it...

[Silent Requiem]

Here's the only link I've found so far - still no deck list. I'm going to be really interested to see what he was running.

http://www.eternal-central.com/?p=910

Grats to the guy, though!

-Silent Requiem

[Gocho]

It isn't solidarity. Seems Spring Tide, maybe with red splash. In the 8th Feature match you can read how he plays T2 Merchant Scroll and win in his own turn. Other persons says in his reports that he plays some Faeries and a Volcanic Island.

I suppose that the decklists would be post in some days. The organization must post 4 tournaments (Vintage, Legacy, Vintage Spain All Stars, Legacy Spain All Stars), so they have a lot of work.

[1maarten1]

It isn't solidarity. Seems Spring Tide, maybe with red splash. In the 8th Feature match you can read how he plays T2 Merchant Scroll and win in his own turn. Other persons says in his reports that he plays some Faeries and a Volcanic Island.

I suppose that the decklists would be post in some days. The organization must post 4 tournaments (Vintage, Legacy, Vintage Spain All Stars, Legacy Spain All Stars), so they have a lot of work.

Where did you read the feature match? :O I cant find it on the site!

[ummon]

Jesus christ! Spring Tide or Solidarity, either way that is insane. Surprised he went with a red splash though. I always expected a green splash to be more useful for Spring Tide as it gives access to Xantid Swarm and Explore.

[Gocho]

8th round feature match, but it's in spanish. Maybe you can use google translate.

http://launiversidaddelasartesludicas.blogspot.com/2010/10/live-coverage-eternal-weekend-2010_10.html

I agree that is insane. I suspect that red is for Grapeshot. There are too many Emrakul decks to win with Brain Freeze.

[ummon]

I combined google translate with my own reading of the text to translate the feature match. Sorry if I misinterpreted anything. The things I couldn't figure out are in quotes, as defined by the dictionary.


Carlos Fernández Baillo from Granada, who T8'ed in the Bazaar of Moxens 4, has been know for a while now and pilots SurvivalMadness, and faces Juan Jose Rodriguez, of Guadalajara, who plays Solidarity.

Carlos wins the dice roll against Juan Jose and chooses to start. Both decided to keep their hands. Baillo starts with an Island and his opponent matches the play. At end of turn Carlos plays a BS, in on his turn puts down a Tropical Island and plays a Noble Hierarch. Juan José counters with BS at EOT and in his own turn plays a Merchant Scroll finding High Tide, and passes turn. Baillo plants a Savannah and casts a Survival of the Fittest, which fails to a FoW by Rodriguez, who in his turn puts down a land and returns the turn. Baillo presses with another of the green enchantments, and Juan Jose Brainstorms, shuffles with a Fetch Land, but finds no answers. Carlos passes the turn to his opponent. The Guadalajaran checks the accounts and drops a Fetch, and after Ponder cedes the turn. Baillo uses EoT to discard a Vengevine and search for a Vengevine, which is again discarded in favor of another Vengevine. Now in his turn he discards this to search for another and the same for the other to put four in the graveyard and search for a Tireless Tribe. He discards this to play a Rootwalla and the Venges enter to attack. Juan Jose is at 2 life and uses the EoT to play a Cunning Wish countered by a Spell Pierce. Juan starts his turn with High Tide as soon as he draws. Spells resolve and after several plays the deck combos.

Juan José Rodríguez 1 - Carlos Fernandez Baillo 0


Baillo tells Juan that he wants "to come out". Looks at his cards and likes them, or at least keeps them. Juanjo also. Starts with Forest and Noble Hierarch. Juan looks for a basic Island using a Fetch Land and passes the turn. The hierarch is tapped for a Tireless Tribe and a Gaea's Cradle taps on the table. With the two mana that it generates Baillo threatens with a Survival, but again Juan the counters it with a FoW. Another Fetch by Juan José gets an island on his turn and again a Merchant Scroll gets a High Tide from the library. Carlos draws and plays a Brainstorm, Juanjo thinks and nods. Puts an Island on the battlefield and attacks with the Tribe to leave juan at 16. After that, drops a Wild Mongrel and passes the turn. Juan José casts Ponder on his turn and it resolves. Baillo has the turn again, and in his Main Phase shows a Brainstorm, pays the cost of a Vengevine and attacks. Juan is at eight and gets the turn. His first spell is a High Tide, and again begins to chain spells until he shows his hand and Baillo concedes.

Juan José Rodríguez 2 - Carlos Fernandez Baillo 0

[ScatmanX]

Looking foward to see the decklist also, and see if he writes a report.

I've been tinkering around with Spring Tide again, since it being faster makes it's MU against Vengevine better, I think.
Also, I'm using 3 Defense Grid MD. Along with Force, they provide all the defense I wanted so far (also protecting Cloud of Faeries from removal.
(but this discussion is for the other thread, so...)

[ummon]

Looking foward to see the decklist also, and see if he writes a report.

I've been tinkering around with Spring Tide again, since it being faster makes it's MU against Vengevine better, I think.
Also, I'm using 3 Defense Grid MD. Along with Force, they provide all the defense I wanted so far (also protecting Cloud of Faeries from removal.
(but this discussion is for the other thread, so...)

Yeah the meta is also really good for Spring Tide, as it has the resiliency to fight through Merfolk and Vengevine Survival's counters (which multicolor combo doesn't always have), and the speed to race them. With the lowering CB performance, you have a good chance at avoiding its worst MU.

Edit: Gocho has translated a report of his round 5 match: http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?19045-Decklists&p=494463&viewfull=1#post494463

[sligh16]

Spanish speaker here: just a quick clarification about the first game of the match ummon translated. Cunning wish doesn't grab a spell pierce, it's countered by it . Also, "rob" is "draw". ;)

[TheyCallMeTim]

I've been looking at dusting off Solidarity and was interested in the Green Splash version with Moment's Peace until I stumbled upon this card: Telekinesis. Obviously it isn't the board hoser like Moment's Peace is but it's cheaper and has a more long term effect, possibly against something like an early Tarmogoyf or Knight of the Reliquary. Of course, also being a blue instant is good. It should certainly be of interest to people in a Counterbalance-lite meta whom are looking at staying mono blue.