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egosum
03-01-2011, 05:43 PM
"Spiral Tide"

1-Long Story Short
2-Riders in the storm
3-The Time Spiral
4-Card Selection
5-You are not Welcome!
6-Match ups
7-For those who are interested

-------------------------------------------

1-Long Story short

In November of 1994 the fifth Magic: the Gathering set was released, Fallen Empires.Very few cards survived from there, but one of those found his moment of glory after Urza’s Saga release. As you all may think I’ m talking about High Tide. Lots of documentation has been made about the decks that made this card shine for the first time, so I won’ t expand on this topic.

However I’ d like to make a brief talk about the incarnations that appeared later for Legacy.

Solidarity was the first of them. An Storm Combo deck that, playing only Instant Spells, generates a huge amount of mana in order to play, using Meditate chains and a big set of cantrips, enough spells to make our opponent running out of cards and therfore winning the game by the time he will draw his next card. Typically this deck also played Stroke of Genius, as an alternate win condition, if you could gather 3 + the number of cards in your opponent 's deck +1 (or more), then you would win the game instantly. Playing Stroke was also important to avoid being nerfed by the possible re-shuffling effects (in that moment the starndard was Gaea's Blessing), in the modern builds you will see Stroke replaced by Blue Sun's Zenith, and the new reshuffling standard to battle is Emrakul, the Aeons Torn.

Later on, with the appearance of Cloud of Faeries and Snap, a faster version was designed: Spring Tide. The main difference with its predecessor is that Spring Tide played “Sorcery Speed” cards, each of those cards having a bigger impact on the game state (Merchant Scroll, Ponder, …). By sacrificing the complete control of the stack and having each card as a potential Counterspell, this deck gained speed and consistency (specially for the addition of more tutoring effects such as Merchant Scroll).

Let’s travel now to December of 2010. Aftter some moths of Survival of the Fittest supremacy it finally got banned, for pity of some players and joy of some others,. But the hole it left behind was filled by the unbanning of an old card, but new for Legacy, Time Spiral.

With this jewel unbanned, the Magic community started a brainstorm in order to find the optimal list for it. Some tried to readapt their old fashioned Spring Tide list, trying to fit it somewhere into their main 60 cards (this seemed a good starting point and the most obvious movement). Some other, on the contrary, preferred to revive old lists like the one Kai Bude played in the Grand Prix in 1999, Vienna. Finally another group of thinkers decided that a brand new shell should be found out so the "new" sorcery can display its full potential.

2-Riders in the storm

Some of you may wonder why should you play an Storm deck in a Legacy tournament. There is not a certain answer, but I can give you a bunch of reasons:

-It has better cards than other combo decks, with fewer "dead weights". This is because of Storm’s nature, because playing cards that allow you to find your (only) Victory Condition is already being in the road to Victory.

-Storm decks have the highest number of “autowins”. The reason for this is that most of decks (specailly those packing no counter magic, nor disruption of any other kind) are not preapred to deal with our strategy. Modern Legacy is mostly ruled by creatures, or strategies that rely on creatures to endure long enough, or win the game.

-You enjoy solving puzzles, every single game playing storm is a new puzzle to solve.

O.K., O.K., … I’ll play Storm in my next tournament but why should I play Spiral Tide, isn’t it too slow in compariosn to the "ritual" archetypes?

If it is true that you cannot win the game in the first turn with Spiral Tide, as other Storm incarnation can (T.E.S, ANT or Belcher, for instance) , it is also true that, in most situations, IT IS NOT NECESSARY, I’d like to remark this because most people argumenting that the deck is slow, don 't realize that a regular typical Lagacy match end in turn 4, or later. Gaining speed is not necessary at any cost, and if that cost is the deck's consistency it may hurt more than benefit us.

Spiral Tide will offer you a bomb-proof mana base and enough manipulation to win the game just when it should be won (on average), i.e. turn 3-4, even 2 in some given games. This, along the fact that it plays the most efficient counterspells ever printed, make Spiral Tide a soild choice for the modern era of Legacy.

Comparing with its ancestors (Solidarity and Spring Tide), what makes Spiral Tide “better” is precisely playing Time Spiral. Time Spiral is a “bomb” (a card that once it is resolved it is very likely to give you the game). Time Spiral makes the deck more resilient to mulligans and hand disruption, two of the factors that made the old Tide list weak.

Obviously, all this benefits have a price. Losing the total control of the stack and being vulnerable to Gaddock Teeg (2 of the 3 most important cards, when comboing, are prohibitted by the legendary Advisor's static ability) is definitely a loss. But, if you test enough with the deck you will see that this flaws can be easily overcome.


3-The Time Spiral

In the introduction, I ‘ve already stated that the early lines of developement of the deck were diverse, this ended up in the appearance of two families of lists, one more comboish and the other more controllish. I’ll post both versions for reference, but only the first one will be explained with detail.

“Spiral Tide” – by Iñaki Puigdollers

Main Deck (60)

Lands (18)

4x Polluted Delta
14x Island

Protection (7)

4x Force of Will
3x Pact of Negation

Cantrips (12)

4x Brainstorm
4x Ponder
4x Preordain

Tutor (8)

4x Merchant Scroll
3x Cunning Wish
1x Intuition

Bussiness (15)

4 x High Tide
4x Time Spiral
3x Turnabout
3x Retraced Image
1x Brain Freeze

Sideboard 15

4x Spell Pierce
2x Wipe Away
2x Snap
1x Brain Freeze
1x Blue Sun's Zenith
1x Meditate
1x Turnabout
1x Rebuild
1x Echoing Truth
1x Slaughter Pact

“CAB Neon Blue Sky” – by Carsten Kotter

Maindeck (60)

Lands (19)

4x Flooded Strand
4x Scalding Tarn
2x Misty Rainforest
8x Island
1x Tropical Island

Protection (8)

4x Force of Will
3x Counterspell
1x Pact of Negation

Cantrips (11)

4x Brainstorm
4x Ponder
3x Preordain

Tutor (6)

4x Merchant Scroll
1x Cunning Wish
1x Intuition

Bussiness (16)

4 x High Tide
4x Time Spiral
4x Turnabout
3x Cloud of Faeries
1x Blue Sun's Zenith

Sideboard (15)

3x Krosan Grip
3x Snap
3x Spell Pierce
2x Pact of Negation
1x Bound // Determined
1x Brain Freeze
1x Dispel
1x Rebuild


As time passed there appeared a third type of lists that settled as optimal, the first to show it was Alix Hatfield, here you have his list:

“Spiral Tide” – by Alix Hatfield

Main Deck (60)

Lands (18)

2x Polluted Delta
2x Flooded Strand
2x Misty Rainforest
12x Island

Protection (4)

4x Force of Will

Cantrips (10)

4x Brainstorm
4x Ponder
2x Preordain

Tutor (8)

4x Merchant Scroll
3x Cunning Wish
1x Intuition

Bussiness (20)

4 x High Tide
4x Time Spiral
3x Meditate
3x Turnabout
4x Candelabra of Tawnos
1x Mind Over Matter
1x Blue Sun's Zenith

Sideboard 15

3x Pact of Negation
3x Repeal
1x Wipe Away
1x Snap
1x Brain Freeze
1x Blue Sun's Zenith
1x Meditate
1x Turnabout
1x Rebuild
1x Echoing Truth
1x Intuition

4-Card Selection

Main Deck:

The manabase:

At the begining the mana base looked a bit different, with a green splash to play Explore, basically.The reasoning behind that was that Time Spiral needed as many lands as you can play (to a maximum of 6) to work at full potential and playing one land each turn for the 6 first turns was not a realistic plan, and Explore speeded the process up. Green also provided Krosan Grip for the sideboard, very useful against Counterbalance, which is our hardest match up, and Autumn's Veil, that worked as a nice "chant effect" (further replaced by Pact of Negation). Nevertheless, playing a non-mono color version seemed very week for a High Tide deck , because Wasteland is a very relevant card in Legacy and we need our Islands fresh and ready to do what they know.It was at this point that Kagehisa, a user of The Soruce, suggested including Retraced Image, and then everything was in its right place. Due to Retraced Image I’ve been forced to minimize the number of fetchlands (keeping the number on 4, being all of them of the same name is the only real requirement), and the mana base established as it is today.

Protection:

*Force of Will: the best counterspell ever printed, or as Brian de Mars said one of the Legacy Power 9. It is necessary for both, protecting the combo and preventing opponent’s hate cards (it 's the most relevant card we have in the main deck against Counterbalance). And all of this at a very low cost (card disadvantage is easily solved with Time Spiral).

*Pact of Negation: Time Spiral is a symetrical card, just like Standstill is, and like Standstill players do we should play cards that break this simetry, the most relevant thing we should break was the Force of Will symetry. In the Splash color builds this symetry was intended to be broken by chant effects (which had the problem of costing one, or more, and this made the deck even slower) but we have no chants in blue, nevertheless a zero cost counterspell is a very solid card, sometimes even better.The testing showed that 3 was the right number.

Cantrips:

*Brainstorm, Ponder and Preordain: all 12 with no discussion. The first is an instant and helps fixing disastrous hands (being helped by Preordain and the fetchlands). The second one is the best if you are searching for a single card, specially important if this is a land. And the last one is a very solid choice, it allows you to keep the good card and send the bad one to bottom, despite the good sinergy that it has with brainstorm (it works in a similar way to Impulse in Solidarity).

Tutors:

*Merchant Scroll: I’m afraid it needs no introduction. Fetches for protection if needed, High Tide, Turnabout, or the other tutors. Never forget that Brainstorm is an instant and can be fetched by Merchant Scroll too.

*Cunning Wish: multiplies the number of threats in your deck, while provides flexibility pre and post board. Pre board permits you to grab bouncers, while post board allows you to get cards that you sided (like High Tide if your opponent is playing Extirpate, for instance).

*Intuition: Kind of weird card, since it’s excellent pre board (Demonic Tutor instant speed is rock and roll, a very regular play against aggro is on turn 2: Merchant Scroll --> Intuition, and turn 3: Intuition --> 3x Time Spiral, so you can go off on turn 4), and kind of awful post board in some matches (losing 2x Time Spiral due to Graveyard hate is not very good, most people won’t have any better cards against us, so they will board in their Relic of Progenitus/Tormod's Crypt. If they play Extirpate, Intuition is a terrible card).

Bussiness:

* High Tide, Time Spiral: no comments.

*Turnabout: this card is more versatile that it may seem at first glace. A part from the obvious use of untapping our lands after one (or more) High Tide are resolved, you can use it as a weapon against heavy counter wall decks, playing it at the end of the turn of your opopnent to tap their lands the turn before you ‘ll go off, so you don ‘t have to worry about the extra mana your opponent will produce because of our High Tide (remember: High Tide make ALL island produce an extra blue mana, not only yours). By doing this the number of counter magic you 'd have to fight against will be harshly reduced.

*Retraced Image: this card, after lots of testing and debating, has become essential. The biggest flaw of the card is the card disadvantage inherent to it, and this is the most regular argumnet people tell me when talking about R.I. The thing is that most of people say so because they don’t play it properly. Essentially, this card covers two important functions in the deck: accelerating the mana against aggro and giving critical mass (in terms of lands) when comboing (I’d like to see Retraced Image as my “Cloud of Faeries”). The problem is that, when I ask them how do they play the card, the answer was: “I play it as soon as I have the chance”, while this is good against aggressive strategies, it is very bad against cnotrollish (or combo) ones, where card disadvantage may hurt you harder. So as a “general rule”, for those who start with the deck, I will give you the following advice: use it as soon as you draw it, as an accelerator, against aggressive decks, but keep it only for being used while going off against control or combo decks (obviously you should also use it while going off against aggro).

*Brain Freeze: it went out, then back in, and now it’s here to stay. I’ ve won too many games palying double freeze on low storm count with Merchant and Cunning or Merchant and Freeze or Cunning and Freeze. Keep in mind that it’s also a nice card against blue decks (after a counter war) and against Counterbalance (messing the top of the deck when they are short on mana, or after an Enlightened Tutor --> Counterbalance/Sensei's Divining Top/Ethersworn Canonist/...).

Sideboard:

*Spell Pierce: the natural substitute for Pact of Negation in some pairings (those that play hand disruption/Chalice of the Void/Pyrostatic Pillar/…). And a must have against CB-Top decks. I normally side 3 in and keep one in the board for wish puropses.

*Wipe Away: This is striclty Counterbalance hate, the best on color card to deal with a resolved Counterbalance. I’m playing two so I can side on in and keep the other in the board to have “nine” Wipe Away post side.

*Snap: the best bouncer against aggro and hate bears. Same idea as Wipe Away, side one in and keep the other in the board.

*Brain Freeze: “nine” freeze in the deck makes difficult to fizzle.

*Blue Sun's Zenith: first we had Braingeyser, then Stroke of Genius, and now the last and improved version. The reshuffling effect permits us to play one for drawing a big bunch of cards and then anohter one for the win. It is the only win condition against decks packing re-shuffling effects (like Emrakul).

*Meditate: it may seem unnecessary, or a reminiscence of the old lists, but it is very good in the long term games and is also a natural substitude for Intuition when it is boarded out.

*Turnabout: “eleven” Turnabouts in the main deck. You will normally Cunning Wish --> Turnabout before casting the first Time Spiral (if it is the only piece you are lacking), once going off you will have better wish targets.

*Rebuild: autowin against some pairings. It 's specially important to deal with an Ethersworn Canonist that has Mother of Runes Backup, or an Aether Vial on two.

*Echoing Truth: versatilty is the best word to define this card. I’ ve lost some important matches that I ‘d have won otherwise, for not playing it. It is also the best way to deal with Leyline of Sanctity. Must include.

*Slaughter Pact: irrelevant most of time. But is the only way to deal with Iona, Shield of Emeria, that otherwise will screw us badly. Being a 0 cost removal can be useful in some situations. This slto maybe flexible (but dedicated to the Legendary Angel), if your metagame is full of Dredge you can Change it for Ravenous Trap.

5-You are not Welcome!

Some cards fought to enter the maindeck but for differents reasons (after testing) didn’t made the cut, if you wonder why any of those are not in the deck just ask in the thread: Spell Snare, Remand, Explore, Blue Sun's Zenith, Meditate, Counterspell, Candelabra of Tawnos, Cloud of Faeries, Snap, Impulse, Personal Tutor, Spell Pierce, Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, Sapphire Medallion, Trade Routes, Muddle the Mixture, Mana Severance, Misdirection, Vision Skeins, Foil, Mind Over Matter, Palinchron, Sensei's Divining Top.

In general lines some of them have been cut for making us vulnerable to cards that we should not be vulnerable (for instance Candelabra of Tawnos makes us vulnerable to Qasali Pridemage, Krosan Grip, Pithing Needle, …), for being Win More cards (such as Palinchron, infinite mana is not really needed, trust me, and it make the opponent’s removal relevant), or for bad sinergy with some deck staples (for instance, Emrakul, the Aeons Torn has bad sinergy with Pact of Negation and Meditate).

6-Match ups

*Zoo: very easy match pre and post board. Even if they pack hate bears, their card manipulation is almost zero, so you will be able to handle their threats with comfort thanks to your Force of Will and pack of bouncers. Retraced Image shines specially in this pairing as an accelerator, due to their fast clock.

Boarding tips:

-3x Pact of Negation
-1x Intuition

+1x Snap
+1x Echoing Truth
+1x Wipe Away
+1x Meditate

*Golbins: another easy match. Pre board you only have to take care of the Goblin Lackey first turn, otherwise they will have enough speed to become a problem. Post board you should take care of their Pyrostatic Pillar, and some times Red Elemental Blast, Pyroblast and Mindbreak Trap.

Boarding Tips:

-3x Pact of Negation
-1x Intuition

+2x Spell Pierce
+1x Echoing Truth
+1x Meditate

*Merfolk: even if doesn’t seem so at first glance, this pairing is fairly easy, being the Cursecatcher our worst enemy. Pact of Negation is exceptional against them. You may have problem if they can curve properly (with Cursecatcher as their first drop).

Boarding Tips:

-1x Retraced Image
-1x Cunning Wish

+2x Spell Pierce

*Tempo Threshold (Canadian, Fatestalker, Team America, …): I’ve not lost a round yet against this kind of decks (but I’ ve lost some matches), so it seems not a bad match-up.Their clock is medium, and this is good for us. The easiest way to handle their huge counterwall is using the Turnabout as suggested above, if you do so you’ll face an unfair battle (in your favor) of 4x Force of Will against 4x Force of Will + 3x Pact of Negation.

Boarding Tips:

-3x Retraced Image

+3x Spell Pierce

If they play black (Fatestalker, Team America, ...):

-1x Intuition
-1x High Tide

+1x Meditate
+1x Spell Pierce

*Counter-Top: our black beast, the worst match-up possible. During the pre board matches you have to fight to go off before the soft lock in on table, if they can assemble it you should try to resolve a Cunning Wish --> Wipe Away to deal with the Enchantment, Brain Freeze and Turnabout are relevant too. Post board the things get easier.

Boarding Tips:

-3x Pact of Negation
-2x Retraced Image

+4x Spell Pierce
+1x Wipe Away

*Landstill: a deck with no clock at all is all you need to have an eternity to sculpt the perfect hand. Just make them waste their counters by bluffing you are going off and the Pact of Negation and Force of Will should do the rest.

Boarding Tips:

-3x Retraced Image

+3x Spell Pierce

If they play black you should aslo side:

-1x Intuition
-1x High Tide

+1x Meditate
+1x Spell Pierce

If they pack Meddling/Canonist:

-1x Cunning Wish

+1x Echoing Truth

*Monoblack with Spalsh (Eva Green, Pikula, Junk,…): this can be a tough match but still very favorable. The idea is to use the cantrips so you can hide the Time Spiral on Top, and when you have enough mana, simply cast it for the win.

Boarding Tips:

-3x Pact of Negation
-1x High Tide

+3x Spell Pierce
+1x Snap

*Storm Combo (T.E.S., ANT, …): this is more or less like a mirror the one who draws the nuts wins the game. If they can draw enough disruption in the early stages you are done, otherwise you have good chances.

Boarding Tips:

-3x Pact of Negation
-1x Retraced Image

+4x Spell Pierce

*Show and Tell (Emrakul Decks): Treat this as a slow combo deck with some countermagic, that must be killed with Blue Sun's Zenith. So center your efforts in drawing countermagic and generating lots of mana.

Boarding Tips:

-1x Cunning Wish
-1x Retraced Image
-1x Pact of Negation

+3x Spell Pierce

7-For those who are interested…

Some extra reading can be found here:

Eternal on the other side of the Ocean. Combo Control Rising - Mon, Goblin Ghief (http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/legacy/21150_Eternal_On_The_Other_Side_Of_The_Ocean_ComboControl_Rising.html)
Time Spiral Storm! - Drew Levin (http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/legacy/20810_Time_Spiral_Storm.html)
Espiral del Tiempo en Legacy - Jaime Cano (Spanish) (http://noticias.magicevolution.com/2011/01/14/espiral-de-tiempo-en-legacy/)
Original (mtg The Source) Thread (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?19565-Spiral-Tide)

Tournament winning decklists:

Tournament Winning Decks (@ TC Decks) (http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/tipo.php?archetype=Spiral%20Tide&format=Legacy)

Reports:

Over 100 players:

Paulinia - 01/05/2011 5-2 - 104 Players - ScatmanX (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?20754-5-2-Spiral-Tide-at-Paulinia-01-05-2011&p=544131)

51 to 100:

LCL - 05/03/22 Top 8 Exaequo (10th due to Tiebreak Points) - 88 Players - egosum (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?20205-[Spiral-Tide]-LCL-05-03-11-8th-Exaequo-(10th-fue-to-Tiebreak-points)&p=527355)

26 to 50 players:

4th Place - 30 Players - ScatmanX (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?19565-Spiral-Tide&p=514657&viewfull=1#post514657)
2nd Place - 36 Players - ScatmanX (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?19565-Spiral-Tide&p=521626&viewfull=1#post521626)

Less than 25 players:

Greetings,

Iñaki.-

Note for reporting Spiral Tide Results:

-Please tell the attendace to the event (do it in the report if possible).
-Post the Report in the Tournament Reports Forum (if it is from an external source this is not needed) and a link in this thread.
-Write the Decklist you played in the tournament report.
-Be as much detailed as possible.

BattlefieldMedic
03-01-2011, 05:58 PM
Great Primer!

As a new player of Spiral Tide, I will try to represent this deck well :D

Thanks Egosum

death
03-01-2011, 06:07 PM
Why is my list not in there? :frown:

egosum
03-01-2011, 06:11 PM
I'm sorry man but I can't add all the list variant that are out there, otherwise the Primer will be too long, so I decided 2 representative lists, for the two differents lines of playing. I encourage to add your updated list here so everyone can dicuss on it aswell.

Greetings,

Iñaki.-

death
03-01-2011, 06:19 PM
Just kidding. :tongue:

Great primer. Kudos!

Gocho
03-01-2011, 06:19 PM
Great work Iñaki,

But you have Blue Sun's Zenith in both lists and in the "You're not welcome" section.
Perhaps you missing remove it from this section.

egosum
03-01-2011, 06:26 PM
Thank you all guys for the good input, this is very encouraging.

If you read it carefully, the you are not welcome section is for maindeck cards. But thanks for reading the whole thing!!

Greetings,

Iñaki.-

Zinch
03-01-2011, 06:56 PM
Great primer Egosum!

As I said on the other thread, I'm testing a list similar to the second one and I think one Blue Sun's Zenith in the maindeck is a must. Is so easy to win with that card that I almost never go for the Brain Freeze route.

Off topic: maybe you should revise some orthographic mistakes

Mon,Goblin Chief
03-01-2011, 07:04 PM
Nice primer, solid work. I think you might want to explain the going-off process itself a little more for those not familiar with the deck at all.
The primer also needs some proof-reading and editorial work, though. I'll try to go over it when I find time during the next days and send you a corrected version if you don't mind :)

Also, in case you're interested, this is the version of NBS I'm trying out currently:


CAB - Neon Blue Sky

Maindeck (60)

Lands (18)

4x Flooded Strand
4x Scalding Tarn
1x Misty Rainforest
8x Island
1x Tropical Island

Protection (8)

4x Force of Will
3x Counterspell
1x Pact of Negation

Cantrips (12)

4x Brainstorm
4x Ponder
4x Preordain

Tutor (7)

4x Merchant Scroll
2x Cunning Wish
1x Intuition

Bussiness (15)

4 x High Tide
4x Time Spiral
3x Turnabout
3x Cloud of Faeries
1x Blue Sun’s Zenith

Sideboard (15)

1 Turnabout
1 Tolarian Winds
3x Krosan Grip
3x Snap
3x Spell Pierce
2x Pact of Negation
1x Brain Freeze
1x Dispel/1x Bound/Determined
1x Rebuild

Not sure yet what the last card to cut from the SB for the Wish-targets will be (at 16 atm). I wanted the additional cantrip - I always want to open with one - and I don't see anything to cut other than the 19th land. The extra-Wish (and SB Winds) are there because finding business after Spiraling was sometimes a little to inconsistent for my liking. Having additional access to KGrip game 1 and being able to safely board out a Tide are additional benefits.

As a sidenote, we clearly play the deck very differently, I could care less if they remove Spirals from the game with GY-hate, I'd be much more annoyed losing Tides as I don't want to cast more than one Spiral anyway if I can avoid it. Just Spiral, make a bunch of mana, get a Zenith and draw half your deck, make a ton more mana, get the Zenith again and stroke them out. Sure, I sometimes kill with Brain Freeze for convenience's sake or to spare my opponent another five minutes of watching me play with myself but actually needing to Freeze is exceedingly rare with Zenith MD outside of suboptimal Spiral-hands when going of turn 3.

Roman Candle
03-01-2011, 11:00 PM
Mon, my list is almost identical to yours (and I really enjoyed your article on the deck by the way) with the exception of one Meditate maindeck over the Pact of Negation. In your article you talk about how Spiral Tide should stay combo control, and that's precisely why I don't like Pact of Negation. I would much prefer something that lets me do something outside of the combo. I like Meditate because it sets you up for the big turn but it also provides a mass draw spell off of a Merchant Scroll in the early stages of the combo when you have less mana available and helps you rebuild after a fizzle/hand disruption. However, I can see where it makes me weaker against Merfolk, so I'm not devoted to the idea yet.

I'm also contemplating Spell Snare in place of Counterspell in the list. I'm noticing that I'm generally countering Counterbalance/Chalice on 1/hatebear/Daze, etc. and all of those can be countered with Spell Snare. Spell Snare also lets you cantrip on turn 1, and then cantrip again on turn 2 while still being able to counter a hate card, as well as catch a turn 1 Chalice on the play. The downside of course is being a weaker counter midcombo when you're avoiding Force of Will and Mindbreak Trap. Thoughts?

Scordata
03-01-2011, 11:14 PM
Mon: Why so many fetches?
The deck thinning effect is negligible, and especially after you Spiral, you increase the odds or drawing more lands if you have lots of fetches in your graveyard. I don't think the extra shuffle effects are needed if you are running spells like Merchant Scroll and Intuition. I also can't get behind Counterspell, because you'll want to use that mana to cast cantrips and other business spells.

Just my 2 cents.

Roman Candle
03-01-2011, 11:20 PM
The shuffle effects are invaluable with Ponder and Brainstorm, though. The life loss is pretty negligible and Stifle isn't very popular right now. I don't want to have to cast Merchant Scroll just to shuffle away chaff with Brainstorm and Ponder.

Also, Counterspell is really really good. Basically, Spiral Tide is never going to be as fast as TES/ANT. However, the deck does have the advantage of being able to play the control role until it combos out. Counterspell helps you play that control role.

lordofthepit
03-02-2011, 02:18 AM
I might be missing something, but why would you not play Retraced Image early against control? It's card advantage, but if you save it up while comboing, you'll have to eventually pay the U anyway, and you miss out on any mana the land could have generated earlier, plus the extra High Tide mana you could have had by not paying U on your combo turn.

The only reasons I see for holding it are 1) to pitch to Force of Will, 2) to shuffle back with Brainstorm, and 3) you don't have extra lands to cheat in after accounting for land drops anyway. But (3) is irrelevant because you'll eventually have to play draw spells (Meditate, Time Spiral) anyway, and the former leaves you with no further chances to drop your extra lands after your combo turn, while the latter replenishes your hand anyway.

I'm not saying I'm correct, because I've never piloted this deck, but it would be cool if you could explain this further.

egosum
03-02-2011, 07:56 AM
This are precisely the reasons:

1-Pitching for FoW
2-Extra cards for brainstorm, into more bussiness or protection.

Plus:

3-The psychological factor of having a grip full of cards is very important when facing the control match up.
4-You don't need to hurry against a control deck, they have an slow to null clock, so there is no reason for that.

In the primer I give this as an advice for begginers because it is "not always" optimal to play R.I. as soon as you can, nevertheless when you become more experienced this may change, it was only a loose guide to make starting with the deck easier.

Greetings,

Iñaki.-

P.S. Sorry for the orthographic mistakes. When I finished the Primer I was so excited that I can't wait to post it, I tried to correct them, but if you find any please send me a P.M. (so we can keep the thread on topic) and I'll fix it ASAP.

P.S.2 @Mon: I'll try to give more detailed information for the process of going off when I had a little more time. Thanks for reading.

Mon,Goblin Chief
03-02-2011, 08:14 AM
@Roman Candle: Good grasp of the deck, happy you seem to enjoy it! Thanks for the props concerning the article :)

I would never remove the PoN from the MD as long as Fish is around, though. You quite often need an additional 0-mana counter against them but don't have the handsize to support double Fow, at which point Scroll->Pact saves your bacon. I also hate losing to that deck with a passion so I'm a little biased when it comes to beating Folk.

@Scordota: Fetching to shuffle is so much better than needing to Scroll at inopportune moments... Roman Candle explained the reasoning quite well but let me demonstrate: You enter turn 2 with an Island in play, Brainstorm and any other cantrip - lets say Preordain - in hand. If you only have an Island, you see a maximum of 6 new cards after drawing for your next turn and still have a dead card on top, meaning you need to Scroll that turn or draw it (you could also have gone Brainstorm->Preordain, but that way you'd see even fewer cards). If you have a Fetch, you can go Brainstorm, shuffle some crap away and Preordain to see six cards this turn alone while having a fresh library to draw from for next turn. This works the same way with Ponder. Ponder, take the best card, crack a fetch, get new cards to look at with your other cantrips. Over the course of the game all those extra-cardsyou see add up significantly.
The land-thinning is irrelevant, I agree, especially because Spiral reshuffles the Fetches. That doesn't mean I suddenly have a higher chance of drawing lands than a version running Islands only - instead Spiral just makes it so that I have exactly the same number of lands in the deck a pure-Island version would have.

@both of you:
On Counterspell:
Spell Snare is an option, I suppose, but I prefer the unconditionality of Counterspell. There are quite a number of spells you'll want to counter that don't cost two (REB and FoW being the most prominent but also things like Orim's Chant, Duress, Breakthrough, Ad Nauseam, Natural Order, Show and Tell, Geddon, etc). Remember the deck wants to control other combo-decks not race them. Counterspell is actually better against aggro than you all seem to think, too.I've countered my fair share of Goblin Warchiefs, Knights, Nacatls etc gaining the one turn more I needed to win because my draw was disruption-heavy. If you win on turn 4, Counterspell is actually pretty good in control, it's only too slow if you need to build up true control of the game against aggro.
Cantrips interfering with CS: If you have a Counterspell and a slow hand just trade your turn for his using CS, than Cantrip a turn later. If you're fast just ignore that there's a CS in your hand. Those slots would be PoN otherwise, which are completely dead vs aggro (the matchup you have to cantrip aggressively in) anyway, so I don't see how having CS there matters aside from giving you the option to slow them down instead of just being completely useless.
Against control or combo, why would you ever cantrip on turn 2 instead of keeping CS open? Not to mention PoN is just as bad as a Counterspell you have in hand while being tapped out at that point of the game - if you cast it you die.

@lordofthepit: I suspect your reasons 1) and 2) are why you should hold them back. You don't need the speed- boost as much against control (because you'll get the opportunity to play those lands naturally anyway) but you might very well need the card-advantage. Never played egosumi's version, either, but that's how I feel about my Cloud of Faeries against control - FoW-food - and I suspect it's the same for him.

/edit: egosum was faster *g*

Rune
03-02-2011, 04:53 PM
Cool primer. I got 1st in a local with ~20 people. List was almost identical to Inaki's - only 3 cards different.

Aggro Elves (w/ maindeck Thorn of Amethyst and Mindbreak Traps out of the SB) 2-0
Dredge 2-0
Death and Taxes 2-0
Supreme Blue 1-1

Ravenous Trap was MVP against Dredge (orly?). The matchup gets much harder without it, so I think it's worth the 1 slot in the SB.

edit: also prefer the Meditate over Intuition because making my opponent's graveyard hate actually matter = sad panda.

Dark Ritual
03-02-2011, 05:43 PM
I'm of the opinion that ravenous trap should be a one of in every SB if the MD runs cunning wish but that's just me. One time I ran without the ravenous trap when playing solidarity and lo and behold I face dredge and I would've wrecked him if I had had it in the SB. And getting to 3 mana game one against dredge is possible especially with retraced image on turn 1 working wonders and while the dredge player plays with themselves we wish for trap and blow them out then we have all day to win. I also love how little storm it takes to brain freeze them out and how you can stroke/zenith them for 20 cards and win the game usually. Don't forget that we can also become solidarity like since we run turnabout, high tide, and brain freeze we can go EoT make lots of mana/storm, brain freeze you FTW kind of thing. Just be sure you do it EoT cause doing that main phase 1 will get you killed if they run FKZ.

I'm running 1 spell snare and 2 counterspell's in the pact slots and so far it's worked good. Considering going up to 2 spell snares though to better combat counterbalance.

Wow Kikoo MD thorn of amethyst in elves? Just wow. They must hate combo lol. How did the supreme MU go for you? That's the MU I'm most concerned about since it is probably the worst especially if they land CB + Top. And they have just as many counters as we do if not more since they generally play 3 MD counterspells, 4 FoW, and at least 2 spell snares and probably red elemental blast's out of the SB. Along with CB obviously.

lorddotm
03-02-2011, 06:52 PM
I'm also contemplating Spell Snare in place of Counterspell in the list. I'm noticing that I'm generally countering Counterbalance/Chalice on 1/hatebear/Daze, etc. and all of those can be countered with Spell Snare. Spell Snare also lets you cantrip on turn 1, and then cantrip again on turn 2 while still being able to counter a hate card, as well as catch a turn 1 Chalice on the play. The downside of course is being a weaker counter midcombo when you're avoiding Force of Will and Mindbreak Trap. Thoughts?

You counter Daze with Counterspell/Spell Snare? You realize that you can just pay 1 and it is countered without having to lose a card?

Rune
03-02-2011, 07:31 PM
I'm of the opinion that ravenous trap should be a one of in every SB if the MD runs cunning wish but that's just me. One time I ran without the ravenous trap when playing solidarity and lo and behold I face dredge and I would've wrecked him if I had had it in the SB. And getting to 3 mana game one against dredge is possible especially with retraced image on turn 1 working wonders and while the dredge player plays with themselves we wish for trap and blow them out then we have all day to win. I also love how little storm it takes to brain freeze them out and how you can stroke/zenith them for 20 cards and win the game usually. Don't forget that we can also become solidarity like since we run turnabout, high tide, and brain freeze we can go EoT make lots of mana/storm, brain freeze you FTW kind of thing. Just be sure you do it EoT cause doing that main phase 1 will get you killed if they run FKZ.

I'm running 1 spell snare and 2 counterspell's in the pact slots and so far it's worked good. Considering going up to 2 spell snares though to better combat counterbalance.

Wow Kikoo MD thorn of amethyst in elves? Just wow. They must hate combo lol. How did the supreme MU go for you? That's the MU I'm most concerned about since it is probably the worst especially if they land CB + Top. And they have just as many counters as we do if not more since they generally play 3 MD counterspells, 4 FoW, and at least 2 spell snares and probably red elemental blast's out of the SB. Along with CB obviously.

Yea, Retraced Image works well with Cunning Wish. It helped me power it out 1 turn faster vs Dredge. He dredged via Breakthrough -> Narcomoeba triggers on stack -> trap. He then had a 15 card library and a 1/1 in play, so he just scooped.

In g1 against Supreme Blue I FoW 2 Counterbalances and then refill with Meditate. He tops and fetches like crazy but he only has a Counterspell when I go off the next turn, and it's easy to win through. During the combo it is helpful to apply Poszgay tactics: Supreme Blue players are at a big disadvantage on a low clock, so when you're winning it's best to keep them in the game for as long as possible by chaining cantrips, tutors and untappers (Note that this isn't the same as stalling). Most people won't concede in this situation, even though they probably should. Since I'm not going to potentially throw the win away, I stop when the only way to keep going is by playing a Time Spiral that will shuffle away the tutor that finds the lethal Brain Freeze.

g2 when they board in Spell Pierces and Pyroblasts is almost impossible. I spell Pierce the 1st Counterbalance, but he has Pyroblast backup for the 2nd copy. Eventually I use Turnabout just for +1 mana and then cast Time Spiral through his 2x FoW, but it doesn't accomplish much since he has CB+Top in play and I die to Goyf. Would have scooped earlier to get a shot at g3 if I had known there wasn't much time left in the round.

Roman Candle
03-02-2011, 09:47 PM
You counter Daze with Counterspell/Spell Snare? You realize that you can just pay 1 and it is countered without having to lose a card?

My bad, I'm not sure what I was thinking when I typed that out. I don't counter Daze obviously.

death
03-02-2011, 10:02 PM
Would have scooped earlier to get a shot at g3 if I had known there wasn't much time left in the round.

You are already in contention for 1st, why do you want to win all your rounds?

egosum
03-03-2011, 06:16 AM
Concerning Ravenous Trap. I' ve tested it in the slot of Slaughter Pact, and it is a metagame choice. If Dredge is a relevant contendant in your metagame, play Ravenous Trap in that slot (anyway, if this is the situation, the biggest number of Ionas will be reanimated by dredge players). But it seems that reanimator is reappearing where I play, and this is why Slaughter Pact is my my sideboard. If both, dredge and reanimator, are relevant in you area then I 'd suggest playing ravenous trap, you can even fight reanimator with your countermagic (preventing Iona), something that could be less useful against Ichorid Players.

Greetings,

Iñaki.-

death
03-03-2011, 09:26 AM
Ravenous trap will not stop reanimator unless it's Buried Alive. If this a concern, it can be dealt with 2 Slaughter Pacts. One scroll target maindeck, one as a wish target. Solid reanimator lists with FoW/Daze/Thoughtseize are just as hard to fight with countermagic as ichorid with recurring Therapies.

egosum
03-03-2011, 09:39 AM
Merchant Scroll cannot go for Slaughter Pact.

Greetings,

Iñaki.-

death
03-03-2011, 09:51 AM
I'm still half asleep, lol. Well I guess in game 2, your best bet will be to side in all Pierces. Then Scroll for Wish and hope for the best.

That is with 1 S. Pact and 1 Ravenous Trap in the 15.

Zinch
03-03-2011, 02:24 PM
Don't worry, it happened to me also. The first time I saw the decklist I thought "how didn't anyone tried a Krosan Grip in the main?". The first time I tried to fetch it with the scroll I realised why... lol

death
03-03-2011, 03:18 PM
The difference is that I had my scrolls since 1999 so clearly I wasn't thinking.

zeroeight
03-04-2011, 07:42 AM
Can anyone please explain how to mulligan properly with this deck? Also, what are some of the possible ways to go off, what you should aim for before casting Time Spiral and after resolving it? I'm quite new with combo decks. I'm getting a hang of it but I want to hear from more experienced players.

Mon,Goblin Chief
03-04-2011, 09:01 AM
My basic mulligan rules against unknown opponents:
- Keep almost every hand with at least one land (and less than 4) and a bunch of cantrips.
- Don't keep 1-landers if you don't have a cantrip
- Most hands that already have 3-4 lands, High Tide/Merchant Scroll and Time Spiral can be kept
- The worst cards in your opening hand are untap-effects, CWish and Zenith - count them as a mulligan already when evaluating if you should ship that hand

A lot of these things change when you know what you're playing against (against aggro you usually want one untap-effect for the turn 3 win, against control you'd rather have countermagic than actual High Tides/Time Spirals, etc) but they're good guidelines for game 1 I think.

Pre-Spiral what you aim for is pretty simple: At least three lands, a High Tide and a way to make six mana to cast your Spiral (fourth land, untap-effects). Your whole goal is to resolve a Spiral after having cast a High Tide, you're not trying to set up anything else (though floating mana and extra-Tides are obviously appreciated). You'll obviously want to avoid dieing before you can Spiral/stop things that keep you from casting Spiral. If you're able to tap the opponent out with Turnabout during his endstep that's usually good, too - you are giving them a new hand, after all.

As for what to do post-Spiral, that's more difficult and seems playstyle-dependant. In NBS the basic plan is as follows: Play all the High Tides you can, use untap-effects to make mana then Zenith yourself for 10+ (always leave at least six mana available - six mana is Merchant Scroll->Turnabout). The new cards should allow you to either win directly or Zenith yourself again for at least twenty cards, at which point you should then be able to target the opponent for lethal.
So that is what you should be evaluating your post-Spiral hand for. Play any High Tides, use cantrips to dig up more High Tides, untap-effects and Merchant Scrolls. If it becomes clear you won't be able to go for the Zenith-Win because you're unlucky or because you had to use up to many untap-effects before you found the necessary High Tides, resolve as many Tides as possible and cast another Time Spiral netting more mana and see if you can finally win with Zenith with that new hand.

Trentemoller
03-04-2011, 10:12 AM
I just got back into magic because of the unbanning of Time Spiral, immediately thinking of a deck similar to this. I did a lot of testing and it's a very consistent deck. I have only fizzled three times in the around 300 times I casted a tide + spiral in the same turn. There are not a lot of good hate cards against you, the only ones that are played that are worrying are Ethersworn Canonist, the blue trap, Gaddock Teeg and Counterbalance (which is not hate against you specifically but a very hating card for our deck). The white Leyline is not very good against us, I don't mind people bringing it in, I consider it almost a dead card, since it allows us to combo even though we cannot kill them yet, after we make bazillions of mana and draw a lot of cards we can just bounce it via Cunning Wish. I'm playing a deck similar to Mon's deck, with 2 maindeck Counter Spells. Here is my list:

13 Island
4 Polluted Delta
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Meditate
1 Intuition
1 Blue Sun's Zenith
1 Pact of Negation
2 Counterspell
4 Time Spiral
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
3 Retraced Image
4 Preordain
3 Merchant Scroll
3 Cunning Wish
3 Turnabout
4 High Tide
4 Ponder
SB: 1 Blue Sun's Zenith
SB: 2 Pact of Negation
SB: 1 Turnabout
SB: 2 Wipe Away
SB: 1 Rebuild
SB: 4 Spell Pierce
SB: 1 Brain Freeze
SB: 1 Chain of Vapor
SB: 2 Snap

I will make some movies with MWS to deal with some of the questions people have asked here. I would like to have some feedback on those videos, but also on the decklist I'm currently playing. I want to fit in a meditate in my board again but I'm not sure what to throw out. Retraced Image is too good not to play, I consider it to be much better than Cloud of Faeries or Candelabra. It is good to accelerate against aggro, but it's even better at letting you combo post-spiral much more consistently, dropping one or two islands more is huge with several tides and turnabouts. I just added a 5th fetchland, which has good synergy with Brainstorm and Ponder obviously.

Edit: This is my first post, how do I add card tags? I did it, but is there no button for it?

death
03-04-2011, 10:37 AM
Can anyone please explain how to mulligan properly with this deck? Also, what are some of the possible ways to go off, what you should aim for before casting Time Spiral and after resolving it? I'm quite new with combo decks. I'm getting a hang of it but I want to hear from more experienced players.


For those of us that are new to the deck, would someone be willing to do sample/mulligan hands?

Some tips on how to play the deck would be useful as well. I tend to crap out sometimes out of nowhere.

I will show you the 3 paths to victory using Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, Blue Sun's Zenith and Brain Freeze.
But first, my categorized decklist (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?19565-Spiral-Tide&p=519666&viewfull=1#post519666) from the old [Spiral Tide (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?19565-Spiral-Tide/page5)] thread:

Bomb: 4 High Tide (Amy Weber)
Cantrips: 4 Brainstorm/3 Ponder/3 Preordain
Untappers: 4 Time Spiral/3 Turnabout/3 Candelabra of Tawnos
Tutors: 4 Merchant Scroll/3 Cunning Wish
death's (4): 1 Impulse/1 Intuition/1 Blue Sun's Zenith/1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
Countermagic: 4 Force of Will/3 Pact of Negation
Lands: 14 Island/4 Scalding Tarn

Toolbox

1 Turnabout
1 Stroke of Genius
1 Meditate
1 Brain Freeze
11 meta slots

The aim of the deck is to cast High Tide(s) and Time Spiral by turn 4 against beatdown or later against slower decks.
For my mulligan decisions, I usually want a hand with High Tide and Time Spiral, or either one with Merchant Scroll or Intuition.
As Mon has pointed out, you can keep a hand with one land as long as you have a bunch of cantrips. In an ideal manner, you go

Turn 1: drop Island, cast a cantrip for more lands. You need to drop a land every single turn.
Turn 2: Merchant Scroll for High Tide (or Turnabout or Force of Will if you have High Tide); or for Intuition if you didn't draw Time Spiral
Turn 3: Intuition for Time Spiral or High Tide; or you may Cunning Wish for Turnabout (or Ravenous Trap or Mindbreak Trap to buy time)
Turn 4: tap Island, High Tide, tap 3 Island for :u::u::u::u::u::u:, cast Turnabout, floating more :u:'s before you cast Time Spiral

In between these turns, if you have Force of Will, you may counter spells that will kill you or deter you from going off. You may use Turnabout on possible attackers during their upkeep or shut down opponent's mana at the end of their turn to prevent them from interfering.

After the first Spiral, your goal is to generate more mana. You do this by casting cantrips to find Tides and Turnabout, or use Merchant Scroll to put them directly into your hand. Once you get to 15 mana, you win from there by casting Emrakul and taking an extra turn (if you draw it, with my list). Otherwise, cast Blue Sun's Zenith (Stroke of Genius, I miss you grandpa!) targeting yourself for a pile of High Tides, Turnabout, Merchant Scroll, or Cunning Wish. If you draw the Emrakul at this point you can still cast him (saving you time in the round), cast your High Tides (before tapping an Island please), Scroll for more Tides and cast them, then tap all your Islands and Turnabout them, tap your Islands and Turnabout them, Cunning Wish for Turnabout.. repeat! Now once you have 53+3 [(60 cards in opponents deck not counting his land drops - 7 cards he drew from Spiral) + 3 Zenith's casting cost] you can now Stroke your opponent to death. Alternatively, if you have played 16 spells already, you can Wish for Brain Freeze, with 18 storm count you can mill the 54 cards in your opponent's deck. I would only do this if he doesn't have Stifle, Trickbind or any of the legendary Eldrazis that will shuffle back his library.

I have Emrakul, Blue Zenith as main win conditions. As I mentioned in the old thread, I find Brainfreeze as a dead card in the main 60, without it having the ability to win on the spot. Well, you can use it for messing up CB lock or Doomsday stacks occasionally and that's it.

You will notice I did not deliberately mention Candelabra of Tawnos in the play above, which is by the way broken when all you want is untap lands and cast Zenith (Stroke) or Time Walk + Obliterate (Emrakul). You will discover that once you start goldfishing. In its place you can run 3 Retraced Image or 4 Cloud of Faeries + 1 Snap.

Another peculiar aspect of my list (and egosum's) is that we ALWAYS run 3 Cunning Wish. This card will pull you out of tight situations. You can fetch Turnabout when you need mana, or Stroke when you need to refill, or Meditate to generate storm or refill for only 3cc, or fetch Brainfreeze as a win con, or fetch an answer from the sideboard to put you ahead in board position. Against Extirpate, you can side out 1 High Tide and then Wish it back. This card also abuses Cloud of Faeries (for builds that have them) by fetching a Snap or Echoing Truth from the sideboard.

Zinch
03-04-2011, 11:19 AM
I just got back into magic because of the unbanning of Time Spiral, immediately thinking of a deck similar to this. I did a lot of testing and it's a very consistent deck. I have only fizzled three times in the around 300 times I casted a tide + spiral in the same turn. There are not a lot of good hate cards against you, the only ones that are played that are worrying are Ethersworn Canonist, the blue trap, Gaddock Teeg and Counterbalance (which is not hate against you specifically but a very hating card for our deck).

I just wanted to note that Chalice at one is a GREAT hate card against us and is widely played (at least in my meta). I've been testing against Dragon Stompy and White Stax and the former is a nightmare to play against. It has Chalices, trinispheres, Blood moon and Magus of the moon as hate cards and normaly puts a very quick clock alongside them.
You cannot win with a chalice at 1 on the table. Solidarity can. We cannot with all the cantrips and the combo enabler with a CMC of 1.
Against white Stax is easy to just counter the armaggedon effects and find the wish, but against Dragon Stompy there's no time. That deck (and its uses against counterbalance) is the reason I've been testing 1 Cryptic command instead of the snap I was playing maindeck. What do you think?

My deck actualy:

4 High Tide
4 Time Spiral
4 Turnabout
3 Cloud of Faeries
4 Merchant Scroll
1 Blue Sun's Zenith

4 Brainstorm
4 Preordain
3 Ponder

3 Counterspell
1 Pact of Negation
4 Force of Will

1 Cunning Wish
1 Cryptic Command

10 Fetches
1 Tropical Island
8 Island

Sideboard:
1 Brain Freeze
1 Rebuild
1 Unknown-- What do you think is the best wishable option?
4 Spell Pierce
3 Krosan Grip
3 Snap

Edit: Excuse me I made a mistake writting the list. I forgot the Blus Sun's Znith

death
03-04-2011, 11:26 AM
Sideboard:
1 Hurkyl's Recall / Echoing Truth
1 Rebuild

Against Chalice@1, maindeck a Hurkyl's Recall or Echoing Truth. You can scroll then cast it. You may also Cunning Wish for Rebuild if there is a second Chalice@2. I'm just showing how a deck that plays 4 Merchant Scroll/3 Cunning Wish can be versatile and resilient.

Trentemoller
03-04-2011, 11:38 AM
Yeah I obviously forgot about Chalice. It is very good indeed. Dragon Stompy is a tough matchup indeed. I suggest playing a 2nd rebuild in the sb if its a big part of your meta, boarding one in to scroll for. However, if that is the case, I would prefer to play monoblue to be able to cut back on the fetches because more islands = more win versus blood moon/magus.

death
03-04-2011, 03:34 PM
Same thing can be said about Stifle. Decks that play them (CT, TA, NH) may not be popular in some areas but they do exist. Fetch + shuffle effects are invaluable with Brainstorm and Ponder, however being caught unprepared is an ugly thing. The lifeloss is also relevant against extremely fast aggro or burn. I wouldn't recommend going beyond 6 fetchlands.

Piceli89
03-04-2011, 07:08 PM
Same thing can be said about Stifle. Decks that play them (CT, TA, NH) may not be popular in some areas but they do exist. Fetch + shuffle effects are invaluable with Brainstorm and Ponder, however being caught unprepared is an ugly thing. The lifeloss is also relevant against extremely fast aggro or burn. I wouldn't recommend going beyond 6 fetchlands.

Quoted for truth. You should try to minimize self-damage in order to gain extra turns against aggressive decks while setting up.

zeroeight
03-05-2011, 01:13 AM
@Mon and Death:

Thank you for the replies. Very helpful. Your posts should be added in the first page. Cheers.

death
03-05-2011, 11:14 AM
zeroeight, you're welcome.

@ Trentemoller, for hate bears and chalice decks, I suggest making room for 2 more cards:
1 Hibernation - Gaddock Teeg, hits Natural Order (Progenitus) and Green Zenith decks
1 Hurkyl's Recall - Ethersworn Canonist, artifact-based decks (affinity, MUD, Stax, Dragon Stompy)

These ones you already have,
1 Rebuild - same as above, leave out as Wish target
2 Wipe Away - for Counterbalance, Meddling Mage, Leyline of Sanctity

Chain of Vapor looks kinda crappy, also that second Snap.
My sideboard is a stockpile of redundant bounce spells and I am thinking of cutting out Echoing Truth.

Trentemoller
03-05-2011, 12:24 PM
zeroeight, you're welcome.

@ Trentemoller, for hate bears and chalice decks, I suggest making room for 2 more cards:
1 Hibernation - Gaddock Teeg, hits Natural Order (Progenitus) and Green Zenith decks
1 Hurkyl's Recall - Ethersworn Canonist, artifact-based decks (affinity, MUD, Stax, Dragon Stompy)

These ones you already have,
1 Rebuild - same as above, leave out as Wish target
2 Wipe Away - for Counterbalance, Meddling Mage, Leyline of Sanctity

Chain of Vapor looks kinda crappy, also that second Snap.
My sideboard is a stockpile of redundant bounce spells and I am thinking of cutting out Echoing Truth.

While Chain of Vapor sucks against Chalice, I think the reduced 1 mana makes it better than Echoing Truth in my eyes. Just being able to wish for chain and bounce eot for 4 mana is huge, or just with 3 mana and then doing it on your own turn can help too. How would you change my SB with my same MD list?


Current SB:
SB: 1 Meditate
SB: 1 Blue Sun's Zenith
SB: 2 Pact of Negation
SB: 1 Turnabout
SB: 2 Wipe Away
SB: 1 Rebuild
SB: 4 Spell Pierce
SB: 1 Brain Freeze
SB: 1 Chain of Vapor
SB: 1 Snap

Mon,Goblin Chief
03-05-2011, 12:45 PM
@zeroeight: you're welcome.

@Death: I disagree quite massively with a lot of the things you've been saying in these last posts:

Candelabra is far from broken, it's never anything but a worse Turnabout at best outside of 2 circumstances:
- You try to go off on turn 2 (which I don't think is worth trying usually and in that case Cloud of Faeries is actually better)
- You've played it turn 1/2 and want to go off turn 3. At that point it saves you one (1) mana on Turnabout.
Sure, it's the closest thing to another Turnabout if you want that, but it's far from great. Also 3 Cloud of Faeries on their lonesome are working perfectly fine in their stead, not need to play a full 5 crappy untap-effects (4 Cloud + Snap).

Fetchlands: 6 Fetchlands probably is the worst. You will still regularly draw one to get Stifled but you'll also still regularly miss one when you need a cheap shuffle-effect. The extra-speed with which you dig through your library by having more fetches and therefore seeing more cards will win you far more games than the one point of life you saved by running 6 instead of 9 Fetches.
Let's go over this in an organized way:
The number of games you win on 1-3 life while having drawn 1-3 of the islands you play instead of a fetch is the upper limit of games you gain as an advantage from having fewer fetches. Let's call this number X so that it's easier to refer to.
The number of games you lose because you can't shuffle after Brainstorm/Ponder and therefore see fewer cards because you run Islands not Fetches is next. Let's call it Y.
For your assertion that having more than six Fetches is not worth it to be correct, X would need to be bigger than Y. Considering I can count the number of games I've lost to exactsies so far on one hand running NBS (9 Fetches currently, by now I've played maybe 200 games) and I remember missing shuffle-effects to maximize Brainstorm + other cantrip on turn 2 in a far higher number of games (with 9 Fetches, mind you), I'm pretty sure Y is significantly bigger than X and what you're saying is nothing but rationalization for "man losing so much life to my lands sure feels bad".
This leaves us with Stifle/Blood Moon issues to raise X over Y. To be reasonably sure that you won't get stifled, you need to have a significant number of games in which you crack no Fetches at all. Aside from how much worse this is if you don't play against Stifle (no shuffles), that means you'd have to run far less than six Fetches. How do I know? Because a ton of decks only have six Fetches and still get stifled out of the game with regularity.
As for Blood Moon, the only deck running it that also has the acceleration to play it before it doesn't make the slightest difference any more is Dragon Stompy. To make a difference there, (considering you need at least three Islands to go off and you need to do so fast because DS has a relevant clock) you'd need to run draw no more than a single Fetch. The only way to make reasonably sure that's the case would again be running significantly fewer than 6 Fetches.
Considering how strongly that impacts your cantrip-shuffles during every single game you play and the comparative scarceness of Stifle/Moon, I highly doubt that you really get an over-all advantage out of cutting fetches to avoid Stifle/Moon.

Now in the Retraced Image-builds there is a utterly convincing argument for running as few Fetches as possible, but that isn't what you were talking about.


Finally, the specialized bounce-spells, particularly Hibernation, are a waste of space in here while Snap is actually very good. The only thing Hibernation really does is give you an answer to Prog, everything else the Snaps you dislike so much does far better. If the opponent invests his resources into getting out an early Prog you should be able to take a single hit and kill them.
Instead of trying to solve hatebears with specialized stuff you don't really need and that sucks monkey balls if your draw it while going off (Hibernation, Hurkyls) you could be boarding a bunch of Snaps, speed your deck up immensely - especially if you run Faeires not Candelabra - AND have a bunch of solutions for hatebears.
I can see where Hurkyl's might come in handy against the Chalice-decks once in a while but honestly, I'd rather M-Scroll for Rebuild either way so that I don't eat Chalice @ 2 the turn after I Scroll (first time they'll usually have four mana usually, too). More Rebuild > Hurkyls.

The only bounce spells that really make sense in the board imo are
- Wipe Away (if you don't run green for Grip)
- Rebuild
- maybe Chain of Vapor/Echoing Truth - though Chain seems better because it's cheaper - if you play somewhere where the aggro-decks board non-creature hate - though I have yet to see that happen. They all seem to have either Teeg or Canonist.

death
03-05-2011, 02:00 PM
Candelabra is far from broken, it's never anything but a worse Turnabout
It is the closest thing to Turnabout and that's just why I like it. I find the ability to untap an Island for :1: then tap it again for :u::u::u::u::u: as broken. Retraced Image is a good substitute. Veteran Spring Tide players might have word with you for calling Cloud of Faeries + Snap crappy. It is a matter of playstyle I suppose.


Fetchlands: 6 Fetchlands probably is the worst. You will still regularly draw one to get Stifled but you'll also still regularly miss one when you need a cheap shuffle-effect.
I play 4 and I'm satisfied with the 1 shuffle effect I get after a Brainstorm. I said I wouldn't recommend going beyond 6. If you mulligan correctly, you wouldn't mind the cream 'not rising to the top' because the deck plays with tutors. I wouldn't put too much weight on shuffling my library unless I'm manipulating it with Sensei's Divining Top. And yes, fetches just blows with Retraced Image.

Yes, a ton of decks only have 6 Fetches and still get stifled out of the game with regularity. More so, this deck which religiously needs 4 Islands to go off.


As for Blood Moon, to make a difference there, (considering you need at least three Islands to go off and you need to do so fast because DS has a relevant clock) you'd need to draw no more than a single Fetch.

I've had games where I didn't draw a single fetch.


I can see where Hurkyl's might come in handy against the Chalice-decks once in a while but honestly, I'd rather M-Scroll for Rebuild either way so that I don't eat Chalice @ 2 the turn after I Scroll (first time they'll usually have four mana usually, too). More Rebuild > Hurkyls.

Hurkyl's is cheaper, it'll let you follow up with a Brainstorm with 3 Islands in play. Them dropping 2 Chalices is also rare. Don't forget you have Force of Will. Or you can always preemptively M-Scroll for C-Wish.


Chain of Vapor/Echoing Truth - though Chain seems better because it's cheaper - if you play somewhere where the aggro-decks board non-creature hate - though I have yet to see that happen. They all seem to have either Teeg or Canonist.

Chain of Vapor is cheaper but it folds to Chalices and won't bounce multiple hate bears or Leylines. I would prefer Echoing Truth over it. Hurkyl's and Hibernation will hose multiple Canonists or Teegs perfectly. Hibernation will suck if you board it in obviously, it is there only as C-Wish target.

death
03-05-2011, 02:31 PM
To those new to the deck, don't be contented by copying a list and goldfishing it 100x. Practice is worthless if you are continually doing what is wrong. Learn to adjust plays correctly and adapt card choices with the meta environment. No list is perfect, and there is so much more to contribute. Adjust, adjust, adjust...



Peace


edit:
ScatmanX, where are you?

Mon,Goblin Chief
03-05-2011, 02:41 PM
Actually, to me all the untap-effects after Turnabout are crappy because the only thing you need them for is winning on 3, other than that they're mainly just useless cards that make going off require less exact play, which i why I said "five crappy untap-effects" - just having three is just better, whichever extra-accelerators you want to use. Also Spring Tide is just a worse ANT-deck imo, so I pretty much don't care if Spring Tide players think Cloud/Snap are good (and yes, they are if you just need to be fast, henceSnap being so sweet out of the board).

Mulliganing making extra-fetches unnecessary: Yeah sure. It's clearly better to have to mulligan more often to win on six life instead of four. Color me convinced.


I play 4 and I'm satisfied with just 1 shuffle effect I get after a Brainstorm.

I've had games where I didn't draw a single fetch.
That's exactly the problem I have with running so few fetches. Not having at least one if they don't play Stifle/Moon (clearly the majority of the meta) is just so bad. Brainstorm being mediocre instead of broken just isn't where I want to be.

As to the issue the second answer was actually addressing, four Fetches seems like a valid setup if you expect lots of Moon/Stifle because you'll have a sufficient number of games in which you don't see a Fetch. So if your meta has more decks with Stifle/Moon than matchups in which you want the highest card quality possible, this would be the right choice.


Hurkyl's is cheaper, it'll let you follow up with a Brainstorm with 3 Islands in play. Them dropping 2 Chalices is also rare. Don't forget you have Force of Will. Or you can always preemptively M-Scroll for C-Wish.
Great so I can now better misplay my Brainstorms by casting them eot (because your bounce should definitely be played eot)? That seems like a great reason to play Hurkyl's. As long as you still need to Brainstorm to hope and get there, playing your mass-bounce against Chalice.dec just seems wrong either way. As to "2 Chalice are rare", sure they are. Those games do come up though, and are those the opponents are most likely to win, too. Having to scroll for the exremely slow Wish because you're running the wrong bounce effect seems just horrible.


Chain of Vapor is cheaper but it folds to Chalices and won't bounce multiple hate bears or Leylines. I would prefer Echoing Truth over it. Hurkyl's and Hibernation will hose multiple Canonists or Teegs perfectly. Hibernation will suck if you board it in, it is there only as C-Wish target
Rebuild deals with multiple Canonists just fine (if they play multiple Canonists they shouldn't be killing you turn 4 because they gave up so much of their clock) and for some weird reason I doubt I'd ever need an answer to multiple Gaddok Teeg in play.

death
03-05-2011, 03:07 PM
Nonetheless, Hibernation will hit Teeg along with Wild Nacatls, will bounce a Progenitus. Against both a Canonist and Teeg on the table however, it looks like Rushing River is the only out.

ScatmanX
03-05-2011, 07:06 PM
ScatmanX, where are you?
I've been playing Standard... sorry.

But I do have been testing the deck quite a bit, Mon's version. It just seems it is better md against everything I was playing before (except Merfolk).

On the subjects being discussed:

- Untappers: On the old thread we've settled that the number of untappers should be 6-7, those being at least 3 Turnabouts. After my testing, I'm running 4 Turnabouts and 3 Faeries. I really liked the power of Candelabra, and being able to preemptly drop your untapper was good against several decks. Unfortunetely, it just opens for more hate from the opponent. I had games where I lost simply because my opponent P. Needled my Candelabra, and other where it was Pridemage'd. Once I was unable to drop it under Chalice @1, and it made difference... So I decided not running it to do not open myself to more forms of hate.

- Bouncers: I really don't think there's a deck that run both Cannonist AND Tegg. for bouncing them, 3 Snaps after SB had proven to be just fine. IF Cannonist is backed with counters (on a Merfolk or CB build), then your best answer is K.Grip/Wipe Away. If you have Grip on your side, Wipe Away is unnecessary. @Chain of Vapor: The number of times costing 1 will be relevant is not high enough to justify the SB slot. I think the same holds truth for Echoig Truth (though I think Cab neon sky should have a lot of problems going trough double Leyline of Sanctity, but I don't think that should happen very buch. Also, 1 Emrakul solve that problem). Hibernation seems pointless.Progenitus is a 4 mana, sorcery, 2 turn kill. We should be able to out race him.
Recall x Rebuild: Rebuild is better. And G2-3 against Stax / D. Stompy, we should bring it to the MD, to be able to search it with Scroll. Scroll > Wish > Rebuild takes too much time, and that might be something we can not have. The 1 mana more also is not relevant, since we should aim to cast it EOT, and go off on our turn. Also, Chalice @2 does happen. Specially when playing against Stax, where we should assume the control role, and take quite a while to go off).

- Number of fetches: I really have no idea what the optimal number might be. Really, none. I just never thought about it. I woudn't worry about Stifle though. IF you're in a meta that has lots of decks running it, then you should minimize it, of course. Nonetheless, with 19 lands (as I play now), it is easy to play around it. We NEED the shuffle effect, not only for Brainstorm, but for Ponder too. And the lifeloss here is quit irrelevant. We are able to constantly goldfish turns 3-4. That should add up to 2-3 lifeloss. If we consider we have counterspells or Snaps for things like Nacatl and Lackey, the only MU that should be relevant is Burn, and I think we should not take that in consideration. Off course, in a Retrace Image build, 4-5 fetches should be optimal. In a version like Mon's, I really don't know.

@Egoum's: Congratulations on the primer. Maybe you could add links to the reports done by us, like Bryant did on the primer of the TES thread. I think it is quite usefull to everyone to read how the deck has behaved on other tournaments.

Piceli89
03-06-2011, 04:57 PM
Alix Hatfield is piloting a Candelabra build at the last SCG and apparently he has defeated Adam Barnello (Nightmare) piloting UWb CBThopter 2-0

mrjumbo03
03-06-2011, 11:41 PM
Alix is winning his semifinal match, he just zenith himself and the rest is formality...

He'll be up against Eli Kassis, Junk deck which I think is a pretty great matchup...

On another note, the commentator said that High Tide placed 9th as well...

death
03-07-2011, 01:07 AM
It's all in the books. Epic games 2 and 3.

Edit:
Hats off to Alix and props to Anwar

@egosum, great timing on the primer, really.

Btw, Mon, Candelabra truly is fucking broken AND apparently 6 Fetchlands IS enough to take home an SCG Legacy trophy.
As I'm probably the only one here who has played Time Spiral when it was Type 2 and Extended legal, don't make me look bad when I am merely pushing the archetype to evolve.

death, signing off.

FieryBalrog
03-07-2011, 01:11 AM
Ridiculous games. Especially game 3, fucking nuts. Mises the Time Spiral off the top on his last card to pull it out before Bob ended it.

egosum
03-07-2011, 09:44 AM
I' m working on it, but I 'm short of time! I' ll do it asap.

By the moment here you have a report:

Report. (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?20205-[Spiral-Tide]-LCL-05-03-11-8th-Exaequo-(10th-fue-to-Tiebreak-points)&p=527355)

DuKeLiO
03-07-2011, 09:54 AM
At first, I play this build:

4 Force of Will
4 Counterspell
4 Brainstorm
4 Preordain
4 Ponder
4 Merchant Scroll
4 High Tide
4 Timespiral
3 Turnabout
2 Repeal
1 Blue Sun's Zenith
1 Cunning Wish
3 Candelabra of Tawnos
8 Island
1 Tropical Island
3 Misty Rainforest
3 Flooded Strand
3 Polluted Delta

SB:
3 Relic of Progenitus
3 Krosan Grip
2 Spell Pierce
2 Dispel
1 Gigadrowse
1 Brain Freeze
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Hibernation
1 Mindbreak Trap

The list has been proven on two 63 and 78 people. I miss top8 in the last round of the first tournament against countertop beacuse a bad play on my side, and made top8 in the second losing in the top4 in a very frustrating matchup seeing only lands and cantrips and two counters, with mulligan to six.
I play Candelabra + Repeal untap engine beacuse I think Candelabra is better than Cloud of Faeries for too reasons:
It produces more mana, and it isn't vulnerable to Spell Snare, so I can combo many times without having to play any two casting cost spell before Time Spiral. I also like the two Repeal beacuse they are very good on game 1 against CB, random hate cards or simply to gain some time.
The bounce spells of my choose were Hibernation and Hurkyl's Recall. Hibernation is pretty good against green hate. Gaddock Teeg decks usually also play amazing cards like Choke, and having the oportunity of bouncing them all in the same turn is very good. I have also some winning situations against enchantress on double Sterling Grove + Leyline of Sanctity Games, that can't be resolved in any other way.
The mass artifact bounce spell also is very useful. I have used it on a lot of situations of Chalice+Trinispehere, double Cannonist and Cannonist + Aether Vial at 2. At least in my meta there are a lot of GW hate decks, that are a very easy game 1 matchup, but harder with a proper sideboard. Usually with the 2 mass bouce spells (Hibernation and Hurkyl's Recall) is enough for winning.
I prefer for my build Hurkyl's Recall beacuse it is cheaper. Against Chalice decks I can wait with counterspells on my hand, making landdrops waiting for the turn to go Merchant->Hurkyl (with cunning on game 1) and winning. I think the deck is like Mon's wrote in his column on Starcitygames, a combo-control deck, and I play it consecuently.
Also I think that if you have to play with Cloud of Faeries beacuse you like it, or you haven't Candelabras, a couple of Snaps on the side is the right call against Teeg and Cannonist.
And for ending, I have seen the Alix Hatfield deck. I test some versions like it, with Mind over Matter and 4 Candelabras and I think that MoM is pretty overkill, I only liked it in a game were my High Tides were Extirpated, and I had to won dropping all twelve islands and recicling Turnabouts with Spirals floating mana until I had to kill my oponent with a Stroke of Genius. I think Alix Hatfield version maybe be faster than mine, but I don´t think it has the hability of winning regulary against Counterbalance decks, like Mon's version and my own version. (I won at least 50% against CB game 1 thanks to Counterspell, Repeal and Turnabouts)

Zinch
03-07-2011, 07:15 PM
As been said, Spiral Tide has won and take a 9th place at the SCG Edison Open (http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/deckshow.php?&start_date=2011-03-06&end_date=2011-03-06&event_ID=20&city=Edison)

What shocks me more are the 2 Mind over Matter on the winning list. I think it's an overkill card and therfore suboptimal: it's only good after a Spiral or Candelabra with at least a high tide played, and at that point you should win anyways. What do you think?

kingtk3
03-08-2011, 03:18 AM
As been said, Spiral Tide has won and take a 9th place at the SCG Edison Open (http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/deckshow.php?&start_date=2011-03-06&end_date=2011-03-06&event_ID=20&city=Edison)

What shocks me more are the 2 Mind over Matter on the winning list. I think it's an overkill card and therfore suboptimal: it's only good after a Spiral or Candelabra with at least a high tide played, and at that point you should win anyways. What do you think?

Completely agree, though I haven't tested so it's a kind of intuition based on my knowledge of the deck (I played both Tide and MoM decks since Urza's Saga)

Sims
03-08-2011, 07:48 AM
As been said, Spiral Tide has won and take a 9th place at the SCG Edison Open (http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/deckshow.php?&start_date=2011-03-06&end_date=2011-03-06&event_ID=20&city=Edison)

What shocks me more are the 2 Mind over Matter on the winning list. I think it's an overkill card and therfore suboptimal: it's only good after a Spiral or Candelabra with at least a high tide played, and at that point you should win anyways. What do you think?

Looked basically like an updated version of Permanent Waves, which was the Spring Tide deck that the VA crowd had developed that won a few tourneys here and there using Candelabra and Mind over Matter, they just updated with Time Spiral.

I would certainly test it before dismissing it, as it really does help the deck keep going in situations where your draw spells or spirals find way more in the way of lands/dead cards than untappers. We'll see if it proves to be win-more, but I certainly wouldn't write it off as overkill right away.

Zinch
03-08-2011, 09:14 AM
Well, I guess that against aggro if you draw lands and counters from a Spiral it can be used to tap opponents creatures on his turn and then try again on your next turn, but in that case is hard you are able to go off with only lands and counters...

Mon,Goblin Chief
03-08-2011, 10:32 AM
Congrats to Alix and Anwar, definitely. Very different deck from the ones we've been discussing here, though, far more focussed on creating mana and chaining draw-spells similar to pre-unban High Tide decks than on simply resolving Spiral. I really dislike that the deck has only FoW for defense, because I still don't see why I would play High Tide over ANT if I don't get to run better disruption, Tide will always be the slower deck.
Mind Over Matter also seems like the definition of overkill, especially in a deck that uses Turnabout and Candelabra as its untap-package, but maybe in that build it's necessary to fuel the Meditate-kill?

@death: Just because something isn't ideal doesn't mean it can't win big tournaments. Heck, original NecroTrix didn't even make top 8 in the tournament it was first played in and compared to that deck every single other deck people had obviously was far more suboptimal than having a fewer-than-perfect number of shuffle-effects could ever be.
As to Candelabra, it's a fine untap-effect, I mean I even compared it to Turnabout, the key untapper for this deck. If Turnabout also fits your definition of broken, that's where our misunderstandings come from. Broken to me are cards like Spiral or Brainstorm, not things that allow you to make more mana than you really need. The ability to make so much mana is simply overkill imo because you can win fine without it.
And no, you're not the only one that's been playing since Ice Age.

egosum
03-08-2011, 12:53 PM
I' d like to give my opinion on "Permanent Waves" decks (i.e. the ones playing Candelabra and Mind Over Matter). Both cards are incredible but they have drawbacks, and I' afraid this drawbacks are more based on the metagame. In an aggro enviroment, with few countermagic, MoM is incredible since you 'll be able not only to play it without fear of being countered, but also can buy you time if you fizzle, by tapping your opponent's threats. If your metagame is more blue oriented (as it is mine, if you read my last report you'll see that I played all 7 rounds against Blue based decks, except, if you want, an ANT deck, nevertheless MoM against in the ANT match-up seems weak for being too costy and having lesser profit beyond untapping your own lands) it seems a bad idea to play redundant bombs over protection (and this is exactly what those kind of list did). In addition, both MoM and candelabra, make you vulnerable to wider hate, being the most relevant Pithing Needle, or Phyrexian Revoker (because you can always use the activated abilities on the cards before passing the priority if you do it as soon as they come into play).

Greetings,

Iñaki.-

P.S. by the way If anyone write a report of their tournament with Spiral Tide, please post a link here, so it will be easier to me for tracking them. Thanks.

ScatmanX
03-08-2011, 03:46 PM
P.S. by the way If anyone write a report of their tournament with Spiral Tide, please post a link here, so it will be easier to me for tracking them. Thanks.
Have 2 torunament reports form last thread.
Post 109 and 163. Don't know how to post single post view... =(

http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?19565-Spiral-Tide&p=514657&viewfull=1#post514657
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?19565-Spiral-Tide&p=521626&viewfull=1#post521626
Next one only next month... =(

lebarion
03-09-2011, 07:11 AM
Next one only next month... =(

Aren't you going to attend the tournament in 19th march?

PS. Soon, I'll be back to the High Tide world! :).

Nicol Bolas
03-10-2011, 03:47 PM
Cloud of Faeries + Snap engine doesn't seem terrible at all. Here's a list that made top 5 out of a 110-man event:

Creatures [3]
3 Cloud of Faeries

Instants [24]
1 Blue Sun's Zenith
1 Meditate
1 Pact of Negation
1 Snap
2 Cunning Wish
3 Spell Pierce
3 Turnabout
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
4 High Tide

Sorceries [15]
3 Ponder
4 Merchant Scroll
4 Preordain
4 Time Spiral

Lands [18]
1 Tropical Island
2 Flooded Strand
2 Misty Rainforest
2 Polluted Delta
2 Scalding Tarn
9 Island

Sideboard [15]
3 Krosan Grip
2 Pact of Negation
2 Dispel
1 Spell Pierce
1 Brain Freeze
1 Meditate
1 Rebuild
1 Wipe Away
1 Ravenous Trap
1 Snap
1 Hibernation

egosum
03-10-2011, 08:26 PM
This deck is not abusing this engine. SOme lists use Cloud of Faeries instead of RI, just because they don't like or understand it. And some of those list use a single snap (great card post board) to abuse it a little more.

Greetings,

Iñaki.-

EnemyMigs
03-11-2011, 02:53 PM
Cloud of Faeries enables their removal. It would obviously suck to get Swords to Plowshares cast on it in response to you casting Snap.

I like it still though, it's not candelabra so it's not $200. also, if you wish board a Capsize then you can go infinite mana when your islands can generate 5 mana each.

ScatmanX
03-12-2011, 11:41 AM
Cloud of Faeries enables their removal. It would obviously suck to get Swords to Plowshares cast on it in response to you casting Snap.

I like it still though, it's not candelabra so it's not $200. also, if you wish board a Capsize then you can go infinite mana when your islands can generate 5 mana each.
So SNAP enables their removal, not CoF...
Also, Capsize is a wasted slot on the SB. When your islands are producing 5 mana each, you should win the game...

Tested against Ugb landstill yesterday, and it seemed a very good MU pre-SB, and quite good post-sb, goin x-0 on the former, and x-1 on the latter (oh, and there were this one time I fizzled also... haven't happened in a long time...)

mrjumbo03
03-15-2011, 03:19 AM
Anyone watched the mirror between Gerry T and Zach Strait in the SCG Memphis Open? Man it was crazy...

ScatmanX
03-16-2011, 03:19 PM
Anyone watched the mirror between Gerry T and Zach Strait in the SCG Memphis Open? Man it was crazy...
Is there a link to a video or something?

mrjumbo03
03-17-2011, 04:02 AM
Regarding the Retraced Image builds, I know the standard has been 4 Fetches but would running 6 or maybe even 8 be detrimental for the deck?

Mon,Goblin Chief
03-20-2011, 12:15 PM
Just won our biweekly tournament (six rounds, swiss only) with NBS, this build:

CAB - Neon Blue Sky

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Preordain
4 Merchant Scroll
1 Intuition

4 Force of Will
3 Counterspell
1 Pact of Negation
2 Cunning Wish

4 High Tide
3 Turnabout
3 Cloud of Faeries
4 Time Spiral
1 Blue Sun's Zenith

1 Tropical Island
8 Island
4 Flooded Strand
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Polluted Delta (don't have Rainforests, otherwise it'd have been 3/3/3 on the Fetches)

SB:
3 Spell Pierce
3 Krosan Grip
3 Snap
2 Pact of Negation
1 Rebuild
1 Turnabout
1 Brain Freeze
1 Meditate

2 Wishes make the sideboarding-plans so much more fluid, it's worth the include. Having two Grips game 1 is also kind of nice. Never wished for Turnabout though, so that might move back to the MD. The Meditate came in against the control-decks, you really just want some cheap draw-spell to Scroll for when taking the control-role, even though it never came up during the actual tournament.

Expect a Q'n'D in the bonus section of my next article, which might even cover matchups/SBing-plans for the deck - I've had more time to play it by now :) (gotta get some value out of the time I spend writing, right? ;) )

Matchups:
UWr CBThopter 2:1 (the loss being a game loss for being an idiot, so I actually just went 2-0 in played games)
Uwg Stoneforge Mystic with Spellstutters, Cliques, Snares and FoWs 2:1
Dredge: 0:2
Junk 2:0
Stoneforge-Junk 2:0
CAB Jace 2-0

I ended up being 5-1 with the best breakers (three player tie for 1st on points), good for enough store-credit to pay for my next 11 tournaments *g*
By the end I was really sick of actually having to go off, chaining tons of cantrips every time while the opponent sits there twiddling his thumbs for 10-15 mins becomes boring once you've done it a hundred times (Extra-turns were called during the first two rounds while I was winning and I went close to time against the Junk-decks just because the deck takes such a long final turn - and games usually didn't last more than 4-5 turns against Junk). One of my Junk-opponents actually told me he was dead to Brain Freeze when I asked simply so that he could finally stop watching me play with myself... I know I built the deck to combo-off that way because it makes it strongest before you're actually winning, that doesn't change that it's a quite the disgusting exercise to have to go through every time. Still, the deck is just such a beast I'll most likely continue playing it anyway.. The fun's definitly during the turns preceding the go-off, though.

Admiral_Arzar
03-20-2011, 01:23 PM
Mon, I really like that list. I'll test it out at my local as soon as I get a fourth Time Spiral. The counterspells should be good as my LGS has a morbid obsession with the color blue (or if they don't play blue, they play hatebears and/or Hymns). I notice your only loss was to Dredge - are they actually fast enough to outrace this build, or did you just get bombarded by Therapies? Should that warrant a Ravenous Trap in the board, or is it just not enough of the meta to worry about?

Mon,Goblin Chief
03-20-2011, 03:00 PM
Well, it all depends on the quality of their hand and if you have a FoW for their discard-outlet. If they win the roll and keep a good seven, you're basically dead because they'll likely multi-Therapy or even just kill you before your third turn (which is the earliest you can reasonably win with NBS, barring pipe-dream hands). On the other hand if their hand is slow or you have the FoW for their discard-outlet, you'll often just kill them before they get to Therapy the crap out of you. NBS goldfishes around turn 3.5 (that is to say, you're ready to win on turn 3 maybe half your games, the others you have to wait till turn 4) so against mediocre hands you can just race them or slow them down with FoW enough to win before they do.
If I was to add gy-hate to the deck, I'd probably ignore Ravenous Trap because it won't ever come online before turn 3 with Wish, which means it doesn't do all that much against the draws that actually beat you, at least on the draw. I'd rather just stuff 3 Crypts (because they're cheap) or Relics (the cantrip-effect means they aren't dead while going off) into the sideboard and trust the mass-cantrip engine finds them in time.

mrjumbo03
03-20-2011, 03:10 PM
@ Mon, what's your take on the retraced image builds?

Mon,Goblin Chief
03-20-2011, 03:37 PM
As a disclaimer, I've only tested a very few games with Retraced Image. For the way I'm playing, I didn't like the RIs as I had to cut Fetchlands to make them work (which makes the Cantrips a lot weaker), not too mention that a reasonable amount of time I keep one land hands that have to cantrip into more lands, which makes it hard to actually accelerate with the RIs (turn one you don't have a second land so for RI to actually meaningfully accelerate you, you need to find two lands of your cantrips if you want to use RI on turn 2 while only hitting the third land of your second turn 2 cantrip is fine when using Clouds. Additional acceleration besides turnabout that doesn't push you towards turn 3 wins is useless in my opinion because that's the important turn against aggro. RIs are insane while comboing, though.
As to the actual RI builds (mainly Iñaki's), I wouldn't want to play them because I really don't see what they gain compared to just playing the faster ANT outside of having access to FoW (which on its own isn't worth the turn 1-2 kills you loose, imo). The real draw to Spiral-decks for me is that you can truly play combo-control instead of straight combo that needs to win ASAP against pretty much anything. Obviously, Iñaki would disagree and he's put up some impressive results, so keep that in mind when considering what I say.

Rune
03-20-2011, 03:56 PM
Got 1st in a small tournament today with a final score of 5-1. Don't remember the exact number of people - somewhere between 20-25.

Prizes were: 1st: JaceTMS, 2nd: Bayou, 3rd & 4th: Wastelands, 5th-8th: Dark Confidants

Same maindeck as the one egosum has posted in the 1st post (-1 Intuition +1 Meditate), slightly different SB:

1 Rebuild
1 Ravenous Trap
1 Meditate
1 Turnabout
1 Blue Sun's Zenith
1 Mindbreak Trap
1 Brain Freeze
2 Wipe Away
2 Snap
4 Spell Snare

My problem with Spell Pierce is that it stops doing anything past turn 3, and I want to be able to counter Hymns and Counterbalances in the midgame as well, so I played Spell Snare instead. Spell Snare basically counters all the things that are bad for this deck, while all the hatebears dodge Spell Pierce. In a more combo-heavy environment, Spell Pierce is going to be much better, though.


1-2 Affinity: g1 he has turn 1 Plating + memnite on the play and I die before my 3rd turn. g2 I FoW Canonist and Time Spiral after that. I make a pr0 play by casting a non-lethal Brain Freeze on him so that I can look through most of his library. I note that his hate consists of 3-4 Canonist. After that, I cast the 2nd Brain Freeze for the win. g3 I keep a shitty hand that should have been an easy mulligan, and I die to Canonist and Ravager+Disciple combo. Hand was Ponder, TS, CW, 2 fetches, 2 islands (in case you don't see it, this is basically a 5 card already hand). First match I lose with the deck in 3 events :I

2-0 BG Dark Depths: Meditate + Spell Snares > discard. I FoW his attempt at putting a 20/20 token into play. g2 he almost gets me with a Choke, but I have the FoW like a master.

2-1 UWG TarmoFaeries: Very hateful deck with maindeck Spell Pierce, Spell Snare, Spellstutter Sprite and Vendilion Cliques. I am able to punch through his counterwall in 2 of the games on the turn before I die. g1 I mainphase a Meditate when he's tapped out because I really need to draw extra cards after having to burn a FoW on a Clique. I play it on my own turn when he's tapped out because I can't afford to have it countered by his maindeck Spell Pierces. This play backfires tremendously when he gets to play Jace and sculpt a sick hand with it during his 2 turns. In the third game I almost got completely destroyed by a Pithing Needle on my one type of fetchland (had 1 in hand and immediate drew a 2nd one.. :< ). Not being able to a run a split of blue fetches is one of the disadvantages of playing Retraced Image. Games 2 & 3 exemplified the brokeness of Pact of Negation.

2-0 Goblins: He can't really interact, but he gets close to killing me in 1 game with Piledriver and haste goblins. g2 he scoops as soon as I play High Tide (lulwut?). His friend tells him he should at least wait and see if I also have the Time Spiral. I show him the Spiral and then he scoops (again?). Apparently he wanted to go smoke instead of watching me masturbate with my cards.

1-1 The Rock: I.D.

Top8
2-0 Affinity: Have to go off on turn 3 because I will die if I pass to him. Retraced Image after TS shows its strength. Actually the only game where the card mattered and wasn't just FoW fodder.. makes me strongly reconsider if it should even be in the deck at all. Playing only 4 (identical) fetchlands is very annoying :<. g2 I make his clock infinitely slower by Spell Snaring a Cranial Plating. At the end of his 4th turn I Rebuild his board of Canonist, lands and other dorks before I untap and cast Time Spiral.

top4
2-0 Dredge: He is on the draw and starts out by discarding in his end step. This means he will attempt to Breakthrough on his next turn, so I dig for a FoW and I manage to find it. The FoW slows him down and I have Cunning Wish for Ravenous Trap ready when he breaks his Cephalid Coliseum on his next turn. g2 is very strange. He dredges slowly and I hold on to Cunning Wish for a long time until he dredges into a Therapy. After the Trap, we both draw lands for a couple of turns and so I got to witness an amazing spectacle - a hardcasted 0/0 Golgari Grave-Troll (so he could get his dredging started again!). Apparently my deck won't stop giving me islands, so I end up tapping 6 lands and playing Time Spiral.

Final:
2-0 Maverick: g1 he has no way to interact. g2 things get a bit dangerous when he gets a SoFaI out, but luckily his mull to 6 only gave him the sword and no hatebear to go with it. I Wipe Away his Vial@2 so there will be no shenanigans during Time Spiral.


Having to combo off with this deck over and over again gets very tedious. I can only imagine how painful it must be for the opponents. I'm kinda hoping it won't be the best deck in the format for long so I will no longer have to keep playing it =)


Time Spiral generally treated me well, although there were a couple of times where it gave me 6 blanks + a cantrip, and I had to make some magic happen.


After this event, I'm 99% sure Retraced Image isn't worth it. The restriction on the manabase is the biggest problem, but it's also an annoying card to draw most times - Cloud of Faeries can atleast cycle when you don't need it. I think something like Mon's list is much more optimal, but I wouldn't drop the MD Brain Freeze and I wouldn't play Counterspells, because Spell Snare/Pierce is much better in that slot.


edit: made post less terrible.

egosum
03-21-2011, 05:04 PM
Congratulations for the results.

For all those who want to contribute with a report, I encourage to do it as stated in the first post of the thread.

Thak you and keep storming!

Greetings,

Iñaki.-

P.S. it seems that RI is not working to nobody but me, but seriously I'm afraid I'll keep them in as long as I play the deck.

egosum
03-21-2011, 05:06 PM
Congratulations for the results.

For all those who want to contribute with a report, I encourage to do it as stated in the first post of the thread.

Thak you and keep storming!

Greetings,

Iñaki.-

P.S. it seems that RI is not working to nobody but me, but seriously I'm afraid I'll keep them in as long as I play the deck.

(nameless one)
03-21-2011, 08:17 PM
Concerning egosum's/kikoo's list:

Why Rebuild? Can you use Hurkyl's Recall instead? It can be wished for as well and it costs less. Is the cycling that relevant?

Rune
03-21-2011, 09:28 PM
I would say Rebuild is almost always better than Hurkyll's Recall because Chalice@2 is very common in the matchups where you want the artifact bounce - it's usually what people follow their 1st lock piece up with. Rebuild doesn't target, so you don't get randomly owned by fringe cards like Runed Halo, Misdirection or Leyline of Sanctity. Rebuild also cycles if you draw it again with Time Spiral. H. Recall is not likely to be played before turn 3 in the first place, because you will usually have to spend your 2nd turn tutoring for it with scroll. With that said, Rebuild REALLY sucks against resistors (Lodestone Golem, Thorn of Amethyst, Sphere of Resistance), so if those start seeing more play, you probably want to play H. Recall instead.

@egosum: Thanks. I fixed my report a bit - this is the link to it: http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?20172-[PRIMER]-Spiral-Tide&p=530578&viewfull=1#post530578

death
03-22-2011, 12:43 AM
I have no issues at all regarding this as I have both (see decklist). I will be more concerned about not having a turn 2-3 answer (M-Scroll for H. Recall) against Affinity which almost always swings for lethal on turn 4 than worry about double chalices which almost never occur.

DuKeLiO
03-22-2011, 07:12 AM
I´m also doing it well with my build. I top4ed on Firenze two weeks ago with the list on my prior post. I won against all blue decks, but no counterbalance, and also two ANT decks. I lost on quarterfinals against a BGW deck with Hymn to Tourach winning the first game, losing the second for a mistake when I didn't hide my 4th Island and he topdecked an Hymn to Tourach discarding it, and the third one due to being my High Tides extirpated.

For the next tournament, this weekend I changed my sideboard:
-1 Relic of Progenitus
+1 Echoing Truth

I lose in the first round against an Affinity deck, beacuse his speed. In the third game I went on turn 2 Merchant Scroll->Hurkyl's Recall, but I never had a third turn to use it (obviously I was on the draw)
I won against Countertop on round 2, aggroloam on round three, draw against Baneslayer Control on round four and won against New Horizons and another Countertop (Thopters) on rounds five and six.
In the top8 I won against another Countertop deck, BGW Junk on Semis (he achieved to extirpate my High Tides on turn 2, but I have the last one on my sideboard for Cunning Wish -I learned the lesson-) and a Zoo deck on finals.

death
03-22-2011, 09:31 AM
So that's why your decklist looks familiar, I checked your previous posts and they were all under Landstill and then it hit me. You're probably the greatest legacy Landstill player (and Vintage) I know. It's too bad deckcheck shut down along with all your achievements. Anyways, nice meeting you here!

Since you may be the only person here (aside from egosum) who has a vast experience with C-Wish, I want to ask you some questions regarding your build. How do you find the 1-of C-Wish without Stroke and Turnabout on the side? You're build relies heavily on M-Scroll and it looks to me that Gigadrowse is worse than Turnabout. Do you find C-Wish too slow for High Tide? And if you are hellbent on the Repeals, did you consider playing a 4th Candelabra?

Mon,Goblin Chief
03-22-2011, 09:51 AM
@Dukelio: I thought I'd seen your list on deckcheck. Congratz on your performance, happy to see the Counterspell-plan has been working as well for you as it has for me at crushing control-decks.

Some comments on a few cards by comparing our builds:

Candelabra: Playing with the 3 Turnabout build, I would have liked having a single Candelabra a few times, as much as I've argued against it being necessary. Only having 3 Turnabouts (Wishes get used for other stuff) makes it sometimes difficult to generate enough mana to win with Zenith without Spiraling twice. CoF being blue and drawing a card have been very useful to me in testing so I'd keep at least two of them but a single Candelabra in place of one of them would have provided me with a fourth big untap-effect MD.
The Repeal my Candelabra plan seems pretty cool, though, giving you MD bounce that cantrips and, in your build, works as a combo-piece. If some list is going to convince me to give Candelabra-based builds another shot, it would be yours.

CWish: I've recently moved to a 2 Wish build (see above) and I suggest you give that a try for a few games to see if you like it. I've been impressed. Makes boarding out the High Tide a lot more effective (especially because you can now do it against Control, too, without sacrificing access to them), allows for more Grips pre- and post-SB (I actually keep the third Grip in the board against CB now) and generally has made my boarding-plans more comfortable. They aren't that impressive by themselves but their benefits concerning all-about fluidity of the build feel like they're worth it anyway for me so far. They also have the side-benefit of you hitting one for Brainfreeze early during the combo-turn more often, which leads to less playing with yourself (definitely a good thing, at least in my mind) and saves time, which can be relevant against control-decks (e.g. your draw against Baneslayer-control). The combo-turn taking as long as it does means you can time out even when you could win two out of three games relatively early as long as you lose at least one.

Pact of Negation: How has your experience against Fish been without at least one? Pact has been essential to winning that matchup for me.

Snap: If you have problems with decks like Affinity outracing you, I suggest you try out three Snaps SB, they've been incredible for me at both speeding up the deck (you don't need CoF for them to do that, the opponent should have creatures if you've brought in Snap which means you have more untap-effects that allow for a turn 3 Spiral even without Clouds) and slowing down opponents's fast kills. I've been very happy with them.

@Death: I know you didn't ask me but I also tested Gigadrowse and the card has it's merits, especially against CB. Being able to tap their top and their lands without being vulnerable to countermagic (turns Spell Pierce back on lategame, too) can definitely win you some games, especially longer ones (they'll flip Top in response to make sure High Tide won't be cast a reasonable amount of time and with the length of the games that often allows you to Spiral off of lands alone and win through that CB as long as they don't randomly hit another 1 on top). I cut it in the end because it seemed somewhat narrow and needed a ton of mana, so I prefered other solutions like a Meditate for additional carddrawing in those matchups (very useful when playing the control-role), in part because Meditate isn't dead when drawn during the combo-turn.

Rune
03-22-2011, 10:17 AM
It's pretty unfortunate that the deck is, after all, most likely strictly better with the stupid, overpriced Candelabras. Its interaction with bounce spells and the ability to profitably run maindeck Repeals is just wayyy too good.

It's kind of similar to Sensei's Divining Top in Tendrils decks when Mystical Tutor was legal. Despite the added vulnerability to Pithing Needle (and Stifle), the card still just made the deck much more powerful.

The only time where I could see it being a very bad idea to run Candelabras would be in meta with tons of Stifles, because having your Candelabra trigger Stifled is one giant blowout.

Kagehisa
03-26-2011, 06:45 PM
Thank you Egosum. :)

I just wanted to add a little note about Retraced Image :

The fetchlands should have the same name as already said and the choice of the U/x fetchlands can be improved. I mean that if you want to optimize Retrace Image against a hypothetical U/R aggro deck, play 4 Sclading Tarn. This way, you can cheat your own fetchland thank to his. Maybe Polluted Delta is already the best choice anyway.


Of course, the opponent can respond to Retraced Image by sacrificing his own fetchland... but it can happen that your opponent is not aware of this "trick".

Yes, I said it was a little note.

Sorry for my bad english.

Rune
03-26-2011, 10:32 PM
Last week I was procrastinating hardcore, and so I decided to spend 4 hours trying to find out if Cloud of Faeries or Retraced Image is better when you go off with the bare minimum of resources. I goldfished 100 games total on MWS, 50 games with each configuration.

Scenario: 3 islands in play. Hand: High Tide, Time Spiral and Turnabout. Opponent with 50 cards in deck.

I used egosum's list from the OP, -1 Intuition +1 Meditate

some notes:
- With CoF I had a success rate of 72.2%. The success rate with RI was significantly lower (about 10% lower)
- The maindeck Brain Freeze is very important to have in the deck when you go off in the worst-case scenario. A high number of games were won because of it.
- On average, I got significantly better draws when testing CoF, so I would say that the results are still inconclusive.
- Won 2 games because of cycling the CoF
- It should also be noted that CoF is vulnerable to Spell Snare and Stifle when playing against an opponent. It's unlikely that you will have to go off with 3 islands against someone who plays those cards, though.

mchainmail
03-26-2011, 10:47 PM
- It should also be noted that CoF is vulnerable to Spell Snare and Stifle when playing against an opponent. It's unlikely that you will have to go off with 3 islands against someone who plays those cards, though.

Spell Snare is pretty relevant though... the deck doesn't have many other cards that get countered by it.

lorddotm
03-27-2011, 02:29 AM
Spell Snare is pretty relevant though... the deck doesn't have many other cards that get countered by it.

If they Snare a Faerie, you get to resolve a Scroll. Which seems a little bit better...

Dark Ritual
03-27-2011, 12:05 PM
Yeah, merchant scroll seems like the right target for spell snare if the opponent is good. You counter the business, not the accel/CoF. There aren't that much targets for spell snare though.

Candelabra is sick only because of repeal. And MoM combo's with it but MoM is unneeded IMO and just win more. Although you have to practically give up a leg just to get a set due to it being absurdly overpriced.

ScatmanX
03-29-2011, 03:03 PM
Scenario: 3 islands in play. Hand: High Tide, Time Spiral and Turnabout. Opponent with 50 cards in deck.
Ok, I'm doing some testing like this, with my list (similar to NBS (the CoF version)).
Up until now, 10 goldifeshes
- 1 Fizzled.
- 7 kills with BSZ, 1 with Emrakul, 1 with BF (trying to kill aways with BSZ for test sake).
- the CoF cycling mattered once, and Snap on SB to bounce it mattered once too.

I'll edit when have more goldfishing...

RexFTW
03-29-2011, 04:20 PM
I like goldifeshes cuz they are so delicious! Gone goldifeshen!

RexFTW
03-29-2011, 04:22 PM
It's pretty unfortunate that the deck is, after all, most likely strictly better with the stupid, overpriced Candelabras.

Yes, they are pretty much what makes this deck good.

RE: the worst case scenario. It is possible to go off with only 2 lands and still win if you play candelabra. Just sayin. I have only had to go for it twice but it worked both times.... recommend 2 candles and 2 tides.

ScatmanX
03-29-2011, 04:38 PM
Yes, they are pretty much what makes this deck good.

RE: the worst case scenario. It is possible to go off with only 2 lands and still win if you play candelabra. Just sayin. I have only had to go for it twice but it worked both times.... recommend 2 candles and 2 tides.
No it is not. Turnabouts and Cloud of Faeries are just fine.
Also, you can T2 with 2 High Tides, 1 Cloud of Faeries, 1 Turnabout/Cloud of Faeries.

Rune
03-29-2011, 06:31 PM
Yes, they are pretty much what makes this deck good.

RE: the worst case scenario. It is possible to go off with only 2 lands and still win if you play candelabra. Just sayin. I have only had to go for it twice but it worked both times.... recommend 2 candles and 2 tides.

The deck still rapes face without Candelabra, but yeah, it's probably slightly better with them. The main reason I want to play them is so I can rock Repeals maindeck and then use Mystic Remora in the sideboard in conjunction with the Repeals. Without Candelabra, it's at least comforting to know that Stifle/Needle won't randomly crush you - it might even be incorrect to run them in the current environment, if Team America, Next Level Thresh, etc. continue to stick around.

Didn't want to test the 2 islands scenario because it's not very interesting to me, since it's never really something that comes up during actual gameplay.

Mon,Goblin Chief
03-29-2011, 07:12 PM
If you're trying to go off turn 2, CoF is actually the best untap effect available - untaps all your lands for U1. That being said I've played a few hundred games with NBS now and it hasn't ever come up. That may be because I usually simply don't try to set that up, though.

As to Candelabra being necessary, it isn't.The deck works perfectly fine with CoF and is arguably better, even. I might want one in my most recent build (one Turnabout SB) so that I still have four mass-mana effects MD, but that's about it. Cloud being blue for FoW (when you need Force, you usually don't need additional untap-effects besides the Spiral you're casting and Turnabout) and cycling when you're low on business after Spiral is actually relevant surprisingly often. I also just love the ability to make the deck faster AND more disruptive at the same time by boarding Snaps (Snapping CoF comes up postboard a reasonable amount of time, actually). The only thing that makes Candelabra seem like a good choice to me is the fact that MD Repeal gives you even more control-elements while being able to work as a combo-piece while going off.
I don't think going off without access to Spiral is something that will come up a lot, honestly, which is where you'd want the additional mass-mana effects compared to CoF.

@kikoo: Amusingly, running Remora in the board is something I've contemplated, too. Have you ever actually tested them? If so, how did they do?

Rune
03-29-2011, 07:55 PM
@kikoo: Amusingly, running Remora in the board is something I've contemplated, too. Have you ever actually tested them? If so, how did they do?

I haven't actually tested it that much t in Legacy yet, but I have played a lot with it in Vintage (Remora Tendrils) and I'm pretty sure it will be a good SB card for this deck, since it's so powerful in combo-control decks. It almost demands you to have Repeals somewhere in your 75, though. Gerry Thompson also recently wrote about it in an article, because he was trying to come up with a strategy to beat Team America, and apparently it worked well for him there.


Dunno if all of the following is obvious, but I'm gonna write it anyway:

Main reasons I want it:
Storm mirror (it basically wins the game by itself here)
Very disruptive FoW decks: Team America, Next Level Thresh, Supreme Blue etc.

Other matchups (that are already favorable or easy) where it will most likely also be a house:
Rock
Landstill-ish decks
Burn
..?


The cool thing about Remora is that you can start going off with High Tides in your upkeep when the cumulative cost is on the stack. Your opponent can then choose to let your High Tides/Turnabouts resolve or he can start fighting over them and let you draw infinite cards with Remora. No matter which option he chooses, he will most likely be dead.

I always found the interaction between Remora and Meditate to be funny as well.

The only problem I see with the card is that it needs Repeal to really shine, and I think Repeals will be much stronger in a list with Candelabras, but that could just be me

ScatmanX
03-29-2011, 10:02 PM
Remora is a great card, but I guess it would take the slot of Pierces on a traditional SB, and I think Pierce is more versatile, not only coming in against Combo, TA and others, but also against StaX, CB, and many others...

death
03-29-2011, 11:17 PM
It's that time of day again where we ponder upon card after card, one which could probably bring the deck past tier 1.75 status.. Will it be Retraced Image.. Ideas Unbound.. Treasure Hunt.. Counterspell.. Spell Snare.. Repeals.. now Remora, then back to Spell Pierce.

So how about
http://www.gatheringground.com/images/MTG-JU-Envelop.jpg

Here's just few of the shit it stops dead
[Black]
Infernal Tutor
Grim Tutor
Doomsday
Reanimate
Exhume
Dread Return
more importantly..
Cabal Therapy
Duress
Thoughtseize
Hymn to Tourach
Smallpox
Sinkhole
Raven's Crime

[Blue]
Ponder
Show and Tell
Careful Study
Breakthrough
Thoughtcast
Merchant Scroll
Time Spiral

[Gold]
Gerrard's Verdict
Vindicate

[Green]
Land Grant
Green Sun's Zenith => Gaddock Teeg
Natural Order
Glimpse of Nature
Life from the Loam

[Red]
Burning Wish
Rite of Flame
Chain Lightning
Rift Bolt
Flame Rift
Through the Breach

[White]
Armageddon


What are you waiting for? Wanna get back at SCG? Why don't you grab your FOIL sets now while they're stupidly low @ $0.25 apiece!! Yes, that is FOIL price!

DuKeLiO
03-30-2011, 06:01 AM
@Mon
I really don't like Cunning Wish on the deck too much. I only use it as an emergency button when I can't generate mana for BSZ, going for the Trap against ANT or going for a bouncer. I think the only slot for them are the Repeals, but I really like them. They does the deck very strong against hate. If i'll try it, i probably go:
- something (maybe a repeal)
+1 Cunning
sb:
- Gigadrowse
- something I don´t know
-2 Relic
+ Turnabout
+ Meditate
+2 Ravenous Trap
Also I haven't any problem on Affinity racing me. I can goldfish before he kills me the mayority of the games, he only had a very goo draw without me having good defense.

Snap: I like it in your build, Mon, but I don't think they are very good without CoF. Against creature decks usually is enough with Repeal for bouncing Ethersworn Cannonist and the lone Hibernation for bounce the Gaddok Teeg.

Pact of Negation: I haven't really tried them, but against fishes I think the Dispels and Spell Pierces are enough. Spell Pierce can also counter a Vial on the play, that it is a very good tempo boost on my side, beacuse they will have to tap out or play the waiting game, which benefits me.

Remora:
The kind of decks that we will beat with remora are already good pairings. The counterspell decks with a lot of Dazes, Spell Pierces and Stifles there aren't very problematic, and I don't think we need a so specific card to beat them. The real problem on blue decks are counterbalance, and here Spell Pierce and Krosan Grip are better.

Envelop:
Spell Pierce is way better. Sure, the opponent can pay 2 mana for his spell, but usually it only matter in the firsts turns, and he will not may pay them. Spell Pierce is more flexible, and can counter cards like Choke, that is very painful beacuse the matchup where my oponents can play Choke, I wan't play Krosan Grip, beacuse they take too many space.

death
03-30-2011, 11:08 AM
Although Envelop is narrower, the cards that it hits are undeniably relevant. Discard effects are gaining popularity nowadays that Force of Wills are shooting through the roof. Decks are adapting with the market by playing discard as their disruption, making pact of Negation a poor choice.

Against permanent (creature/artifact/enchantment-based) hate, there's always bounce in the sideboard. Of course for the deck to be to be flexible, it must play multiple copies of C-Wish, not just 1.

Also, since you are deciding on replacing Relics with Traps, Envelop can significantly slow Dredge down by countering their draw spells. They can also just Therapy you before you reach 3 lands to play C-Wish for Trap and having that Envelop gives you an edge. Counterspell is the catch-all answer but it's too expensive. I want to be able to cast my cantrips and M-Scrolls and also be able to answer any disruption from my opponent with just a single Island untapped.

DuKeLiO
03-30-2011, 11:38 AM
I understand your vision, but you can't oversideboard with this deck, beacuse it weaken your capability to combo out.
What version are you playing? I think this is the problem about our discussion. In a UG version, with 3 slots devoted to play Krosan Grip I have not sideboard space for it, but maybe in a monoU version you can afford to play, for example, 4 Pierce and 2 Envelop. But if I were very worried for the amount of discard on my meta, y will try Misdirection or Divert instead.
I don't like Cunning Wish too much for two reasons:
- Sure, it is a very flexible card, but it also is very slow.
- It screw down your sideboar for the Cunning Wish package. If you play a lot of copies of them you have to play some cards in your sideboard to take advantage of it. In my version I only swapped one card when I included it, a Brain Freeze. I think one is enough if you have to deal with an unexpected situation in game 1.

death
03-30-2011, 11:46 AM
I don't like the card disadvantage of Misdirection and it doesn't hit Duress. Also, it's simply impossible to Pierce or Divert spells once the opponent gets to his 3rd turn.

Edit: forgot Inquisition of Kozilek in the list of cards above. I see more of this card being played in addition to the usual discarders. It's harder to keep up with black disruption nowadays. This is where Brainstorm can once again shine but excess shuffle effects from fetchlands can become counterintuitive.

DuKeLiO
03-31-2011, 06:13 AM
Inquisition and Duress are far less played than Thoughseize and Hymn to Tourach. Also, with this deck you haven't to counter long in time, against a the mostly discard decks, you can go off easily on turn 4. Also diverting a Hymn to Tourach is like winning the game, and with a toughseize is a very good 2x1.

death
04-01-2011, 11:36 AM
Here's a list I would recommend for anyone to bring in an unknown meta,

Enveloped Tide

4 High Tide
4 Brainstorm
3 Ponder
3 Preordain
1 Impulse

4 Time Spiral
4 Candelabra of Tawnos
3 Turnabout

4 Merchant Scroll
3 Cunning Wish
1 Intuition

4 Force of Will
3 Envelop

1 Blue Sun's Zenith

4 Misty Rainforest
14 Island

Sideboard
1 Turnabout
1 Stroke of Genius
1 Meditate
1 Brain Freeze
3 Pact of Negation
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Rebuild
1 Wipe Away
1 Rushing River
1 Snap
1 Hibernation
1 Mindbreak Trap
1 Ravenous Trap

I dropped Emrakul in favor of a 4th Candelabra, although I've won games against permission-heavy decks and Leyline of Sanctity with him. I think pushing the deck for quick turn 3 kills is a right call right now against extremely fast aggro decks.

Rushing River simply answers multiple hate in the form of creatures, or artifacts/enchantments. Hibernation just blows KotR, Qasali, Progenitus, and Gaddock Teeg away. Snap is a free bounce effect and that's the only reason it's staying there.

nuff said.

Forbiddian
04-03-2011, 12:18 AM
Hmm, read through the thread, and it seems like there used to be staunch and often backhanded opposition to Candelabra of Tawnos.

Just an example from the OP:

Some cards fought to enter the maindeck but for differents reasons (after testing) didn’t made the cut, if you wonder why any of those are not in the deck just ask in the thread: ... Blue Sun's Zenith, Meditate, ...Candelabra of Tawnos,

These all now seem to be standard picks and the opposition has acquiesced (Mons's Goblin Raiders went from saying it was worse to saying that Cloud of Faeries was comparable). I don't mean to just salt the wounds, but is Candelabra better albeit more pricey? I'm trying to make educated guesses about the builds I should be testing and working on.

PanderAlexander
04-03-2011, 01:17 AM
Hmm, read through the thread, and it seems like there used to be staunch and often backhanded opposition to Candelabra of Tawnos.

Just an example from the OP:


These all now seem to be standard picks and the opposition has acquiesced (Mons's Goblin Raiders went from saying it was worse to saying that Cloud of Faeries was comparable). I don't mean to just salt the wounds, but is Candelabra better albeit more pricey? I'm trying to make educated guesses about the builds I should be testing and working on.


I built and tested both with candelabra(proxy) and without, and although the deck is perfectly fine without it, it's better with it. But paying $150-200 a pop seems quite steep before I invest further, I wasted the same amount of money on 4x Imperial Recruiters. The applications for those cards aren't wide, candelabra only used in that cloudpost land deck.

BTW welcome back Matt, finally got away from SCII? There's a Mox Sapphire tournament in Pasadena on 4/9, maybe we'll see some SD guys.

death
04-03-2011, 01:47 AM
Simply put Frantic Search is currently banned, Mana Vault is banned. Aside from Turnabout, nothing else fits the bill (at least for me) but Candelabra of Tawnos. When Time Spiral was unbanned, immediately I saw the potential in this build:

here's the thread: [Deck] Permanent Waves (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?7599-[Deck]-Permanent-Waves&p=280560&viewfull=1#post280560)

and the following discussion on the old thread: [Deck] Spiral Tide (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?19565-Spiral-Tide/page5)

In retrospect, Candelabras weren't even as pricey as Underground Seas before. If it weren't for that junky 12-posts deck the card wouldn't have caught attention. Everything else just exploded when Alix Hatfield piloted Anwar's deck to victory in NJ last 3/06/11.

death
04-03-2011, 05:01 PM
UPDATE:
Both Hatfields piloting identical lists currently 6-0 in the swiss.

Crysthorn
04-03-2011, 10:00 PM
Both Hatfields piloting identical lists currently 6-0 in the swiss.
And Jesse won the whole thing (Alix was 3rd and Ben Wienburg with another Spiral Tide was 10th). I don't even want to know what will Candelabra's price be next week.

Jodahae
04-03-2011, 11:46 PM
Jesse Hatfield wins in Game 3, after ripping tide of the top. Im betting candelabra hits 300 before the next open.

Shax
04-04-2011, 01:52 AM
I was at the SCG Atlanta also. Is Spiral Tide not the nuts or something? Clearly a card that you run as a 4-of in a mono blue deck not effected by wastelands that taps and gives you a form on untap with your High Tides is insane. If this took hold though in a metagame and faced something like instant speed Solidarity it would be fun to see them go off with Spiral Tide's Brain Freeze on the stack. The deck is good for a midrange control-combo deck too. The Legacy metagames have lots of viable deck choices right now, but this seems like is can make a splash and take people unexpected like that Cephalid Breakfeast list recently did.

Forbiddian
04-04-2011, 03:58 AM
This deck is fucking scary. Just played a few games online with it and even with mistakes it would always spit out a win through disruption and it was plenty fast to race aggro. Even after 20 games, I can't imagine wanting to play TES or ANT. This deck feels like those broken Shandalar decks that I would make.

If I had like an extra grand, I would definitely play this deck.


Paying $300 for a Candelabra is not normal.
But on Magic or Jew it is.
MTG: Not even once.

DuKeLiO
04-04-2011, 04:26 AM
@death
Envelop can be useful in a meta in particular, but I don't think it will be fine for an unknown metagame. There are a lot of decks against it only counters Ponder or simply nothing.

death
04-04-2011, 11:13 AM
This deck is fucking scary.

I always grin everytime you do that!

http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?17048-[Deck]-Shelldrazi&p=447671&viewfull=1#post447671

@Jaime,
I'd still give it a swirl :smile:. Besides, it's not any riskier than playing 3 Meditates.

e_hawk77
04-04-2011, 01:54 PM
This deck is the stone cold nuts. Especially since the meta game is not very good for team america right now. At my last tourney I played this deck to a 4-1-1 record and my one loss was to just some really bad draws.

The things I wanted to address were the mind over matters and what they should become and also the mirror. In my testing they are just over kill it seems. They have never won me a game that I wasn't gonna win anyway. I mean it is sweet to BSZ for like 20 then have a Mind Over Matter in play cuz you can't lose, but if you BSZ for 20 you prolly aren't gonna lose anyway. In my last tourney I played 2 spell pierce in their slot, but intuition seems very good too and a one one split doesn't seem very good. Also is there some tech for the mirror? I know most people don't have candelabras or don't wanna spend 200 on them, but I would like to see if there is some good tech for the mirror match that can sure up the match-up with out hurting the deck. Any thoughts would be great.

death
04-04-2011, 04:15 PM
If you read my post on the previous page, you'll find that Envelop is also tech against the mirror.

ummon
04-04-2011, 04:38 PM
If this took hold though in a metagame and faced something like instant speed Solidarity it would be fun to see them go off with Spiral Tide's Brain Freeze on the stack.

As a Solidarity player, I'd go off in response to the first draw spell. I don't want you drawing into extra Forces or instant speed cantrips to find the Forces. Your High Tide should generally be enough for me to go off off of.

Scordata
04-04-2011, 06:23 PM
So I'm gonna chime in here and offer my two cents:

I think the reason this deck is making so many waves (haha) is generally because people were unprepared for it, and due to meta-ignorance, have no idea how to fight it.

Cards like Red Elemental Blast, Stifle, and good old Force of Will, if well timed, blow this deck out of the water (zing.)

Don't counter the High Tides - use them to your advantage.
Land an early clock, and ride it to victory. Discard is useless.
Cards to counter include, Time Spiral (duh), Meditate, BSZ, and Stifling a brainfreeze is usually pretty good too.

If you're not playing blue, Get those cretures out ASAP.
Count out your damage, and deal 20 before they get to 3-4 lands. Discard is only good if you know how to play high tide, otherwise you'll probably take the wrong card. The deck runs TIME SPIRALS, remember? Nice hymn, buddy, now draw 7.

If all else fails, just play Trinisphere.dec

It's actually due to these reasons that I sold off my combo pieces here. The deck is good, but not stupid good, and I decided that dual lands were cooler than Menorahs.

Mark Sun
04-04-2011, 06:35 PM
The issue with countermagic is that Pact of Negation comes in, you can only counter so much before you're tapped out and 1 Time Spiral behind.

I was brainstorming (ha) on the car ride home and Extirpate on High Tide seems pretty good.

chinEsE girl
04-04-2011, 06:48 PM
The issue with countermagic is that Pact of Negation comes in, you can only counter so much before you're tapped out and 1 Time Spiral behind.

I was brainstorming (ha) on the car ride home and Extirpate on High Tide seems pretty good.

Extripate on high tide seems like it would be good in most circumstances, but I've personally witnessed a bunch of times where it wasn't good enough. Between the two tournaments at Jupiter games this past weekend, I witnessed at least 2 games where the spiral tide player won through an extripate, getting there off of just one high tide. Sure, having only one high tide boost makes winning harder, but I doubt that it's enough in it's own to make spiral tide fizzle.

Sintheros
04-04-2011, 07:55 PM
Extirpate on High Tide and Turnabout help a fair bit, TS too if you can get them to discard it.

Forbiddian
04-04-2011, 09:30 PM
I always grin everytime you do that!

http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?17048-[Deck]-Shelldrazi&p=447671&viewfull=1#post447671


I believe I also said something similar when Vengevine Survival got that tournament win. But I didn't say I'd play Shelldrazi, even if I had the parts (and I did have access to them, but there were stronger decks).

Still, I love (and am scared of) interesting combo decks, and I think this is the best deck in the format right now. Independent of its impressive tournament pedigree, it has the highest power level of any combo deck. The win percentages off of Time Spiral make Ad Nauseam from 20 life look like a gutshot straight draw, and it walks over traditional countermagic (even REBs) like they don't even exist. Countertop seems to be the only matchup that can even hold its own, and even then it's harder to assemble the lockout than it is for the Spiral Tide player to win. Slight hyperbole, I know, but this is my pick for best deck in the format.

Also, why isn't the deck called, "Tide Spiral"?

Shax
04-05-2011, 12:26 AM
To the post above me. I had some of the crew that went with me to SCG Atlanta tell me the same thing. There were only three Spiral Tides there in the event and all three finished in the top 16. Pretty impressive. Time will tell the story though on if it will hold up the world title again throughout the format. I find it sad though that Candelabra has NOT been used previously to finish highly like this has been. Then again, Time Spiral has not been unbanned for long enough to see what kind of long term effects this will impose on Legacy.

Breaking it down. The sorcery does something only T.E.S does in the format right now. Use a draw 7 effect. More so that it untaps your lands and does not remove from game your win conditions and tutors. Time Spiral was pretty good when Vintage Academy was being used successfully way back then. The Legacy metagames are all over the place though and Time Spiral has been banned or a while. If Spiral Tide decks keep on winning even after Phyrexia is out then I will be convinced.

DuKeLiO
04-05-2011, 10:59 AM
So I'm gonna chime in here and offer my two cents:

I think the reason this deck is making so many waves (haha) is generally because people were unprepared for it, and due to meta-ignorance, have no idea how to fight it.

Cards like Red Elemental Blast, Stifle, and good old Force of Will, if well timed, blow this deck out of the water (zing.)

Don't counter the High Tides - use them to your advantage.
Land an early clock, and ride it to victory. Discard is useless.
Cards to counter include, Time Spiral (duh), Meditate, BSZ, and Stifling a brainfreeze is usually pretty good too.

If you're not playing blue, Get those cretures out ASAP.
Count out your damage, and deal 20 before they get to 3-4 lands. Discard is only good if you know how to play high tide, otherwise you'll probably take the wrong card. The deck runs TIME SPIRALS, remember? Nice hymn, buddy, now draw 7.

If all else fails, just play Trinisphere.dec

It's actually due to these reasons that I sold off my combo pieces here. The deck is good, but not stupid good, and I decided that dual lands were cooler than Menorahs.

I think you aren't too familiar with the deck. You simply can't use High Tide for your advantage. Spiral Tide plays 18 lands and 42 spells that are from good to awesome with High Tide resolved. Aside of Solidarity, what other deck is better with High Tide resolved?
Also, any good player with this deck will play Turnabout on you EOT or in your upkeep for cause the first counterwar. It isn't matter who won it, beacuse you will tap a lot of your lands.
You will be only capable of stifling Brainfreeze against a very poor player.
Discard is pretty good against this kind of deck, beacuse aside of having six islands, it will need at least two especific cards in hand to go-off. Beacuse of this, Canadian is a good matchup with this deck and Team America a very bad one.

If you are very scaried for this deck, simply play a Pox deck. Ten years ago, on 1999-2000 extended session Pox works beating High Tide. Now it will be the same.

Admiral_Arzar
04-05-2011, 11:50 AM
I think you aren't too familiar with the deck. You simply can't use High Tide for your advantage. Spiral Tide plays 18 lands and 42 spells that are from good to awesome with High Tide resolved. Aside of Solidarity, what other deck is better with High Tide resolved?
Also, any good player with this deck will play Turnabout on you EOT or in your upkeep for cause the first counterwar. It isn't matter who won it, beacuse you will tap a lot of your lands.
You will be only capable of stifling Brainfreeze against a very poor player.
Discard is pretty good against this kind of deck, beacuse aside of having six islands, it will need at least two especific cards in hand to go-off. Beacuse of this, Canadian is a good matchup with this deck and Team America a very bad one.

If you are very scaried for this deck, simply play a Pox deck. Ten years ago, on 1999-2000 extended session Pox works beating High Tide. Now it will be the same.

Gonna agree on the discard part. Last time I played against Junk I got crushed by a topdecked Hymn to Tourach hitting both High Tide and Time Spiral the turn before I was about to go off. Pox would probably be a horrendous matchup although they don't generally have much of a clock from what I've seen. This deck (like pretty much all the viable combo decks right now) is feasting on a metagame full of Vial aggro, Affinity, and G/x midrange decks, few of which are actually equipped to beat it. The aforementioned decks are keeping Counterbalance, Tempo thresh, Stompy, and other poor matchups for us out of the equation.

firstshot
04-05-2011, 02:21 PM
The deck is UNREAL. None of my matches felt close on the weekend. I lost 4 games on the weekend. One because my zoo opp drew multiple cannonists and I wasn't able to get multiple answers in time. Two I thought one of my opponents was Team America but he was AD Nauseum so I lost g1 when I could have gone off t3 but not through a FOW but I put him on the wrong deck even though I saw cards that aren't in Team America. The other 2 games I lost were after resolving a Time Spiral with 5+ mana floating and 3-4 lands untapped and bricking into hands of no card draw/filtering and dying.

AriLax
04-05-2011, 02:33 PM
The deck is UNREAL. None of my matches felt close on the weekend. I lost 4 games on the weekend. One because my zoo opp drew multiple cannonists and I wasn't able to get multiple answers in time. Two I thought one of my opponents was Team America but he was AD Nauseum so I lost g1 when I could have gone off t3 but not through a FOW but I put him on the wrong deck even though I saw cards that aren't in Team America. The other 2 games I lost were after resolving a Time Spiral with 5+ mana floating and 3-4 lands untapped and bricking into hands of no card draw/filtering and dying.

Welcome to the world of Storm. Though this deck rarely actually has to kill with a Storm spell.

firstshot
04-05-2011, 02:37 PM
Welcome to the world of Storm. Though this deck rarely actually has to kill with a Storm spell.

Somehow getting to 15-20 storm and brain freezing them out or making them draw 60 is easier for me than counting to 10 and casting Tendrils. So I won't be casting AD Nauseum anytime soon just Time Spiral.

AriLax
04-05-2011, 03:52 PM
Somehow getting to 15-20 storm and brain freezing them out or making them draw 60 is easier for me than counting to 10 and casting Tendrils. So I won't be casting AD Nauseum anytime soon just Time Spiral.

It's kinda redic to say considering how Solidarity was so impossible to play, but this deck is basically easy mode in terms of Storm combo once you break through whatever resistance they have and start the chain. You just make so much extra mana and have so many extra cards that you don't always have to have a perfect line, just a good one. The other Storm combo decks basically have the cards they have at that exact point and nothing else, meaning you have to plan out your line. Even with the "free roll" of Ad Naus you have to keep figuring it out and can easily mess up.

death
04-05-2011, 03:59 PM
Ben, I'm scared for you running too few lands. It looks easy capitalizing on daze against your cantrips and stifle on your fetchlands.

Scordata
04-05-2011, 04:45 PM
So, firstly @dukelio:
Not to toot my own horn, but I've been playing combo since I've been playing MTG, which goes back to roughly 5th edition. That having been said, I've ALSO played the deck extensively, running various builds since the cards unbanning. I know how the deck plays, and I still stand by my assertion that well timed counterspells make it VERY difficult for the High Tide player to accomplish much of anything.

Sure, if the combo player wants to waste an untap effect at the end of my turn, AND BE DOWN A BLUE CARD, I'm ok with this.
The scary spells are the card draw spells, secconded only by untap effects targeting themselves. With this deck now turning heads, people are going to learn how to fight it, and I don't think we will see a format dominace of any kind.

Also, all other blue decks benefit off of High Tide. When a Tide is on the stack, you get an excuse to use cards like Spell Pierce and Daze, because you get more value out of them. If they wait untill turn 4 to go off, you should have the advantage.

Secondly: Remember, as Mr. Weinburg illustrated - bricking off a Spiral is a VERY REAL possibility.

I feel the deck is very strong, and as a combo player I'm happy to see a new contender in the metagame, but there are so many factors you can't control, like what cards you will draw off Spiral, or the fact that your opponent can draw MORE counterspells, that leaves such a sour taste in my mouth.

Doomsday Tendrils wins on the same turn, for example, and you can control much more of what is going on, instead of gambling.

Forbiddian
04-05-2011, 06:40 PM
Fizzling after a Spiral is not very likely. True: It can happen, but the probability is fleetingly small.


The probability that Tide Spiral fizzles is easily on the order of:

Doomsday from 5-8 life vs. Fireblast (or 4-6 life vs. Bolt or 9-14 life vs. Bolt+Blast, etc.).
Doomsday against an opponent with more than 24 life (I think 25 life was the critical point, it has been a while since I played, but regardless, DD is much harder to use to win against opponents who have more life).
Doomsday pilot fucks up.*

*Yes, this is really important. I know that players have some macho attitude like they will always play perfectly, but then everyone always fucks up. If you have to choose between a deck that wins 90% of the time, but loses if you make any mistakes and a deck that wins 80% of the time, but still wins 70% through mistakes, it's not a tough decision.

The top pros who are least likely to make mistakes know enough about the game to choose the 80/70 deck over than 90/0 deck. I don't understand why people see "easy to pilot" like it's a bad thing.

lexluthor
04-05-2011, 08:41 PM
Which in turn this deck usually wins? turn 3? 4?

Pich
04-05-2011, 08:46 PM
When you're not facing any kind of disruption, you Brain Freeze for lethal on turn three. Against Duresses, Silences, Forces, Pierces, you wait and you build an hand. Note ; High Tide doesn't fucking care if there is a Gaddock Teeg on the board, it just freaking Snap it.

AriLax
04-06-2011, 12:36 AM
When you're not facing any kind of disruption, you Brain Freeze for lethal on turn three. Against Duresses, Silences, Forces, Pierces, you wait and you build an hand. Note ; High Tide doesn't fucking care if there is a Gaddock Teeg on the board, it just freaking Snap it.

Realistically, you are a turn four deck with the decent possibility of goldfishing on 3 in a vacuum. Turn three goldfishing is not the norm, but it isn't especially rare either.

Also, as for targeting High Tide or the card draw, it depends. Dazes and Spell Pierces should be slammed immediately once High Tide is cast unless it is a premature attempt where they would have to immediately go for a Turnabout or Candlestick without sufficient mana to beat a Daze or Piece. Hard counters are better off saved for the first major piece of card draw (Spiral/Meditate) or the clutch untap effect unless Tide resolving puts them at mana to stick two large treats (usually 9 for Wish -> Pact + Spiral).

emidln
04-06-2011, 08:16 AM
Doomsday against an opponent with more than 24 life (I think 25 life was the critical point, it has been a while since I played, but regardless, DD is much harder to use to win against opponents who have more life).


This just isn't true. In the maindeck you have Ill-Gotten Gains and Chain of Vapor in almost every build as well as the ability to chain SDTS and/or Doomsdays together. It's trivial to inflate the storm count to beat things like a suspected STP on goyf/etc and things that gain more life than that give you some extra time to get more mana to inflate your storm count with the above methods.

The type of Doomsday play you find in the X-0 or X-1 bracket competing for top8 is going to laugh at your 25 life and crush you anyway. The type of Doomsday player who isn't is already 0-3 for not understanding his deck.

Anyway, more on to topic, has the Retraced Image/Pact of Negation md build been completely supplanted by the Candelabra build?

egosum
04-06-2011, 08:45 AM
It seems that in the States it has been that way.

Greetings,

Iñaki.-

Admiral_Arzar
04-06-2011, 10:15 AM
It seems that in the States it has been that way.



Yeah, I'd be playing it if I could afford Candelabras lol. I just watched somebody playing it crush Merfolk over and over again, which seemed pretty absurd at the time. The deck is ridiculous.

firstshot
04-06-2011, 11:05 AM
The 18th land is probably correct. I played 17 because it was the number of lands in the deck handed to me. Most likely Gerry had cut a land for a cantrip where I had assumed it was the 75 that Alix had played in Edison. I had an extra wipeaway in my sideboard over a repeal because I wanted another split second card versus counterbalance if I got paired versus it.

death
04-06-2011, 11:00 PM
So that was the list that Gerry played. I really enjoy the fact that this deck has caught the attention of my favorite (and) greatest magic players in history (Gerry Thompson, Alix Hatfield, Jaime Cano). This archetype indeed has an impressive pedigree. It is also appropriate to give credit to Iñaki and Anwar for laying out the blueprints from which these successful High Tide lists were derived.

Scordata
04-07-2011, 04:29 PM
I'm still waiting for them to unban frantic search. I could at least get some legitimate value out of my Resets, lol.
It seems like in recent memory, whenever the DCI touches the banned list, some insane broken deck gets made.

And BTW Forbiddian, I wont speak for pros, but you raise valid points. It's one of the reasons I often hesitate to take doomsday to 8 round events. I like playing magic, but I hate getting headaches. That having been said I'm either playing dday or nogoyf in boston's scg 5k.

mchainmail
04-07-2011, 05:11 PM
If all else fails, just play Trinisphere.dec

It's actually due to these reasons that I sold off my combo pieces here. The deck is good, but not stupid good, and I decided that dual lands were cooler than Menorahs.

I comboed off through Trinisphere with this deck, and it isn't even difficult.

5 Islands, High Tide, Candelabra untap 4, Spiral (12 mana available post-tide)

GG.

ddt15
04-07-2011, 06:01 PM
I'm still waiting for them to unban frantic search.Never gonna happen.

Scordata
04-07-2011, 06:52 PM
With 5 islands, and a trinisphere out, I don't see how you did that.
High Tide costs 3 - 2 untapped Islands
Make 4 mana - Candelabra costs 3, down to 1 mana.
Untap 1 island? Make UU - Cheat Time Spiral into play?

Unless you had Candelabra in play already.

Ok I give up, this is the best deck in the format :P

RexFTW
04-09-2011, 12:04 AM
Unless you had Candelabra in play already.

This!

And rebuild off cunning wish im sure.

The other easy way is high tide rebuild untapping lands, tide again.

e_hawk77
04-09-2011, 10:49 AM
So I play the Hatfields' list pretty much straight up at my local stores Thursday night legacy (about 25-30 players) and went 4-1 in the swiss and lost in the first round of top 8. My losses were to team america and new herizons. Team america got the thoughtseize/hymm draws games one and three and I played poorly in game one vs new herizons and game three mulled to 5 and he had counters for the spells that i needed to draw out with.

Overall I was happy with the list but I really feel that the deck wants to play some other counter magic other than force of will. I played dredge twice and would have loved spell peirce versus their cabal therapies or breakthrough, I know force does counter those spells but sometimes you just can't or you don't have it. I am just of the belief that while mind over matter and intuition are good I think they help the match-ups that are already good and don't help in the ones that are bad.

I'm gonna play in a GPT today and this is the list that I'm running. After the tourney I will come back on and right up a report and I will let you know if i liked the slight changes.

4 Candelabra of Tawnos
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
2 Preordain
4 Merchant Scroll
3 Meditate
3 Cunning Wish
1 Blue Sun's Zenith
4 Force of Will
2 Spell Pierce
3 Turnabout
4 High Tide
4 Time Spiral

6 Fetches
12 Island

SB

2 Echoing Truth
2 Repeal
3 Pact of Negation
1 Rebuild
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Wipe Away
1 Intution
1 Turnabout
1 Meditate
1 Brain Freeze
1 Blue Sun's Zenith

Hopefully when I write up this report it is with three byes to GP Providence.

death
04-09-2011, 11:27 AM
Team America has become popular, putting 4 in the top 8 at Jupiter's. Not surprising when it has been bagging wins in Japan awhile back. TA will give High Tide a tough matchup. While Spell Pierce is great against Dredge (no-brainer), it doesn't really stop discard that plays more than 12 lands. I've lost games against back to back Duress/Thoughtseize/Inquisition/Hymn after managing to FoW a Hymn and Brainstorming to hide my pieces. I would have won if I had Envelop or Counterspell, but not Spell Pierce/Snare.:frown:

Also, it will be better to put the Intuition back in the main, in place of a Meditate. Intuition doesn't just help matchups that are already good, the card is a necessity. I believe the cards you are talking about are Mind Over Matter and Cunning Wish.

e_hawk77
04-10-2011, 02:51 PM
(For the list look up to my last post)
GPT Providence @ Monster Den Minneapolis, MN
about 25 players

The field was more combo than i thought there would be. There were 2 ant decks, 2 tes decks, 2 dredge decks, 1 doomday, 1 painter stone, 1 show and tell/sneak attack, and me playing high tide. The rest of the field was pretty spread out with a couple zoo decks a couple of control decks and some merfolk and of course some brews.

Rd 1 vs ANT

My opponent and I played in a tourney about a week ago and we knew what the match up was. In game one he kept his opening seven while I mulled to six. I kept a hand with high tide, some cantrips and spell pierce. He hit me with a duress and thought and took spell pierce. After some setting up and found another spell pierce and had brainstorm x2 high tide and time spiral but was stuck on three lands. Now with him on four lands my spell pierce wasn't very good he started off with duress and after some thought i let him, if i brainstormed to hide the high tide and time spiral then he takes the other brainstorm and goes off and I don't get a chance to find something to stop him, he thinks and takes spell pierce. Now he starts to go off he Infernal tutors for Ad nauseum and I brainstorm and hit Force of will and get the concession.

No boarding :(

Game 2 he boards in Dark Confidant and I have to force one on turn 2. He finds another 2 turns later and I get drowned in card advantage and duress effects. I'm forced to meditate to keep cards in hand and have a chance but he gets a duress off the top with Bob and gets my force of will and combos off on the extra turn i gave him.

Game 3 I mull to 5 and really don't have much of a chance if he has the read and guts to just go for it as I have no way to stop him. I have a candle, 2 lands, timespiral and ponder for my mull to five. He gets a Bob and looses some life with him and multiple thoughtseizes. Unfortunatly we have both been playing kinda slow, as he is afraid of me having counter magic and I have to find was to stop him from going off every turn, so time is called. On his last turn he decides to go for it and with him at a low life total (13) he duresses me and finds i have no counter magic and tries and go off now he has a tough choice he can try ad nauseum from 13 with no extra mana or go for iggy and give me a chance to brainstorm. He chooses to go for iggy and i brainstorm and i miss the force and he gets it.

0-1

Rd 2 vs the bye
I get to check on my buddies in dallas and most of them are 3-0 at this point and I get hear some pretty good stories.

1-1

Rd 3 vs bwg hexmage depths

Game 1
He gets off to a very good start. He goes turn one thoughtsieze turn two hymm turn three hymm luckily I won the roll and meditate in respose and I'm left with turnabout high tide and 2 lands. On his extra turn he plays Dark Confidant, Vampire Hexmage and Dark Depths. I draw a Island and then turn about his guys now that Hexmage turn into a 20/20 avatar token. I peel and find another turnabout to tap his guys. He draws a Knight of the Reliquary but no disruption and I top deck a Time Spiral and my spiral hand is nuts and get there from there.

I board in 2 Repeal and 2 Echoing Truth Out 1 High Tide 1 Candelabra of Tawnos 1 Ponder and 1 Force of Will

Game 2
The first couple of turns we don't do anything I play cantrips and he plays lands. On turn 3 he plays a land and a mox diamond and plays a hymm and he is like I wasn't gonna run into spell pierce. Turn 4 he follows up with hymm and then extirpates my high tides and only finds 3 and is confused. After finding that I boarded one out he plays a Knight of the Reliquary. I top deck a cunning wish and two turns later use it to find a high tide and use the turnabout in my hand to tap his lands and get there off one hightide, some candles and timespiral.

2-1

Rd 4 vs Dredge with Force of will

Game 1
This game isn't much of a game he mulls to 5 and I force his first discard outlet and I get to free roll on turn four and i have the spell piece for his force of will and the candle to untap my lands and then get to play spiral.

In 2 Echoing Truth Out 1 ponder 1 Cunning Wish

Game 2
My hand is pretty good and get to force his discard outlet but he has another the next turn and runs off 3 therapies in 2 straight turns and I don't have the tools to go off before he kills me.

Game 3
This game is the most real game we play. I spell pierce his careful study on turn one. He misses another discard outlet on turn two and I drop a candelabra on mine. Turn 3 he gets started with a breakthrough and hits a cabal therapy but has no creature to sac. I don't have the time spiral or meditate to try for the turn four so I pass the turn and he hits a narcomeba and therapies me I brainstorm and hit a timespiral so I hide it and high tide and he calls force of will knowing that I would hide the good stuff and he misses. The next turn i have a ponder and use it to get the two cards I hid and go off as he only have one unknown card and no mana so he can't have anything to pitch to force of will. I draw a good hand and have a spell piece if he drew the force.

3-1

Rd 5 vs rifter

Games 1 and 2
This game is very uninteresting. I get to like 7 lands get a perfect hand then turnabout his lands as he is playing abeyance and orim's chant and I get him with out time spiral.

Top 8 vs Cat sligh (like zoo but superfast)
Game 1
I force his turn one wild nactal and play a turn one candelabra he follows up his turn one nactal with nactal and goblin guide and i play a land and merchant scroll for high tide. He hits me for five then plays double chain lightning and puts me to seven and I try the turn 3 combo and get there with a good time spiral.

In 2 Echoing truth 1 Repeal (after i found out he is playing md gaddock teeg and boards in mind break trap) Out 1 force of will 2 spell pierce

Game 2
In this game he has a fast clock and I have to go off on turn four. I don't know what he boarded in and decide it is mind break trap and cunning wish for pact of negation on his end step on his turn 4. He did side in mind break trap and has it and I get to play time spiral but when i get my hand it is ponder preordain and 5 lands and I miss on my cantrips and have to scoop them up.

Game 3
Once again I have to go off on turn 4 but now there is another problem he has two mountains and two cards in hand and im at four. I cunning wish for a pact of negation and don't have the resources to not go with time spiral and have to give him 7 new cards to get a mind break trap or fireblast. To my luck he doesn't have either as I didn't get a counterspell and I brainfreeze him out and blue sun's zenith the rest.

Top 4 vs Rifter again

These games are once again very easy and get there off turnabout and never play a timespiral

Finals
He isn't going to providence and I know the guy so he gives me the win.

Overall I really like this list and wouldn't change anything. Wish there was a extract that was an instant blue i might add that for ant but other than that i wouldn't make a change. let me know what you think.

perm
04-11-2011, 05:50 AM
very ignorant about high tide here, but is turnabout way more desirable than reset?

PanderAlexander
04-11-2011, 06:03 AM
very ignorant about high tide here, but is turnabout way more desirable than reset?

Yes, because Time Spiral is sorcery and Spiral Tide goes off on it's own turn, you can't cast Reset on your own turn. There is a different deck though that uses High Tide and Reset and it's called Solidarity.

perm
04-11-2011, 06:18 AM
haha wow, I am retarded. Didn't connect the dots till after that post

overseer1234
04-12-2011, 11:07 AM
Okay, seeing that playing candelabra is the way to go at the moment.

What's the best non-candelabra list?
(Iif you're like me and don't want to spend 1000$ for a set of cards that only go in like 2 deck, but still enjoy "Tide" decks)

Or should I just stick with solidarity?

Grtz,
Robin.

Scordata
04-12-2011, 12:53 PM
http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/deck.php?id=5515&iddeck=39942

That one probably. Cloud of Faeries is pretty similar, functionally. It just may take an extra turn to go off.

death
04-12-2011, 03:36 PM
Needs moar Turnabouts.

lexluthor
04-12-2011, 09:45 PM
Will be to replace that of Candelabra by Reality Spasm? (budget version)
Reality Spasm is instant (better against ptithing, krosana grip,...), 1 mana more (drawback almost insignificant) , and back to the deck after Time spiral. Too can be used as fog (tap x creatures)

Comments, plis

lexluthor
04-12-2011, 09:45 PM
Will be to replace that of Candelabra by Reality Spasm? (budget version)
Reality Spasm is instant (better against ptithing, krosana grip,...), 1 mana more (drawback almost insignificant) , and back to the deck after Time spiral. Too can be used as fog (tap x creatures)

Comments, plis

death
04-12-2011, 10:11 PM
If you have 6 floating to cast TS, you have mana to cast this and untap 4 lands before going for Spiral. y not?

lexluthor
04-12-2011, 10:44 PM
and???

Rune
04-12-2011, 11:59 PM
Okay, seeing that playing candelabra is the way to go at the moment.

What's the best non-candelabra list?
(Iif you're like me and don't want to spend 1000$ for a set of cards that only go in like 2 deck, but still enjoy "Tide" decks)

Or should I just stick with solidarity?

Grtz,
Robin.

The best non-Candelabra lists are deviatons of Mon,Goblin Chief's "NBS".

I have been running this recently

// Lands
2 Flooded Strand
2 Polluted Delta
2 Misty Rainforest
2 Scalding Tarn
10 Island

// Creatures
3 Cloud of Faeries

// Spells
1 Brain Freeze
3 Turnabout
4 High Tide
2 Cunning Wish
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Preordain
1 Pact of Negation
4 Merchant Scroll
4 Time Spiral
3 Spell Pierce
1 Meditate

// Sideboard
SB: 1 Brain Freeze
SB: 1 Turnabout
SB: 2 Pact of Negation
SB: 1 Meditate
SB: 2 Snap
SB: 1 Mindbreak Trap
SB: 1 Rebuild
SB: 1 Ravenous Trap
SB: 1 Blue Sun's Zenith
SB: 2 Wipe Away
SB: 2 Spell Snare

I stopped playing the green splash for Krosan Grip because Counterbalance seems to have been wiped out from the face of the earth. This SB can still handle CB quite well, though, and it's more flexible overall.

Some cards in the maindeck can be changed around, but there are things you shouldn't do; like cutting lands for Sapphire Medallions

Kayrkhan
04-13-2011, 06:51 AM
Will be to replace that of Candelabra by Reality Spasm? (budget version)
Reality Spasm is instant (better against ptithing, krosana grip,...), 1 mana more (drawback almost insignificant) , and back to the deck after Time spiral. Too can be used as fog (tap x creatures)

Comments, plis

Great!!!, this evening I try it in my testing group. I think that it is so good.

Mon,Goblin Chief
04-13-2011, 08:52 AM
I've thought about Reality Spasm before, the problem with it is that it really doesn't do what you need it to do: enable the turn three kill against fast aggro-draws. Casting High Tide of off three lands leaves you without enough mana to Spasm for 3. Every unatp-effect beyond Turnabout and Time Spiral really is only necessary to speed the deck up (though the ability of Candelabra-versions to win without Spiral can be pretty good), which Spasm doesn't do, which in turn means it isn't worth it.

@kikoo: Thanks for the props :) What's your reasoning for running Brain Freeze MD instead of Zenith? It doesn't seem like it's worth it. Zenith lets you Scroll into drawing most of your deck, Brain Freeze really doesn't do anything but end the game once you've won already. It isn't like you don't have Wishes to get the Freeze game one if you're somewhat light on mana.
As to the green-splash, with the way the American meta looks at the moment, the splash doesn't seem strictly necessary, I agree there. I suspect that might change soon considering the two last SCG Open Top 8s, though. They look like CB might be primed for a comeback...

Rune
04-13-2011, 07:56 PM
It's just for the possibility of the double Brain Freeze play when you can't get a lot of mana/storm. It improves the win% of comboing with only 3 islands, and not much more than that, although it does allow me to look through people's decks before delivering the final blow ^-^. It also allows you to finish the game faster, if that is necessary. Sometimes it's win-more, but often when I've played the deck it has changed what would have been a loss into a win instead.

The maindeck BF gets swapped for BSZ in some matchups, so I guess it's not an ideal maindeck card. It's occasionally a dead draw or just FoW fodder, but I personally like the dimension it adds to the deck.

mrjumbo03
04-14-2011, 01:12 PM
What are people's thoughts on applying the 3-meditate main used by the Hatfields to the Candle-less builds... It is very appealing, specially in the Retraced Image Builds to go turn 2 Meditate... Of course the trade-off is losing the 3 pact of negation in the main board but you do get 4 cards which usually buries control anyways... Also, it makes dealing with discard specially Hymns (which we couldn't pact anyway) easier...

List would probably go like this:
14 Islands
4 Fetch

4 Brainstorm
4 Preordain
4 Ponder
3 Meditate
1 Blue Sun's Zenith

3 Turnabout
3 Retraced Image

4 Merchant Scroll
3 Cunning Wish
1 Intuition

4 Force of Will

4 High Tide
4 Time Spiral

I have done no testing on this list but it looks promising...

death
04-14-2011, 05:19 PM
Regarding the Hatfileds/Anwar build, it's a no-brainer. Meditate has a pretty amazing synergy with >> Mind Over Matter. IN A VACUUM, that list is what I'd consider the best High Tide list.

Personally, I'm not confident running Meditates over Envelop or Counterspell. If you don't have a Brainstorm, Meditate cannot protect well against discard for obvious reasons.


edit: Regarding the list you posted, I think I saw a similiar one making first place.

Uly Van Hammer
04-14-2011, 05:49 PM
How has this not become a DTB? It's been putting up lots of great results.

Also, has there been much discussion about Mind Over Matter. It seems good, it turns every land in your deck into a 0 mana candelabra.

yawg07
04-14-2011, 08:57 PM
This deck is really cool. I haven't honestly looked at the deck since the unbanning.
I tried the last list on the page before this one. It is surprisingly consistent!
Honestly, this deck is pretty inexpensive for the non-candelabra lists.

Do you think lists like the one on the last page are tournament caliber? It seems like they should be.

death
04-14-2011, 10:07 PM
Here's the Retraced Image version that recently won a 32-man event:

4 High Tide
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
3 Preordain
1 Meditate

4 Time Spiral
3 Retraced Image -x
3 Turnabout

4 Merchant Scroll
3 Cunning Wish
1 Intuition

4 Force of Will
2 Spell Pierce
1 Pact of Negation

1 Blue Sun's Zenith

Lands
1 Flooded Strand
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Polluted Delta
1 Scalding Tarn
14 Island

Sideboard:
1 Turnabout
1 Blue Sun's Zenith
1 Meditate
1 Brain Freeze
2 Wipe Away
2 Pact of Negation
2 Spell Pierce
1 Rebuild
1 Echoing Truth
1 Gigadrowse
1 Slaughter Pact
1 Ravenous Trap


This list can still be improved by running 4-of fetchlands rather than 1/2-ofs since Retraced Image only allows you to put lands that have the same name as the ones in play. If you try to retrace an opponent's fetchland, he can just crack it in response, lol.

Ziilot
04-15-2011, 06:11 AM
This list can still be improved by running 4-of fetchlands rather than 1/2-ofs since Retraced Image only allows you to put lands that have the same name as the ones in play. If you try to retrace an opponent's fetchland, he can just crack it in response, lol.

But he has to do it before retraced image has resolved? So he has no way to know if we are going to put island or fetchland, am I right?

What do you guys think about retraced image vs. cloud of faeries build? Snaps are good vs. aggro though, but images are faster?

mrjumbo03
04-15-2011, 07:03 AM
@ death, i meant protecting against Hymn... Not exactly protecting but recovering from it... So my bad... Actually my list is almost the same as the one you posted except the spell pierces are counterspells for me...

Uly Van Hammer
04-15-2011, 11:41 AM
But he has to do it before retraced image has resolved? So he has no way to know if we are going to put island or fetchland, am I right?

What do you guys think about retraced image vs. cloud of faeries build? Snaps are good vs. aggro though, but images are faster?

Exactly what i was going to say. It works the same as meddling mage or cabal therapy. once it resolves, there's no shennanigans.

death
04-15-2011, 04:12 PM
I said in response, before Retraced Image resolves. Once he cracks his Misty for example (assuming he has a clue of what you are about to do) while Retraced is on the stack and you have a Misty in your hand, you obviously just wasted a spell.

The advantage of running 4-ofs is that you can retrace your own fetchlands without worrying about opponents responding to the spell. (I'm not saying it'll happen 100% of the time)

RexFTW
04-17-2011, 11:50 AM
I am practicing with the following list:


Maindeck:

Artifacts
4 Candelabra of Tawnos

Enchantments
1 Mind Over Matter

Instants
1 Blue Sun's Zenith
4 Brainstorm
3 Cunning Wish
4 Force of Will
4 High Tide
1 Intuition
3 Meditate
3 Turnabout

Sorceries
4 Merchant Scroll
4 Ponder
2 Preordain
4 Time Spiral

Basic Lands
12 Island

Lands
2 Flooded Strand
2 Misty Rainforest
2 Polluted Delta

Sideboard:
1 Blue Sun's Zenith
1 Brain Freeze
1 Echoing Truth
1 Intuition
1 Meditate
3 Pact of Negation
1 Rebuild
3 Repeal
1 Snap
1 Turnabout
1 Wipe Away


Clearly the meditate, intuition and blue sun's zenith always stay in the board to cunning wish for because there are redundant versions in the 60 to scroll for.

I am trying to figure out what cards to side OUT for pacts and repeals, and what other cards to bring in.

Also, something else that I can not figure out:

If you side in an instant you can merchant scroll for it, making it available earlier than if you had to cunning wish for it. SO- in which cases do you side in the instant that you want for the match up and side out something you would normally merchant scroll for. For example, do you side in wipe away vs counterbalance? And if you do, planning to scroll for it on turn 2 - do you then side out a high tide so you can wish for it? Or do you side in the cards you want to scroll for, and the pacts/repeals instead of wishes?

AnwarA101
04-17-2011, 03:32 PM
I am practicing with the following list:


Clearly the meditate, intuition and blue sun's zenith always stay in the board to cunning wish for because there are redundant versions in the 60 to scroll for.

I am trying to figure out what cards to side OUT for pacts and repeals, and what other cards to bring in.

Also, something else that I can not figure out:

If you side in an instant you can merchant scroll for it, making it available earlier than if you had to cunning wish for it. SO- in which cases do you side in the instant that you want for the match up and side out something you would normally merchant scroll for. For example, do you side in wipe away vs counterbalance? And if you do, planning to scroll for it on turn 2 - do you then side out a high tide so you can wish for it? Or do you side in the cards you want to scroll for, and the pacts/repeals instead of wishes?

What you sideboard out depends largely on what you are playing against. The Blue Sun's Zenith is one of the best cards to take out against aggressive decks and combo decks where it is a poor draw early in the game. Intuition isn't particularly strong against aggressive decks either as it requires a great deal of mana to : Merchant Scroll, Intuition, and then Time Spiral. Of course you can break up this cost over turns, but its not ideal against a faster deck that maybe packing some hate post-board. What you sideboard in also depends largely on what you think your opponent is bringing for you. If you think they are bringing things to counter your spells like Mindbreak Trap and Pyroblast then you want Pact of Negation. If you think they are brining in permanent based hate, then you would want some amount of bounce spells.

I don't sideboard in the lone wipe away against Counterbalance decks. I leave it as a wish target and board in the Repeals. Repeal functions as a bounce spell that repleaces itself and it is much better to draw while going off since it can bounce a Candelabra. Sideboarding out High Tide only makes sense against cards like Extirpate and if you suspect such a sideboard then boarding out 1 High Tide is reasonable in that it gives you a way to win through an Extirpate on High Tide.

RexFTW
04-17-2011, 10:11 PM
I watched the VODs of the hatfield brothers on ggslive.com and they never brought in repeal. What is repeal used against?? Is it for mox diamond?

They played against ichorid, goblins, and GW Taxes. I would have thought Goblins it would come in. Perhaps they just never drew it but that seems unlikely in a deck that draws 20+ cards a game.

rgripp
04-18-2011, 10:35 AM
They use it against CB. They can just stack lands and use the Candelabra to make an enormous Repeal, practically impossible to counter with Counterbalance.

death
04-18-2011, 10:43 AM
Repeal doesn't have Sunburst so it doesn't work like Engineered Explosives. You pay X=the converted mana cost. There's no tricks involved, except it draws a card when it resolves.

TheRedBaron
04-18-2011, 12:13 PM
Hi guys, I'm new to the source. Repeal works against CB, as well as random Chalice of the Void.
I have adopted a Hatfield list tweaking it a bit. IMO 18 lands are alot. I run 16 with no problems. I prefer extra counters to the 2 lands. I used to use retraced image, but I switched to Candles. IMO, Candles aren't win-more like the primer states. M.O.M. seems more like a win-more.

Here is my current list:

Sorcery

4 Time Spiral
4 Ponder
4 Merchant Scroll
2 Preordain

Instants

4 Brainstorm
3 Meditate
3 Turnabout
3 Cunning Wish
1 Intuition
1 Blue Sun's Zenith
4 Force of Will
2 Spell Pierce
4 High Tide

Enchantements

1 Mind Over Matter

Artifacts

4 Candelabra of Tawnos

Land

10 Island
2 Polluted Delta
2 Scalding Tarn
2 Flooded Strand

Wishboard

3 Pact of Negation
3 Repeal
1 Wipe Away
1 Echoing Truth
1 Meditate
1 Blue's Sun's Zenith
1 Turnabout
1 Ravenous Trap
1 Rebuild
1 Hibernation
1 Brain Freeze

ScatmanX
04-18-2011, 12:21 PM
Repeal works against... random Chalice of the Void.
Would you care to elaborate How?

rgripp
04-18-2011, 12:22 PM
Repeal doesn't have Sunburst so it doesn't work like Engineered Explosives. You pay X=the converted mana cost. There's no tricks involved, except it draws a card when it resolves.

I could swear Repeal bounced a permanent with mana cost equals X or less, but you're right.

TheRedBaron
04-18-2011, 12:52 PM
Would you care to elaborate How?

Well... as long as it isn't set to 1, but in which case you need to wish for an echoing truth or wipe away/rebuild anyways.

RexFTW
04-18-2011, 02:54 PM
Just to clarify, when you use repeal on counterbalance, x must be 2. Also, you can not use repeal on Chalice at 1 because x must be 0.

Repeal seems strong against vial decks when on the play. Also against chrome mox, mox diamond and pithing needle. However, this seems quite narrow to devote 3 slots.

Also: i think people are using Mind over Matter just to untap candelabras, which is not the only use. You can also just untap islands - which still generates a ton of mana when you have a ton of high tides going. If your tide is at 5 and you just discard 4 cards you draw from meditate you just made 20 mana! Those 4 islands you drew off time spiral? they are good for 20 mana at this point as well.

RainbowPenguin
04-18-2011, 03:29 PM
Hello everybody. Long time lurker, just signed up.

I've been playing Merfolk for a while, but am assembling Spiral Tide, since my local meta is pretty hostile to the folk, currently. Also, ST is pretty awesome. I will probably run a version similar to Mon's or kikoo's build, mainly because i happen to know kikoo (hej Rune!) and trust his judgement on most legacy matters, except for putting Goyfs in merfolk decks. :tongue:
(also, candelabras are sorta expensive..)

The OP mentioned Sensei's Divining Top as a card that had been tested (whatever that means) but wasn't good enough. I was sorta curious why? Also, what are other people's opinion on that card in this deck? I've read through the tread, and it is barely mentioned by anyone.
I don't actually want it to be good, since then I would have to go get some, but in theory, Top seems good as a one- or two-of, probably replacing a similar number of Preordains. It is more mana intensive than the true cantrips, sure, but that mana could be spent at end of turn, if you held up countermana, etc. And obviously Top gets better in the long game. The most important reason why Top interests me in ST, though: It gives you access to a delayed cantrip, making your Time Spirals much better.
Thoughts?

death
04-18-2011, 03:36 PM
SDT is non-blue so it doesn't pitch to FoW. It is mana intensive therefore slow. Post-spiral it will cost :2: just to cantrip and up the storm count.

TheRedBaron
04-18-2011, 03:50 PM
Just to clarify, when you use repeal on counterbalance, x must be 2. Also, you can not use repeal on Chalice at 1 because x must be 0.

Repeal seems strong against vial decks when on the play. Also against chrome mox, mox diamond and pithing needle. However, this seems quite narrow to devote 3 slots.

Also: i think people are using Mind over Matter just to untap candelabras, which is not the only use. You can also just untap islands - which still generates a ton of mana when you have a ton of high tides going. If your tide is at 5 and you just discard 4 cards you draw from meditate you just made 20 mana! Those 4 islands you drew off time spiral? they are good for 20 mana at this point as well.

Yes, and Mind Over Matter can also be used to tap down your opponents islands/lands/critters :smile:, or that pesky Trinisphere


Hello everybody. Long time lurker, just signed up.

I've been playing Merfolk for a while, but am assembling Spiral Tide, since my local meta is pretty hostile to the folk, currently. Also, ST is pretty awesome. I will probably run a version similar to Mon's or kikoo's build, mainly because i happen to know kikoo (hej Rune!) and trust his judgement on most legacy matters, except for putting Goyfs in merfolk decks. :tongue:
(also, candelabras are sorta expensive..)

The OP mentioned Sensei's Divining Top as a card that had been tested (whatever that means) but wasn't good enough. I was sorta curious why? Also, what are other people's opinion on that card in this deck? I've read through the tread, and it is barely mentioned by anyone.
I don't actually want it to be good, since then I would have to go get some, but in theory, Top seems good as a one- or two-of, probably replacing a similar number of Preordains. It is more mana intensive than the true cantrips, sure, but that mana could be spent at end of turn, if you held up countermana, etc. And obviously Top gets better in the long game. The most important reason why Top interests me in ST, though: It gives you access to a delayed cantrip, making your Time Spirals much better.
Thoughts?

I concur that Top is too slow... and your Meta will hate spiral tide too lol

Infinitium
04-18-2011, 05:44 PM
The OP mentioned Sensei's Divining Top as a card that had been tested (whatever that means) but wasn't good enough. I was sorta curious why? Also, what are other people's opinion on that card in this deck? I've read through the tread, and it is barely mentioned by anyone.
I don't actually want it to be good, since then I would have to go get some, but in theory, Top seems good as a one- or two-of, probably replacing a similar number of Preordains. It is more mana intensive than the true cantrips, sure, but that mana could be spent at end of turn, if you held up countermana, etc. And obviously Top gets better in the long game. The most important reason why Top interests me in ST, though: It gives you access to a delayed cantrip, making your Time Spirals much better. Thoughts?

Well, that's basically what I was trying to tell people throughout the old thread. My best guess is that because it isn't widely played it Spring Tide (or Solidarity for that matter) it never made the Spiral lists that largely derived from it, and people tend to be slow to apply new tech to older lists unless it's already been proven in larger tournaments.

Anyhow in my opinion there's little to no reason not to run it as a 2-3 of over Preordain (or whatever 3rd cantrip you use). This deck isn't Solidarity; you don't have to tap out every turn to sculpt the perfect hand in order to go off - you need High Tide, Spiral and enough mana to cast both in the same turn (using either 4 Islands or any of 8 redundant untappers). Ignoring the fact that SDT still digs for all of these components that's hardly difficult to assemble in any given game with the 8+ cantrips and 5+ tutors available to the deck.

Now consider the obvious advantages Top brings with it:

* Making the deck inherently more resilient versus all forms of disruption.
* Greatly reducing variance post-spiral.
* Giving you greater inevitability in stalled games.

(And no, I'm not going to provide you with any particualr arguments as why the above statements are true - it should be common knowledge)

All at the cost of costing one more mana pre-tide. Not seeing it being more widely used really is curious and curiouser.

EDIT:


SDT is non-blue so it doesn't pitch to FoW. It is mana intensive therefore slow. Post-spiral it will cost just to cantrip and up the storm count.

These aren't very compelling arguments. Not pitching to FoW in a deck running 30+ blue spells is hardly relevant (and you could easily reverse the argument by stating that top helps you dig for additional blue cards).
Being mana intensive is also a non-argument since you won't actually spin the top until you've played out your remaining cantrips and/or Scrolls pre-Spiral (unless you're holding them for the shuffle effect), at which point you should either have enough to combo off (and top is godly when spiraling out) or you are being actively disrupted (at which point Top will help you recuperate your losses better than any other comparable effect in the game (ie cantrips)). Post-spiral not drawing enough business is a far more pressing concern than mana.

AriLax
04-18-2011, 06:03 PM
From my experience with this deck, it follows a similar curve to Ad Naus. You spend all of your mana on cantrips/hand fixing up to the turn that they die, then from that point its all easy.

In ANT, Top was garbage. It wasn't synergistic with your other cantrips in any way. It ate up your mana to cast them, overlapped with the info they gave you, and strained your shuffle effects even when mana wasn't an issue. In this deck I can only imagine it is worse as some of your set up cantrips cost 2/3.

It does allow for slightly less variance post Spiral. It does make you better when the game goes to turn 17. But then again the deck is currently 95%+ to win post Spiral and is already better than control decks at gaining ground as the game extends due to Meditate and the cantrips.

ScatmanX
04-18-2011, 06:13 PM
It does allow for slightly less variance post Spiral. It does make you better when the game goes to turn 17. But then again the deck is currently 95%+ to win post Spiral and is already better than control decks at gaining ground as the game extends due to Meditate and the cantrips.
This. But this actually makes it bad.
Like people say on the TES thread: Don't play cards that are only good after Ad Nauseam. I think the same principle can apply here.

SpoCk0nd0pe
04-18-2011, 09:58 PM
Just did a little testing with this deck on mws.

I did a second thought about Candelabra. It really is inferior to retraced image (besides the possibility of hate) if you want to go off before turn 4, just do the math. Besides retraced image has better synergies with the untapping effects.
I played without MD meditate so far, it worked like a charm. Since it's only useful after going off see scatman's post on why to cut them.

ScatmanX
04-18-2011, 11:06 PM
I played without MD meditate so far, it worked like a charm. Since it's only useful after going off see scatman's post on why to cut them.
But Meditate is quite useful before comboing. It refills your hand after heavy discard; you can EoT on your opponents turn, so you try to go off on your own turn with 8+ cards on hand; it's extremely cost/efficient after Spiral; Is an Instant, so you can respond lots of things with it, and find answerers....

Top, on the other hand, have similar and, imo, more powerful competitors, on Ponder and Preordain.
I have tried substituting Meditate for Fact or Fiction and Compulsive Research, but they don't even compare to it.

RexFTW
04-18-2011, 11:09 PM
RE: Candelabra
I believe this card makes the deck very consistent and makes it easier to kill with BSZenith.

RE: Retraced Image
I think this card reduces consistency and resilience to disruption but increases the speed of the deck.

RE: SD Top vs Preordain
Preordain is kindof like a cantrip with a shuffle effect combined in that it never leaves 'bad' cards on to of your deck. If you were going to replace something with top you may want to cut some brainstorms or add more fetchlands. I find that with 4 brainstorm I have barely enough shuffle. However I feel that brainstorm is better than top because post spiral you can put 2 lands back then shuffle, essentially gaining you 3 total cards. However with 2 tops you can cycle them around and general big storm if you want. 2 tops + cunning wish + ~22 mana = total mill.

RE: Repeal
Has anyone figured out why this is in the deck yet?

TheRedBaron
04-18-2011, 11:13 PM
Just did a little testing with this deck on mws.

I did a second thought about Candelabra. It really is inferior to retraced image (besides the possibility of hate) if you want to go off before turn 4, just do the math. Besides retraced image has better synergies with the untapping effects.
I played without MD meditate so far, it worked like a charm. Since it's only useful after going off see scatman's post on why to cut them.

Candles can how allow you to produce 7 mana on turn 3... how is this inferior to image in any way? All you really net is a possible 6 mana on turn 2 or 8 mana on turn 4... So yes slightly faster, however you can run 4 candles... if you run 4 retraced image you could get stuck with 2 in hand, i would prefer 2 candles in hand almost all the time.

you can actually also win on turn 2 with 2 candles, 2 high tide, 2 islands, 1 spiral... but yeah that's god hand. I usually go off on turn 3... turn 4 if I keep a slow hand.



RE: Repeal
Has anyone figured out why this is in the deck yet?

I think Repeal is best for slowing down aggro, also bouncing pesky needles or your own candles.

RexFTW
04-18-2011, 11:49 PM
Candles can how allow you to produce 7 mana on turn 3... how is this inferior to image in any way? All you really net is a possible 6 mana on turn 2 or 8 mana on turn 4... So yes slightly faster, however you can run 4 candles... if you run 4 retraced image you could get stuck with 2 in hand, i would prefer 2 candles in hand almost all the time.

agree. You need to start playing them out early though instead of the "standard" play of holding them.


I think Repeal is best for slowing down aggro, also bouncing pesky needles or your own candles.

The hatfield brothers do not bring them in vs goblins (atleast not on the draw) probably because 1 lackey hit could put things in that are out of range of repeal. You also cannot bring it in against decks sporting teeg. I guess this leaves Merefolk and random vial decks. Death and taxes seems like a miserable matchup?

Michael Keller
04-19-2011, 09:18 AM
From my experience with this deck, it follows a similar curve to Ad Naus. You spend all of your mana on cantrips/hand fixing up to the turn that they die, then from that point its all easy.

In ANT, Top was garbage. It wasn't synergistic with your other cantrips in any way. It ate up your mana to cast them, overlapped with the info they gave you, and strained your shuffle effects even when mana wasn't an issue. In this deck I can only imagine it is worse as some of your set up cantrips cost 2/3.

It does allow for slightly less variance post Spiral. It does make you better when the game goes to turn 17. But then again the deck is currently 95%+ to win post Spiral and is already better than control decks at gaining ground as the game extends due to Meditate and the cantrips.

Right, but the hand-sculpting procedures associated with Ad Nauseam Tendrils are far different than that of Spiral Tide. Spiral Tide runs no hand-disruption, much less any real acceleration until nailing a High Tide, so you have no capability of actually determining the right line of play given your opponents' abilities to stop you once you go all-in on a Time Spiral, much like an Infernal Tutor. Spiral Tide uses Force and Brainstorm as its primary sources of protection but is less vulnerable to disruption as ANT - aside from casting Ad Nauseam - requires Storm to ultimately be effective and holds back more often than Spiral Tide does when a "win-now" hand is not entirely available.

The cantrip/tutor count remains roughly the same, albeit Spiral Tide unanimously having more draw effects to dig deeper. This also inherently changes the mulligan dynamic of the deck, as ANT seems to fish for hands requiring cantrips or action much faster than Tide would yet Tide always seems to have a keepable hand if the land count is acceptable). Infernal Tutor as opposed to Merchant Scroll requires Lion's Eye Diamond or a mass-amount of tutors to be effective. Scroll replaces itself with something much more powerful, be it Force of Will or a cantrip to find what you need and shuffle your deck in the process (if a Brainstorm winds up failing or other cantrip yields one card of critical importance that the others become moot).

Also, I don't see how generating an obscene amount of mana and processing one of it to filter your potentially game-winning Meditate or search function is garbage here. The deck is hardly mana-intensive the first few turns, as a typical line of play involves Island and passing the turn, so I don't see how investing your first few turns into some efficient card-filtering can be a bad thing. I'm not advocating its inclusion outright, but the dynamics are certainly different between the two decks as far as search and draw functions are concerned. Top also gave people free cards after drawing the key component off Mystical Tutor (and shuffling the deck), so I don't see how you can compare the two except generating a list of which deck has more shuffle effects to provide more options and uses less mana earlier in the game.

Admiral_Arzar
04-19-2011, 10:07 AM
*Stuff*


I agree with Hollywood here. Top is bad IF your deck is too fast to make use of it (TES, maybe ANT, I remember seeing ANT lists with Top at some point). However, if your deck is going to be winning on turn 3-4, (various Doomsday decks, this deck) it makes perfect sense to play top. We have a million shuffle effects to ensure consistent card quality, and it's not like dropping the blue count for FOW matters in a mono-blue deck. My one concern about top is vulnerability to Pithing Needle, but we're already playing Candelabra, so that seems like a nonissue.

TheRedBaron
04-19-2011, 10:59 AM
agree. You need to start playing them out early though instead of the "standard" play of holding them.



The hatfield brothers do not bring them in vs goblins (atleast not on the draw) probably because 1 lackey hit could put things in that are out of range of repeal. You also cannot bring it in against decks sporting teeg. I guess this leaves Merefolk and random vial decks. Death and taxes seems like a miserable matchup?

It's quite possible that the Hatfields packed Repeal for an "insurance" policy. Maybe they realized that it wasn't as useful as they thought it would be at the beginning of the Day. Sideboards do tend to change and maybe we are overanalyzing it... "omgz! they run 3 repeal, i has to do it 2!!"

IMHO, Really and Truly the only things on the wishboard that shouldn't change are:

1 Meditate
1 Turnabout
1 Blue Sun's Zenith
1 Brainfreeze
1 Echoing Truth
1 Wipe Away


The other 9 slots I feel could be changed quite often. in the rest of the slots people tend to keep 3 counterspells, 6 more utility. I think cards like Rebuild are damn near always found on the board, cause they are best at hosing off decks... silver bullets if you will. All I'm saying is the Hatfields felt it was best to run 3x Repeal at the time. Next time you see their list it might have like 3 Impulse for all we know.

AriLax
04-19-2011, 11:06 AM
Right, but the hand-sculpting procedures associated with Ad Nauseam Tendrils are far different than that of Spiral Tide. Spiral Tide runs no hand-disruption, much less any real acceleration until nailing a High Tide, so you have no capability of actually determining the right line of play given your opponents' abilities to stop you once you go all-in on a Time Spiral, much like an Infernal Tutor. Spiral Tide uses Force and Brainstorm as its primary sources of protection but is less vulnerable to disruption as ANT - aside from casting Ad Nauseam - requires Storm to ultimately be effective and holds back more often than Spiral Tide does when a "win-now" hand is not entirely available.

The cantrip/tutor count remains roughly the same, albeit Spiral Tide unanimously having more draw effects to dig deeper. This also inherently changes the mulligan dynamic of the deck, as ANT seems to fish for hands requiring cantrips or action much faster than Tide would yet Tide always seems to have a keepable hand if the land count is acceptable). Infernal Tutor as opposed to Merchant Scroll requires Lion's Eye Diamond or a mass-amount of tutors to be effective. Scroll replaces itself with something much more powerful, be it Force of Will or a cantrip to find what you need and shuffle your deck in the process (if a Brainstorm winds up failing or other cantrip yields one card of critical importance that the others become moot).

Also, I don't see how generating an obscene amount of mana and processing one of it to filter your potentially game-winning Meditate or search function is garbage here. The deck is hardly mana-intensive the first few turns, as a typical line of play involves Island and passing the turn, so I don't see how investing your first few turns into some efficient card-filtering can be a bad thing. I'm not advocating its inclusion outright, but the dynamics are certainly different between the two decks as far as search and draw functions are concerned. Top also gave people free cards after drawing the key component off Mystical Tutor (and shuffling the deck), so I don't see how you can compare the two except generating a list of which deck has more shuffle effects to provide more options and uses less mana earlier in the game.

None of what you said makes any sense.

First off, High Tide has a win now: Time Spiral + High Tide. You are 95+% to win. The sculpting procedure is the same, only replace incidental Rituals with one High Tide and one Tutor with one Time Spiral.

Both decks don't go for it unless they have to or have it. That's why they are good, their hands actually get significantly better each turn they play. You sculpt the hand the exact same: get the combo, +Force/Duress if they are blue. The one difference is that High Tide doesn't always know, but you can just get the 2nd Force to be safe or similar.

High Tide and ANT have almost the same mull conditions: either the nut or cantrips. You are making a mistake here and comparing the wrong cards. Infernal is the Time Spiral, the Rituals are equivalent each game to the effort you put into getting a High Tide, and the cantrips are mirrors. If anything, the added cantrips/tutors is a reason to not Top as you have so many awesome things to do anyways.

Top does not filter a Meditate.

In goldfishing, I rarely pass on turn 1 with a mana up if I have a cantrip, which Top would replace. If anything, you are more mana intensive than ANT as you want to cast things like Merchant Scroll and Intuition and Cunning Wish before killing on ~4.

High Tide currently has a huge issue with faster combo decks or just being on the draw against a Steppe Lynx. The deck wants to be as consistently quick as possible. In matchups where you don't have to kill on 4 you are fine going long already and do not need to play Top to make your hand better on turn 13. The only possible use of Top is to allow long term dig against Hymn decks, but the better plan against those decks has almost always been to maximize your filtering early and kill them before they get to cast even more Hymns. You want to Scroll and Wish on 2/3 there, not waste your time messing around with Top letting them have more time to shred your hand.

And Admiral Arzar, ANT is fundamentally a turn 3 deck. Top still makes no sense in a deck there. In this deck, you have 6 mana over 3 turns at best to use before the critical turn. If you Top, you are limited to 1 more cantrip + a Scroll or Wish, not both Scroll or Wish.

The one advantage between the two decks is that being "down" a card to an on board Top is less relevant when your combo is 2 cards instead of your whole hand.

RexFTW
04-19-2011, 09:24 PM
Tested top. Its bad. Moving on.

ScatmanX
04-20-2011, 10:06 AM
So, where does Mental Misstep leaves us?

And what do you guys think about Gitazian Probe? I aways liked Peek...

RexFTW
04-20-2011, 10:11 AM
Mental Misstep {pu}
Instant (U)
Counter target spell with converted mana cost 1.


Owww. It leaves us playing this card I think. If not just to counter theirs. Is it good enough to main deck? who knows.

It is so good against so many cards we dont want to be seeing. Consider this:
spell pierce
spell snare
Sensei's Divining Top
Aether Vial
Goblin Lackey
Cursecatcher
thoughtseize
duress
pithing needle

Are all key cards against us. Either key disruption or key tempo!


Side note: I think it will see lots of play in decks that are scared of Aether Vial or Swords to Plowshares and not much else. (Examples: Reanimator, Counterbalance)

leegoo
04-20-2011, 10:15 AM
there are tons of cards that are just way better than mental misstep. It's, at best, jank.

What deck would run this? It's just BAD in aggro decks, worse than the discard spells in black/x decks, and way outclassed by other options blue has.

I'm just not sure why people are excited about this card.

The probe on the other hand is neat in some applications. Any deck that ran Street Wraith has a strict upgrade in this.

death
04-20-2011, 11:02 AM
Mental Misstep {pu}
Instant (U)
Counter target spell with converted mana cost 1.


Owww. It leaves us playing this card I think. If not just to counter theirs. Is it good enough to main deck? who knows.

No. The only card Misstep would be targetting are High Tides. And that is during the critical turn where Pact of Negation still trumps all other blue disruption. The cards you mentioned previously failed at beating this deck. There's no good reason to consider them as problematic now.

RexFTW
04-20-2011, 11:14 AM
I think what people are worried about is this coming from non blue decks when you dont have pacts in. However they could already be bringing mindbreak traps soooo.....

also, this deck certainly does NOT beat counterbalance, which plays several of the cards in the list.

I am not going to go into why other deccks would play it because that is quite off topic heh.

death
04-20-2011, 11:23 AM
I think what people are worried about is this coming from non blue decks when you dont have pacts in. However they could already be bringing mindbreak traps soooo.....

also, this deck certainly does NOT beat counterbalance, which plays several of the cards in the list.

The matchup is in their favor but this deck does NOT always lose to Counterbalance. There are tons of tournament reports that support this statement.

RexFTW
04-20-2011, 01:39 PM
I am merely suggesting that this card may improve our poor matchup against counterbalance. Perhaps we can take repeal out of the board, since nobody can figure out why its there anyway. I also see this as a card that counterbalance decks may run.

TheRedBaron
04-20-2011, 05:15 PM
MM vs. Spell Pierce


MM definately desevres a look, at least on the board. I garauntee that this card will possibly near replace Mindbreak Trap in non-blue decks, cause of its Utility. If it reaches that level we need to fight MM with MM... It'll be almost like Goyf wars all over again. If it sees this kind of play, it Hits Candle/Tide/Retraced Imge/Our Cantrips... I also believe it hits many, many things that we (as high tide players) need it for. Vial,Thoughtseize,surgical extraction,lackey,needle,Dark Rit,Exploration,Cursecatcher, Top, stuff in the Mirror, as well as aforementioned other MMs.

I think I will test it over spell peirce MD for a while. Exceptions: can't hit extirpate, but neither can pierce.

One of the more major detriments that pierce can hit, that MM does not is Hymn to Tourach... It's as if you concede the ability to counter things like this, but on the flip side, you can counter creatures easier.

IMO, and personally, I run the following counterspell config MD:


4 Force of Will
2-3 Spell Pierce


Essentially In my build, i prefer 6-7 counters main deck anyway. Therefore, I will try MM in the pirece slot, keeping Pacts on the board.

Rune
04-20-2011, 08:04 PM
I think what people are worried about is this coming from non blue decks when you dont have pacts in. However they could already be bringing mindbreak traps soooo.....

also, this deck certainly does NOT beat counterbalance, which plays several of the cards in the list.

I am not going to go into why other deccks would play it because that is quite off topic heh.


Sorry, but your post is full of vagueness. "this deck"? There are a lot of incarnations of Spiral Tide, and the matchup will vary a lot depending on the cards you run. A ST deck with Spell Pierces/Counterspells is in a lot better position to beat a Counterbalance player than a ST deck with just FoW+Wish as only outs to CB. Going off on a tangent here, but with just FoW+Wish you are also incredibly soft to combo decks that are faster, which is why I suspect that the Hatfields' list doesn't actually work outside the US. You also can't put all Counterbalance decks into the same basket, since they differ greatly. Overall, I'd say the CB matchups look like this for a ST deck with Pierce/Counerspell:


Supreme Blue -> unfavorable
Dreadstill-> unfavorable
Bant-> 55/45
Thopters/Walkers -> favorable


Bant CB, Dreadstill and Supreme Blue are busy getting bashed senseless by infinite amounts of Green Sun's Zenith decks at the moment, and so the only viable CB decks that exist currently are the creatureless ones that have more tools against the GSZ decks in form of 2WW bombs. Because of this they are noticably softer to combo, which is why I think that Spiral Tide generally beats Counterbalance (right now).



About Mental Misstep replacing Spell Pierce: Well, it doesn't answer Counterbalance or any other commonly played hate (Pyrostatic Pillar, GSZ->Teeg, Rule of Law, Choke, etc.). The discussion ends there, really. The card is way too narrow to be maindecked, but it seems decent as a Wish target since I can think of a few instances where I'd want to wish for it instead of a Pact.

Misstep definitely seems like a small indirect nerf to the deck, because blue aggro-control can now force you to have triple Pact/FoW (or a 2nd High Tide) for the combo turn more often.

ScatmanX
04-21-2011, 12:26 PM
Misstep definitely seems like a small indirect nerf to the deck, because blue aggro-control can now force you to have triple Pact/FoW (or a 2nd High Tide) for the combo turn more often.
I think if they are going to use the card, it would be in place of some other counter.
Like, Merfolk would probably -3 Spell Pierce, -1 something (creature or daze), so, though it does gets a little tuffer, I don't think the sky will fall. Maybe just a 4th Pact can resolve this.

AriLax
04-21-2011, 12:37 PM
Played this deck in an event finally. You are actually softer to permanent hate than Storm as you can't just randomly kill them before it hits. You are softer to counters than Storm (at least G1) as the info from Duress/Seize is a lot more powerful in terms of knowing when they are dead. You are softer to random stuff than Storm as you can actually lose the die roll and just die.

The only thing I was better against was Chalice of the Void as I could Scroll -> Wish -> Rebuild if I didn't already have it.

Can someone explain what I'm missing here?

Chikenbok
04-21-2011, 12:42 PM
Played this deck in an event finally. You are actually softer to permanent hate than Storm as you can't just randomly kill them before it hits. You are softer to counters than Storm (at least G1) as the info from Duress/Seize is a lot more powerful in terms of knowing when they are dead. You are softer to random stuff than Storm as you can actually lose the die roll and just die.

The only thing I was better against was Chalice of the Void as I could Scroll -> Wish -> Rebuild if I didn't already have it.

Can someone explain what I'm missing here?

Depending on the build determines what you're softer to than the rest. I happen to pack 9 pieces of maindeck counterspells including Force, Pierce, and Counterspell which makes things a lot more resiliant than the rest. It appears that the decks that were piloted to the top 8 recently (by the hatfield brothers) were developed for THIS (american) meta, and not a universal unknown. I've found that my build holds very well against almost any softer storm hate (which is dealt with preboard and post board with wishes), I have no problem with soft counters, and duress/sieze usually means my opponent is either playing midrange aggro/ctonrol or a faster storm, which yes, is hard to deal with sometimes.

AriLax
04-21-2011, 12:50 PM
Define soft hate. You are probably about the same as UB Storm against what I consider soft hate, which is Daze/Duress/Force aka things not specifically designed to beat only storm.

leegoo
04-21-2011, 03:02 PM
Can someone explain what I'm missing here?

What List?

AriLax
04-21-2011, 03:11 PM
What List?

74/75 of Jesse's from Atlanta. -1 board Repeal, +1 Mindbreak Trap.

Also goldfished the Retraced Image lists, felt like a bit of win more. Too hard to get the turn 2 kills, and if you were Spiralling on 3 it was prob enough anyways.

Mon,Goblin Chief
04-21-2011, 03:43 PM
Played this deck in an event finally. You are actually softer to permanent hate than Storm as you can't just randomly kill them before it hits. You are softer to counters than Storm (at least G1) as the info from Duress/Seize is a lot more powerful in terms of knowing when they are dead. You are softer to random stuff than Storm as you can actually lose the die roll and just die.

The only thing I was better against was Chalice of the Void as I could Scroll -> Wish -> Rebuild if I didn't already have it.

Can someone explain what I'm missing here?

First, this might be a playstyle thing, particularly because you're so familiar with Storm. While the deck looks a lot like ANT, it does play quite differently in certain matchups (aka the ones you aren't just trying to goldfish them in). You might have been too aggressively going for the win without even realizing it.

General things Tide is better against than ANT preboard:
Sphere-effects (I have won under double Thorn of Amethyst before - and I don't even use Candelabra)
Tempo decks (simply because you can't ever be Wastelanded and you don't care about their clock as much. In my experience using ANT winning with IGG is usually impossible against tempo and Tutor-chaining can be tight, especially against Bant-versions with War Monks and stuff).
arguably Gaddok Teeg et al (You can Wish for Snap or Force it, typical ANT lists (aka yours) don't have any out aside from randomly winning before it hits. In ANT you're just cold to it, in Tide they also need a relevant clock or they die to Wish)

As to being softer to countermagic, I think it's more of a wash. You have Merchant Scroll and Cunning Wish to have better access to disruption than ANT has, usually negating the information-disadvantage you have compared to Duress (you'll often win a turn later than necessary compared to Duress, but who cares what turn the opponent dies on?). Decks with real countermagic usually put you on such a slow clock that either direction is fine.

The rest is build-dependent. I agree with you that the Hatfield-build, while successful at the SCGs, doesn't maximize the potential you get from playing a mono-blue combo-deck as far as resilience is concerned. A build with Counterspells like mine on the other hand makes you better against CB, Tendrils and hatebears than ANT is, especially game 1, while still delivering crushing percentages against goldfish matchups/minor disruption. Basically once you run more Countermagic than just FoW, you get a deck with a somewhat worse matchup against fast aggro than ANT (at least preboard before Snap comes in) but better CB and combo-matchups, which is imo the real draw to play Tide over other, faster combo-decks and the reason I don't think the Permanent Waves build is ideal, despite the success the Hatfields have had with it.

TheRedBaron
04-21-2011, 04:26 PM
First, this might be a playstyle thing, particularly because you're so familiar with Storm. While the deck looks a lot like ANT, it does play quite differently in certain matchups (aka the ones you aren't just trying to goldfish them in). You might have been too aggressively going for the win without even realizing it.

General things Tide is better against than ANT preboard:
Sphere-effects (I have won under double Thorn of Amethyst before - and I don't even use Candelabra)
Tempo decks (simply because you can't ever be Wastelanded and you don't care about their clock as much. In my experience using ANT winning with IGG is usually impossible against tempo and Tutor-chaining can be tight, especially against Bant-versions with War Monks and stuff).
arguably Gaddok Teeg et al (You can Wish for Snap or Force it, typical ANT lists (aka yours) don't have any out aside from randomly winning before it hits. In ANT you're just cold to it, in Tide they also need a relevant clock or they die to Wish)

As to being softer to countermagic, I think it's more of a wash. You have Merchant Scroll and Cunning Wish to have better access to disruption than ANT has, usually negating the information-disadvantage you have compared to Duress (you'll often win a turn later than necessary compared to Duress, but who cares what turn the opponent dies on?). Decks with real countermagic usually put you on such a slow clock that either direction is fine.

The rest is build-dependent. I agree with you that the Hatfield-build, while successful at the SCGs, doesn't maximize the potential you get from playing a mono-blue combo-deck as far as resilience is concerned. A build with Counterspells like mine on the other hand makes you better against CB, Tendrils and hatebears than ANT is, especially game 1, while still delivering crushing percentages against goldfish matchups/minor disruption. Basically once you run more Countermagic than just FoW, you get a deck with a somewhat worse matchup against fast aggro than ANT (at least preboard before Snap comes in) but better CB and combo-matchups, which is imo the real draw to play Tide over other, faster combo-decks and the reason I don't think the Permanent Waves build is ideal, despite the success the Hatfields have had with it.

I agree with you. I feel Like less than 6 MD counters is not enough. What alot of people don't understand about the Hatfield lists, was that they were playing against a much larger Meta... Therefore they have things in their 75 that seem less than optimal (maybe explains the repeal Sb). I've played at larger tournaments before, and from my experience people play what they know that works. This is why you see mostly the Tier 1 decks like merfolk, gobs, and some form of Bant, Zoo for the most part. Going to 200 man tournament (esp. in US) you will simply not be in epic counterspell battles like you may in your local meta.

e_hawk77
04-22-2011, 01:40 AM
I believe this deck is better against counter decks than the ANT decks. You can fight with your own counterspells also the card filtering in this deck is amazing. Against non combo/ non sligh type deck you have so much time to sculpt the perfect hand to go off. It also has Cunning Wish which give you many answers vs permanent based hate or finds you another counterspell or combo piece. Ever since mystical tutor I have been wanting a deck that plays this many ways to find bullets and this deck does it so well.

About mental misstep. I have been playing with spell pierce in my deck for about a month now and most of the spells I spell pierce cost 1. I know there is counterbalance and hymm. Hymm can be fought with meditate most of the time. Counterbalance is a bad match up but can be fought with Force of Will or bounce. With so many decks that will be running mental misstep that just adds to the one mana hate that will be coming at this deck. While I know a lot of the other hate can be countered with spell pierce it can also be bounced with most of the board cards.

For the people playing 7 or 8 maindeck counters what did you cut?

ScatmanX
04-23-2011, 05:40 PM
For the people playing 7 or 8 maindeck counters what did you cut?
Nothing. Look the lists on the Primer.

RexFTW
04-24-2011, 10:31 PM
playing less counters makes you less likely to fizzle. It also lets you refuel faster when facing disruption. Just saying.

I played hatfield's list this weekend in a tourney.

Faced and beat canadian threshold packing maindeck 12 counters, stifle and boarding in REB. I just had so much gas he had to counter it every turn and I eventually got there.

Beat Imperial Painter, with 8 maindeck REB and boarded trinispheres.

Punted vs artifact jank playing thorn, lodestone, chalice, and various other hate. Should have won with better play. gogo rebuild!

candelabra + mind over matter = win games you should not

Enchantress has no chance. Win through 2 leyline of sanctity, sterling grove, runed halo and solitary.

3-1 in matches.

ScatmanX
04-24-2011, 11:20 PM
playing less counters makes you less likely to fizzle. It also lets you refuel faster when facing disruption. Just saying.
If you counter their disruption, you don't need to rebuild.
Also, the 7 counter version is not likely to fizzle, only turn 3, and every version has a good chance of fizzling T3.

Question: If that Enchantress player had 2 Sterling Groves, could you have won that match?

DuKeLiO
04-25-2011, 08:09 AM
I play Hibernation on my board.

RexFTW
04-25-2011, 09:45 AM
Question: If that Enchantress player had 2 Sterling Groves, could you have won that match?

Only with hibernation from the board or a force of will.


If you counter their disruption, you don't need to rebuild.

this slows your development to keep mana open for disruption that may or may not be coming. (in the case of discard or permanents) or makes you have more islands out when you start to combo to afford the mana to play the counters.

Mon,Goblin Chief
04-25-2011, 10:57 AM
this slows your development to keep mana open for disruption that may or may not be coming. (in the case of discard or permanents) or makes you have more islands out when you start to combo to afford the mana to play the counters.

Slowing down is irrelevant against those decks where keeping up Counterspell is important as they usually don't have a (relevant) clock and you only care about a very few of their cards. You're far better of stopping one of the ~8 relevant spells they might play early and dig afterwards (once you have three lands you get to dig and counter anyway) than to hope eot Meditate gets you there (especially against permanent-based hate) or just try to race their disruption (which Tide isn't very good at, being at heart a turn 3-4 deck).
As for needing more Islands when you go off to be able to keep Counterspell open - sure, that's true. With a different build you simply wouldn't have a way to punch through at that point (as they simply run less disruption), which seems infinitely worse, and against decks that tend to counter back winning late with a ton of lands is much safer than trying to go off early anyway.

Against the decks that you want to be fast against, ignore having Counterspell in hand or simply trade your second turn for theirs, both work perfectly fine.

TheRedBaron
04-25-2011, 11:07 AM
Ugh... So I was so close to being undefeated until Top 8. My play started to deteriorate after about my 3rd match. Combination of sloppy play on my part and bad sideboarding was the culprit. But otherwise I love this deck.

So here is my Report from the weekend:

Match 1: W 2-0 vs. Dredge
- Game 1: W; FoWed his Tribe and won on T3.
-Game 2: W; Sided in 1 echoing truth; pierced his beakthrough and won on T3 again.

Match 2: W 2-0 vs. Dragon Stompy
-Game 1: W; only threat online was a phyrexian revoker set to my Candle. Wished for Snap at his T3 eot to easy T4 win.
-Game 2: W; Stompy player was on a fast break, Turn 1 unmorped Gathan Raiders AND Jitte into Hellbent but me on 3 turn clock; was at 6 life and won.

this is where i began to play kind of badly; plagued by misplays and wishing for wrong things, as well as lack of judgement. Guess I was too cocky having stomped all my opponents so far.

Match 3: L 1-2 vs Goblins
Game 1: L; Kept slow hand and basically fizzled in the face of Vials and Piledrivers.
Game 2: W; Mind Over Matter + 2 candles, then cantripping into 2 High Tides help me explode on turn 3.
Game 3: L; Thorn of Amethyst on his T2 slowed me down alot and never even saw a wish.

Here is when I was tired (as i been up for 16 hours at this point), my judgement was flawed and didn't even mulligan when I should have all 3 games.

Match 4: L 1-2 vs. Pact SI
Game 1: L; I kept opening 7 w/o FoW/Pierce, He had Dark Rit x3, Land Grant into Belcher on his T2.
Game 2: W; again I kept no openning countermagic, he goes off with belcher on his T1, luckily the first card off the Top was Bayou (LOLz)
Game 3: My hand was really strong for the win. I was definately going to win on T3, but again foolishly I thought "well there is no way he'll get a fast break again..." and lacked countermagic. He proceeded to Tendrils on T2.

Top 8: L 0-2 vs. Bant Excalibur
Game 1: L; Here I was nervous and fizzled + bad luck. I tried to win on turn 3 when realistically I could have waited until T5-T6. Bant was off to a slow start, and he was bluffing countermagic. He had nothing to stop me actually... But I went off waaay to early, I also Meditated into 4 lands... that was my last gasp.
Game 2: L; I started to go off on my T3, again with Strong hand... however the Bant player Boarded in 3x Mindbreak Trap and 3x Spell Pierce; and had 2 of each in openning hand :mad: .... lol, that was the nail in the coffin. He had to use all of it to basically stop my High Tide and one of my counters. He then got a Sword of Feast and Famine online equiped to a Goyf.


All in all, I should have been at least 3-1, but I blew it on several occasions. From this experience I think I want to go back to 2 Mind Over Matter Maindeck, as Well as an Intuition Sideboard.

rgripp
04-25-2011, 11:37 AM
I played Adam Barnellos' version (while I do agree the version with Candelabra is better, I can't afford a set right now) of this deck in a 40 player tournament, went undefeated til we splitted the Top 2. My opinions on this:

I don't see the deck needing more counters. People in the topic have been advocating the usefulness of more disruption against slower decks, and honestly, the only time I needed more counters in my deck was on fighting counter wars to resolve a High Tide, and sometimes, it's probably better to pack extra draw or extra tutors in the deck, let them counter the High Tide, tutor for one and go off next turn instead. Against faster decks, while more counters could afford more turns, more business often guarantees you're going to go off on turn 4, and enable some turn 3 wins.

Against problem permanents, you can just EoT Wish for a bounce and combo off next turn

TheRedBaron
04-25-2011, 12:56 PM
I played Adam Barnellos' version (while I do agree the version with Candelabra is better, I can't afford a set right now) of this deck in a 40 player tournament, went undefeated til we splitted the Top 2. My opinions on this:

I don't see the deck needing more counters. People in the topic have been advocating the usefulness of more disruption against slower decks, and honestly, the only time I needed more counters in my deck was on fighting counter wars to resolve a High Tide, and sometimes, it's probably better to pack extra draw or extra tutors in the deck, let them counter the High Tide, tutor for one and go off next turn instead. Against faster decks, while more counters could afford more turns, more business often guarantees you're going to go off on turn 4, and enable some turn 3 wins.

Against problem permanents, you can just EoT Wish for a bounce and combo off next turn

I am starting to see this as a valid statement. Hatfields only run 4 MD countermagic, and that one list at Boston's SCG that made top 16 followed the same logic. I'm thinking about more Preordain, less pierce in my build. Main Deck.


Note: I have also been running 1 Trickbind as a wish target, for utility vs. Storm, Solidarity.

lebarion
04-25-2011, 03:56 PM
Hi guys,
I'm testing Mon's list and finding it to be great against a huge variety of decks. However, I'm facing big problems against Merfolks.
Basically they put me on a clock of more or less 5 turns, and I usually don't have enough mana to play around (for example) a Cursecatcher, a Daze/Spell Pierce and a FoW. Dazes and FoWs alone are not that hard, but Cursecatcher is a bitch.
Am I doing anything wrong, is this match really hard, or am I being unlucky? Is there any tricky/tip I should know against fish?
Thanks!
Leandro.

Irenicus
04-25-2011, 04:20 PM
I played Adam Barnellos' version (while I do agree the version with Candelabra is better, I can't afford a set right now) of this deck in a 40 player tournament, went undefeated til we splitted the Top 2. My opinions on this:

I don't see the deck needing more counters. People in the topic have been advocating the usefulness of more disruption against slower decks, and honestly, the only time I needed more counters in my deck was on fighting counter wars to resolve a High Tide, and sometimes, it's probably better to pack extra draw or extra tutors in the deck, let them counter the High Tide, tutor for one and go off next turn instead. Against faster decks, while more counters could afford more turns, more business often guarantees you're going to go off on turn 4, and enable some turn 3 wins.

Against problem permanents, you can just EoT Wish for a bounce and combo off next turn

I have started playing Spiral Tide by copying the Hatfield list. But I wanted more counters because I think that CB and Hymn decks are some of the better decks vs. Spiral Tide. You said that by adding counterspells you reduce the chance to go off turn 3 or 4. I have cut 2 Meditate, 1 Wish and the MoM for 4 Spell Pierces and this doesn't really reduce my chances at having High Tide + Time Spiral (+ Untap effect) on turn 3/4. But it helps a lot vs. Hymns and CBs, particular on the draw. And besides that it helps the storm combo matchup which isn't as good as some of you might think. But in my opinion it all depends on your personal play-style and to some effect on your budget (Candelabra). So far I really like the deck and won both tournaments in which I played it (smaller tournaments, only 4 rounds each).

rgripp
04-25-2011, 06:46 PM
Against most decks packing Hymns, Meditate works great. You can more often than not afford to give them an extra turn and just overdraw their discard spells.

I can see myself cutting a wish and the single Intuition from the deck for two extra counters, but I wouldn't touch the other cards.

I didn't use to play a MoM because I thought it would be too weak without Candelabras, but turns out having a singleton in the deck makes it just that easier to kill with a Zenith. While it's definitely worse than with Candelabras, turning extra lands in your hand into lots of mana is really great in drawing your deck and then making them draw theirs.

RexFTW
04-25-2011, 09:06 PM
Hi guys,
I'm testing Mon's list and finding it to be great against a huge variety of decks. However, I'm facing big problems against Merfolks.
Basically they put me on a clock of more or less 5 turns, and I usually don't have enough mana to play around (for example) a Cursecatcher, a Daze/Spell Pierce and a FoW. Dazes and FoWs alone are not that hard, but Cursecatcher is a bitch.
Am I doing anything wrong, is this match really hard, or am I being unlucky? Is there any tricky/tip I should know against fish?
Thanks!
Leandro.

I would recommend waiting till EOT before you want to go off, then bounce cursecathcer. You will have to side in bounce spells not wish for them. Also try to bounce the turn 1 vial. This really slows them down.

DuKeLiO
04-26-2011, 04:43 AM
@lebarion
I also play a version with 4 Counterspell, but with Candelabras. I think the matchup is in our favour, beacuse Merfolks counterspells there are not so good against us, aside of Force of Will, and they haven't manipulation to find it. It is probable that you will have to face up only against one Force of Will, and some Daze/Pierces. Also if your oponent don't play Pierces (like the one that won SCG last weekend) it will be a very easy matchup. On the other side, the most hard games will be the ones with vial. If you can, counter it, he will be slower, and you will have plenty of time to sculpt a very good hand.

Moosedog
04-26-2011, 09:16 AM
I run the Candelabras but i also cut the MoM. just testing the deck without it. i was drawing it to often before comboing unfortunately. Currently im testing a Capsize in the board. it produces infinite mana and storm if our islands can produce enough with each tap in addition to a candelabra. at this point im not sure if its cute or effective. has anyone else tested this? also if you already wished for your meditate and have no other way on your board to draw cards you can produce alot of mana and bounce your opponent entire board.

TheRedBaron
04-26-2011, 11:07 AM
I run the Candelabras but i also cut the MoM. just testing the deck without it. i was drawing it to often before comboing unfortunately. Currently im testing a Capsize in the board. it produces infinite mana and storm if our islands can produce enough with each tap in addition to a candelabra. at this point im not sure if its cute or effective. has anyone else tested this? also if you already wished for your meditate and have no other way on your board to draw cards you can produce alot of mana and bounce your opponent entire board.

I've got to say I haven't tried capsize... but I do know that I have never lost when I successfully resolve MoM. I only run 1, but I'm thinking 2 could work.

Moosedog
04-26-2011, 11:39 AM
I will agree that when you get to the point where you can play MoM its extreamly powerful. My only issue with it was drawing it before playing HT/comboing off. I was thinking if your already comboing off why not use a SB tech you can wish for to fill that same purpose. Again in goldfishing it has seemed effective but in tournament play things could be different. If someone has the time to paytest it thoroughly i would appreciate it. I unfortunatly will not have much free time for the next month.

DuKeLiO
04-26-2011, 11:52 AM
In my first builds I run MoM along with 4 Candelabras. The main issue is that you can combo out only with Turnabout, and only play Candelabra for speed. Wiith it you can goldfish on turn 3 a lot of times, but not only with Turnabouts. I have found that I rarely need more untap effects than six (and Time Spiral). I tested MoM and I found it completly overkill, it only saves me one game: My opponent Extirpated my High Tides, and I could develop my mana base, drop a MoM and combo with multiples Strokes, Spirals and Turnabouts (this were before BSZ were printed obviously)
I also tested Capsize on my firsts build. I liked it. It saved my some games where I Spiraled into nothing, only a Capsize or a Scroll and I bounced all his permanents. Right now I play more cantrips, and I think I don't need have infinite mana no more.

RexFTW
04-26-2011, 12:12 PM
The benefit of playing Mind over Matter is that it essentially makes all of your meditates into huge mana generators and can make cunning wish for meditate profitable as well - even if you are only untapping lands.

It is also essentially a 5th (albiet slightly worse) Time spiral. If you play meditate + MoM you normally just win immediately, similar to playing time spiral.

It is slightly slower and should be sided out vs goldfish decks and discard decks.

BUT, I find the greatest benefit is reducing the amount of clock time required to combo - making the deck fast enough to rarely draw. If you can show your opponent that each card you discard = 15 mana and you have blue suns zenith that speeds up the process greatly against emrakul decks.

TheRedBaron
04-26-2011, 12:17 PM
I will agree that when you get to the point where you can play MoM its extreamly powerful. My only issue with it was drawing it before playing HT/comboing off. I was thinking if your already comboing off why not use a SB tech you can wish for to fill that same purpose. Again in goldfishing it has seemed effective but in tournament play things could be different. If someone has the time to paytest it thoroughly i would appreciate it. I unfortunatly will not have much free time for the next month.

Well... The good thing about MoM, is that it is your 5th Time Spiral Kind of. You can cast it for 6 instead of spiral, and draw into everything you need w/ Meditates. Also, Sometimes you used 1 wish already and a scroll + MoM could potetntially allow you to win through heavy disruption. IMO i don't think 1-2 in the build is "overkill", but sometimes it's stronger than Time Spiral even. And well no, you wouldn't want 3 MD.

EDIT
My thoughts exactly Rex. My opponents scoop most of the time after I win the counter battle to get my MoM to stick. I think it's exactly what the deck needs as a back up strategy if someone say, extirpates your High Tides... it is essentially: "Pay 0: untab Target Island that generates 1-2 mana" and could still allow you the storm route to victory. Then all you have to do is move 1x high tide to the board game 2 vs. extirpate.

RexFTW
04-26-2011, 12:24 PM
Even with MOM, I think atleast 1 High Tide is needed unless you just draw sick amounts of spirals. LOL.

TheRedBaron
04-26-2011, 12:42 PM
Even with MOM, I think atleast 1 High Tide is needed unless you just draw sick amounts of spirals. LOL.

Yeah, obviously the best thing to do when someone casts a thoughtseize/discard effect is counter it or Brainstorm for a FoW/hide High Tide on Top lol... Otherwise cast hightide and Hopefully have a candle in play/turnabout to generate enough mana all in response to cast a MoM/Spiral after the thoughtseize resolves.

Let's face it, successful turn 1 dark rit into HYMN/Thoughtseize > Extirpate High Tide is probably the sickest play vs. us... Thankfully Extirpate is Limited to SideBoards for MBC type decks lol... most of the time. Most.

RexFTW
04-26-2011, 02:08 PM
Has anyone considered back to basics as sideboard tech vs counterbalance? Limiting their mana severely limits the effectiveness of their combo.

Mon,Goblin Chief
04-26-2011, 03:00 PM
Hi guys,
I'm testing Mon's list and finding it to be great against a huge variety of decks. However, I'm facing big problems against Merfolks.
Basically they put me on a clock of more or less 5 turns, and I usually don't have enough mana to play around (for example) a Cursecatcher, a Daze/Spell Pierce and a FoW. Dazes and FoWs alone are not that hard, but Cursecatcher is a bitch.
Am I doing anything wrong, is this match really hard, or am I being unlucky? Is there any tricky/tip I should know against fish?
Thanks!
Leandro.

Fish can be a bitch, depending on how aggressive their draw is and how many Pierces they run. Are you using my latest build (18 lands, 3 Turnabout MD, 2 Wish) or the older one with 19 lands 4 Turnabout? The older one finds lands more easily (one more makes quite a difference with all the cantrips) and is therefore slightly better against Fish. Fish is also the reason you want the MD PoN (and more of them in the board), as it makes it much easier to set up double counter for your combo-turn (you'll have to counter Daze quite often when they have Cursecatcher, meaning you need a second counter for their FoW).
How do you sideboard against them?

@Rex: B2B doesn't really do enough vs CB. Sure, it limits their available mana but they will be able to get two basics into play thanks to Fetches usually, which is enough to lock you out with CB. The whole matchup revolves around keeping CB on the table/getting rid of it asap (Grip) and B2B won't help you do that against a competent player (who plays his own deck like a CB combo-deck and doesn't tap out for random stuff to get blown out by B2B or you winning afterwards). I can see it working fine against counterlight Bant-builds with a lot of creatures, though Hierarch weakens it significantly there. The best way to beat CB is to play single Tropical and have acccess to Krosan Grip in multiples - that and as much countermagic as you can squeeze in.

rgripp
04-26-2011, 05:04 PM
Or keep it monoU and play Wipe Away, that would work exactly as Grip on this deck. EOT Wipe Away, go off on the next turn.

RexFTW
04-26-2011, 07:25 PM
This may be a crazy thought but, I think the printing of mental misstep may actually help this deck. If it replaces daze and spell pierce then we will be able to resolve our powerful draw spells and tutors more easily! call me crazy....

Mon,Goblin Chief
04-26-2011, 09:29 PM
Or keep it monoU and play Wipe Away, that would work exactly as Grip on this deck. EOT Wipe Away, go off on the next turn.

Totally wrong, for two reasons. First Wipe Away loses to a three being on top (any competent opponent will keep a three floating and have it on top at all times other than a) countering something b) during upkeep before drawing. More importantly, though, the reason you lose to Counterbalance isn't really that you can't go off any more (though that factors into it) but much rather that it shuts off all the cantrips and most of the time even Merchant Scroll, which means you suddenly can't compete with SDT cardselection any more. That's why you want Grip: to get rid of CB to unlock your card quality mechanisms.

rgripp
04-26-2011, 11:33 PM
I'm curious to know how Krosan Grip doesn't lose to CB just as well.

ScatmanX
04-26-2011, 11:53 PM
I'm curious to know how Krosan Grip doesn't lose to CB just as well.
You don't use Grip only the turn before you combo. You can use it turn 3, and continue to cantrip and sculpt your hand for the combo turn.

With Wipe Away, you get 0 manipulation before you bounce CB, and after you do, you have to go off right away.

That's why Grip is way better.

DuKeLiO
04-27-2011, 07:15 AM
EDIT
My thoughts exactly Rex. My opponents scoop most of the time after I win the counter battle to get my MoM to stick. I think it's exactly what the deck needs as a back up strategy if someone say, extirpates your High Tides... it is essentially: "Pay 0: untab Target Island that generates 1-2 mana" and could still allow you the storm route to victory. Then all you have to do is move 1x high tide to the board game 2 vs. extirpate.

You can do it also without MoM. You put a High Tide on your sideboard, search a Cunning, go Cunning->High Tide, and do it again ASAP after Time Spiral but with a Merchant Scroll instead of Cunning Wish. You usually will be capable of comboing with two or three manas for each Island. This is posible also beacuse the discar+Extirpate decks usually allow you to take your time for comboing.




BUT, I find the greatest benefit is reducing the amount of clock time required to combo - making the deck fast enough to rarely draw. If you can show your opponent that each card you discard = 15 mana and you have blue suns zenith that speeds up the process greatly against emrakul decks.
I have played 64 tournament rounds with the deck and only drawed one, and really didn't matter the time I wasted comboing.
If you have problems with the time, it is not for the deck, maybe you have to play quicker. It is really easy comboing out when you have played your first Spiral. It is very simple: if you have enough untap effects and high tides for a Blue Sun's Zenith for six or more leaving six mana, do it. All your cantrips and merchants serves for achieving this meta. The decisions about this Brainstorms, Preordains and Ponders are very easy. The real hard decisions are BEFORE comboing, when you have to decide if keep force, cantrips, scroll or lands with your cantrips, and they are largely what decides your success with the deck.

Mon,Goblin Chief
04-27-2011, 07:16 AM
@rgripp: What ScatmanX said. Also, check my post as to when the opponent won't have a three on top and you'll get a good idea why Gripping a CB is about a million times better than bouncing it (hint: it has to do with when his mainphase takes place).

TheRedBaron
04-27-2011, 10:40 AM
This may be a crazy thought but, I think the printing of mental misstep may actually help this deck. If it replaces daze and spell pierce then we will be able to resolve our powerful draw spells and tutors more easily! call me crazy....

Actually, I think I will test with 3/3 split Force and MM main deck. Sometimes force hurts us. 3 MM would allow us to be flexible in countering early drops without the card disadvantage, allowing for Force to still be available to counter ad nauseam/charbelcher/Hymn if needed.



You can do it also without MoM. You put a High Tide on your sideboard, search a Cunning, go Cunning->High Tide, and do it again ASAP after Time Spiral but with a Merchant Scroll instead of Cunning Wish. You usually will be capable of comboing with two or three manas for each Island. This is posible also beacuse the discar+Extirpate decks usually allow you to take your time for comboing.




Yeah. I was just saying that there is a guy in my meta that packs extirpate MAIN DECK lol... Just saying that a MoM could answer the unexpected in some cases.

DuKeLiO
04-28-2011, 06:56 AM
I don't think you can win against these kind of deck with High Tide extirpated with MoM. Probably is a mono black deck with land destroyers like Sinkhole, and a lot of hand disruptors like Hipnotic Specter, Sinkhole and Thoughsezie. I think your better chance is hide High Tide with brainstorm and keeping it there. Also it is easy avoid that with a counterspell heavy version, beacuse if you could save the Tides on the firsts turn, you will protect them from discard with counterspell.
So I like better the counterspell versions, beacuse the deck are more resilient to hate.

egosum
05-02-2011, 07:14 AM
Hi there, long time since I don't make long posts here...

Is there anyone testing Spiral Tide post NPH seriously? We all know that MM is going to be everywhere, at least for the next 2 months I guess, and this may hurt the deck a bit. I' ve been testing it against Tempo on Steroids (this is with MM) and what happend is that what used to be a "bye" now is a serious contendant. This made me reconsider the whole list, not just tune it a bit. I'm not sure, by now, how an optimal list will look like, but what I know is that, if we want to keep the list in the gauntlet, we have to think a little bit wider, this is sacrificing some Staple-thoughts we have about the deck. For instance I' ve been testing this list, which seems that fights better than my older list in actual enviroment:

Main deck 60:

4x Brainstorm
4x Ponder
3x Preordain
3x Gitaxian Probe

4x Force of Will
3x Mental Misstep

4x Merchant Scroll
4x Turnabout
4x Time Spiral
4x High Tide
3x Meditate

1x Brain Freeze
1x Blue Sun's Zenith

12x Island
6x "Blue Fetch" (2+2+1+1)

Sideboard

3x Pact of Negation
3x Relic of Progenitus
2x Krosan Grip
2x Rebuild
2x Snap
1x Echoing Truth
1x Wipe Away
1x Tropical Island

Let's explian the differences with my original Build.

This is what we lose:

-Cunning Wish: cunning wish is a super card, and this is the main reason why I said thinking in the deck in a different way. It seems like a staple, and it's been like that until now. My greatest concern about it is the slow timing it has. After testing against TA on Steroids I founbd myself wanting to have lots of tools just to break their counterwall on time and having wish to get a single answer was not enough. Basically what I did is add 3x Meditate. Mental Misstep doesn't improve Tempo deck's clock so Meditating the turn before going off can be a nice approach so we can overdraw the resources to handle their countermagic (at least the countermagic they have sculped during this first turns). This will also be useful during the Goldfish so we can have better access to cards than our opponent.

-Retraced Image: Adding the 4th Turnabout to the maindeck give us 8 untap effects and with some mental misstep in the deck we can survive easier to an aggro start. The idea is that we can have an extra turn or so due to MM so the acceleration seems less relevant, and dropping extra lands is something very nice but, once again, with this tempo tool we will have like an extra turn or two for setting up.

-Pact of Negation Main deck: I'll keep it but in the board. IT's still the best weapon against the blue decks we have (it stops MM perfectly), but MM is just more versatile for the main deck.

On Mental misstep:

As said above, this card help us to live longer, and hence we 'll have longer setup (land drops). Gives Protectins against Discard and opponent's MM. I think is worth testing it.

The sideboard:

With PoN in the board I' m afraid we have no extra room for countermagics (I can't Imagine a match where I want to add 6 or more Coutnerspells with a combo deck), so Spell Pierce is gone. This is why I added the Green Splash, just to beat CB-Top Decks, but mantaining 1x Wipe Away as Scroll Target.

Relic is there to fight Dredge and Reanimator (Iona beats us hard, maybe not that hard with Mental Misstep by our Side, but still is GG if she hits the table). Relics can give us the time we need while not losing card and may help to filter cards so we can Time Spiral with Higher card quality.

Well, this is like phase 1 of my testing so any thought will truly help.

Greetings,

Iñaki.-

P.S. for all those who cannot live without Candelabra. If Candelabra had some weaknesses, now tht thing becomes worse just bacause MM can hit it too, and this means more attack points for our opponent, minimizing this is always good, specially in a very tight deck, like the Storm combo decks are. Just my 2 cts.

death
05-02-2011, 09:58 AM
Your list is very reliant on M-Scroll for untapping and finding answers. Without Cunning Wish, the deck seems pretty weak because it loses card selection and now it will have to depend mainly on good draws. You have too few untappers which can hinder combo development. Cunning Wish is M-Scroll's partner at going for High Tide/Turnabout for mana, Pact for protection, Zenith/Meditate for CA, or Wipe Away/Snap etc for solution. Without C-Wish, M-Scroll is left alone with the burden, making the deck easier to disrupt, like Infernal Tutor in ANT/TES.

Also, Mental Misstep against Mental Misstep, Duress, Thoughtseize, IoK, Lackey, Vial seems ok. But how about Hymn and GSZ in particular. I'm inclined to think that no good player will start the first game with Gaddock Teeg in the sideboard now. Without bounce in the maindeck, Force, no C-Wish, it's probably going to be a scoop.

RexFTW
05-02-2011, 09:59 AM
Inaki, I dont think Gitaxian Probe is worth it. I think preordain is going to be much better at the same function but I have not tested it. Those 3 slots may also be better as cunning wish, as cunning wish for pact of negation is a strong play against mental misstep.

I feel like the addition of misstep to blue decks may replace spell pierce and will make cards like meditate and intuition much better against those decks.

Instead of playing misstep yourself try playing more of the non 1 mana spells!

Irenicus
05-02-2011, 10:17 AM
In general:

Last weekend I have won another tournament, this time five rounds. I made some small changes to my recent list and was quite happy with it during the tournament. But the thing is that whatever list you are playing, there are a lot of tight matchups and Spiral Tide doesn’t let you make many mistakes (read: almost none) before going off with Time Spiral. Last tournament I had only one easy matchup and the other four were 2-1 wins and took a lot of time and thinking. I have yet to lose a match with Time Spiral and just say this to show you how powerful the deck is. And that’s the reason why I believe that this deck will survive Mental Misstep.

Mental Misstep:

We all know that going off without High Tide isn’t that easy or common. Playing around Mental Misstep can’t be done that efficiently. I think that you have to play MM yourself or some kind of protection vs. MM in your 75. The question is whether you need answers to it in the maindeck. At the moment I am thinking about playing 3-4 MM in my SB. To make room for that I cut some of the wish-targets. But this leads to the question whether Cunning Wish is really needed. As Iñaki said above it’s not impossible to play a list without it and while developing a list, which answers the metagame well enough, it is import to keep your minds open.

Cunning Wish:

I nearly played a list without Cunning Wish last weekend. But in my opinion you have to play some maindecked bounce-spells in exchange then. But why should you play a bounce-spell or two over the more flexible Cunning Wish(es)? I think that the cost of playing Cunning Wish is low enough to keep playing them. But I think that cutting some of the wish-targets might be right. Furthermore I like playing “only” two Cunning Wishes. As Iñaki stated it’s usually the weakest pre combo card. This leads me to some thoughts about going off and fizzling.

Playing protection maindeck and thread density:

Some of you said that playing with more protection spells other than FoW decreases the chance to win post Time Spiral. And in a vacuum you are right. But the additional protection also leads to an additional land drop most of the time which makes winning much easier. At the moment my list has 21 business-spells after the 1st Time Spiral (12 Cantrips, 3 Time Spiral, 2 Cunning Wish, 4 Merchant Scroll). This leads to a 97,3 % chance to have a least one of them after the 1st Time Spiral. Granted, by playing 3 more business-spells you increase the chance to 98,7 % but I think that every chance above 95 % should be enough.

Number of fetchlands:

I have started with playing only four fetchlands and upped them to six. I am still not sure what the “right” number is. I often win with less than 5 life and therefore every lifepoint counts. The thing is that due to Time Spiral you don’t have any positive effect by playing fetchlands other than a shuffle-effect for Brainstorm. I just wanted to state that in my opinion you don’t have to play 8-9 fetchlands but that’s not that important anyway.

Candelabra:

I know that Candelabras are expensive and I don’t blame anyone for not spending a lot of money for them. But playing with Candelabras changes the way you can play and win with Spiral Tide. First off all winning with Blue Sun’s Zenith gets a lot easier (even without Mind over Matter) and second of all it makes your bouncespells usable during the combo post board. It gets hit by Mental Misstep but in my opinion it’s the best untap-effect after Turnabout and Spiral and it lets you win post Spiral with a smaller number of Spiral in total.Because I win most my games by playing a giant Zenith on my opponent I have cut the Brain Freeze from my SB.

My current post NPH list:

12 Island
6 Fechtlands
4 Preordain
4 Ponder
4 Brainstorm
4 Merchant Scroll
4 Force of Will
4 Spell Pierce
4 HighTide
4 Time Spiral
3 Turnabout
3 Candelabra of Tawnos
2 Cunning Wish
1 Blue Sun’s Zenith
1 Intuition
SB:
1 Turnabout
1 Blue Sun’s Zenith
2 Echoing Truth
2 Rebuilt
2 Wipe Away
3-4 Pact of Negation
3-4 Mental Misstep

Closing

As you can see by looking a my post-count I normally don't write that much. But I really enjoy playing the deck and want to share my thoughts about it I don't know how much a discussion about the deck helps each one of us, because most of us are playing their "own" lists, but at least all of us get some suggestions and opinions from this thread. So keep it coming! :wink:

Thank you very much for reading this post and I hope that my "I haven't lost a match with Spiral Tide" didn't come across the wrong way!

Felix

egosum
05-02-2011, 11:08 AM
Maybe you are right on Probe. Nevertheless I think is worth testing. It helps to play arond MM a lot, making you to find answers only if you need them.

Sorry for the short post, I'll give longer answer to everyone else when have time.

Greetings,

Iñaki.-