Help me pick a Combo deck

[xfxf]

I am trying to limit my budget to a single new deck this year and I know I want to play some combo. I am indecisive about my options and looking for opinions/encouragement. With the same budget (considering my card pool) my current options are Spiral Tide (candles), Storm and Sneak&Show.

I've been playing candle-less Spiral Tide for a year and playing Candelabra version in non-sanctioned events. I already know the deck and like it very much. It is the least powerful option but it's the one I know how to play best. I don't like some of the deck's matchups like being raced by random aggro decks (Affinity, Infect Stompy), being raced by tribal decks and having an incredibly hard time against some low profile decks like MUD and Pox. Also the candles are a 600$ investment for a single deck so even though this the one I'm most familiar with I couldn't pull the trigger on it yet.

Sneak&Show and variants are the most powerful option currently imo. The benefits are you can play multiple decks by getting a playset of S&T (Omniscience, Reanimator etc.) and you don't lose to random low profile decks. You get to do some very powerful stuff and it doesn't take too much effort to play the deck good. The downsides are it's a dumb deck which doesn't provide much room improvement in the long run. It doesn't have much depth and could be boring to play with on a weekly basis.

Storm variants are the ones I'm least familiar with. By getting a set of LEDs I can play multiple variants of Storm depending on the meta changes and even if I stick with a single one it provides more depth and complexity over a long period compared to S&T decks. I think they are stronger than High Tide, more susceptible to hate than Sneak&Show. They are also harder to play than High Tide but more fun to play than Sneak&Show. I just can't figure out if I will enjoy playing against counters round after round with a non-FoW combo deck.

If you had 600$ to spend on one of those as a Spike-Johnny which route would you go :)?

[Megadeus]

ANT. LEDs are staples in many combo decks, you have durress effects for FOW decks, and multiple lines of play make for different games.

[entity]

Doomsday, for the reasons stated above plus additional versatility.
In any case, DDFT/ANT/TES are all quite close to each other, so it's not too difficult to finish others if you have finished at least one of them.

[Sloshthedark]

UBx Storm, not close...

[Griselpuff]

I'd say bite the bullet and buy 4 Candlesticks. High Tide has had the best finishes by far out of any other deck since RTR was released. Don't go for Show and Tell; that card is seeing a lot of hate and it's a drag fighting through it. High Tide sees hate too, but it has a good manabase and many versatile wish answers.

[joemauer]

Personally I would pick the Storm combo route because that is what I enjoy playing.

I find Show and Tell tell decks to be absolute snore fests.
And High Tide decks are way too much repetitive work: keep track of mana, keep track of storm count, keep track of number of cards in each player's hand, cast stuff and untap lands, then cast some more stuff and untap some more lands.
However if you enjoy High Tide and know how to play it then you probably should stick with it. It is a pretty favorable time to play it with Show and Tell decks and Reanimator decks on the decline.

But if you want versatility getting LEDs is a good idea. Each Storm deck has it's own strong and weak matches and one deck can be a better choice in any given meta. That being said, if it isn't an optimal time to play one storm deck then it is generally not a optimal time to play the others either. For instance, Bug is making a come back and none of the storm decks(or high tide for that matter) want to play against a deck with hymns, FoWs, and a quick clock.

[AngryTroll]

It's worth remembering that the learning curve on all of the Tendrils decks is brutal. I like that there are several different Tendrils lists you can build once you have the core cards, but again, each one of them will have its own learning curve to climb before you play it proficiently.

It sounds like you're already comfortable playing High Tide, which means that you'll do better with that deck much faster than you will with any of the Tendrils lists.

I don't know if it's even worth considering, but Show and Tell and LED are both mentioned as banning candidates somewhat regularly, and Candelabras are pretty much off of the banning radar.

[troopatroop]

Ad Nauseam really isn't all that hard. Play T.E.S. and enjoy your free wins, imo.

[maritlage]

If you want a combo deck to build i suggest storm personally. Just be prepared to face a lot of hate in the meta. Now you say you have been playing Spiral Tide with candle sticks and you feel most comfortable playing that deck but don't want to fork over the money for the sticks. For an easy fix to this just play Solidarity. Its basically a high tide reset list that requires a lot of thinking and double thinking to go off properly though it does have a tendency to collapse in upon itself. But if your looking for some thing a little less complicated and less prone to collapsing in on itself build T.E.S. it is really resilient to a lot of the hate in legacy. Kinda partial to it too as i have it built and play it at my store and it does quite well against BUG Maverick Show and Tell Dredge Esperblade Countertop Burn RUG Delver and MUD though im not beating them every game or match i can usaully go 2/2 1/3 or 3/1 in a 4 round tourney though i kinda continually go 2/2 or 1/3 because of bad desisions on my part its still a good deck.

[Darkenslight]

TES and Spiral Tide are the two "best" combo decks with some exceptions for very strange metagames. That said, if you already have the parts, then I'd also suggest Belcher as a secondary combo deck.

[Jenni]

Personally, I'd go for high tide, I've been toying around with a Resets, meditates, mono-instant high tide deck, it's one of the few combo decks I've really enjoyed playing.

the better choice is probably Storm though - LED goes into any number of combo decks so if you get bored of it or get hated out of the metagame you can spent 40-50USD and have a new deck by the next week, and I think it has the most room for growth - it's a difficult deck to really master, and if it's the only new deck you'll be building for the year, then I think you will have the most to show for it in terms of acquired skill by the end of the year.
Plus, once you have LEDs, you're only like 30USD away from building a full dredge deck, so if you get them cheap enough you may have room in your budget to make 2 decks for the price of a set of candels.

Show and Tell is too dull, maybe the omniscience version is more fun (haven't played that version at all), but the "pay three, I have a giant dude." versions are pretty boring. (to me at least)

[swoop]

Aluren, best deck ever.

[Koby]

I like High Tide only because of nostalgia, but I don't think the investment in Candelabras is the most efficient use of 6 weeks of rent money.

I would say pick up the LEDs and start goldfishing various UBx Storm lists. Right now I'm big on TES (obv.), but I like ANT too. Trouble is with the latter is that it's both slower and more susceptible to Wasteland than TES. If you have a good read on the metagame, it's really easy to shift from ANT to TES to DDFT (altho this one requires a PhD to play correctly). They're moderately cheaper than Candelabras too, while being more versatile.

[Tammit67]

I would say pick up the LEDs and start goldfishing various UBx Storm lists. Right now I'm big on TES (obv.), but I like ANT too. Trouble is with the latter is that it's both slower and more susceptible to Wasteland than TES. If you have a good read on the metagame, it's really easy to shift from ANT to TES to DDFT (altho this one requires a PhD to play correctly). They're moderately cheaper than Candelabras too, while being more versatile.

+1. Sometimes the meta is just bad for High tide. Or belcher. Or SI. Or show and Tell. UBx storm has enough variations that you can metagame like a fiend while still sharing the same core cards. The cards they don't share are very inexpensive outside of the duals, and the duals aren't exactly playsets of each anyway.

[ahg113]

As a Belcher player, I'm a fan of the storm decks with LED. In particular, I recently played against a Spanish Inquisition Deck, that's similar to T.E.S. but I found to be very enjoyable to play against. We were obviously both racing each other, and while I lost the match 1-2, his lines of play were more intricate, chance to fizzle, serious thought about the lines of play to make and when to make them. Whereas I was more or less, "draw, can I win now, win/pass turn." Aside from stomping a U/W miracles deck, it was the most fun I had by far in Baltimore (besides credit card roulette for lunch.)

+1 S.I. (Bx storm)
+.25 Belcher (because people won't respect you as much typically)

[Richard Cheese]

Play TinFins (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?24104-TinFins-3-Return-of-the-Onion-Burst). We need more people playing it so we can fix the sideboard plan.

[Koby]

Play TinFins (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?24104-TinFins-3-Return-of-the-Onion-Burst). We need more people playing it so we can fix the sideboard plan.

Interest piqued. Price check on Entomb?

[Richard Cheese]

Interest piqued. Price check on Entomb?

They didn't really go down much after the Premium Deck came out, I guess b/c everyone thought Reanimator was going to dominate the format. I'd pick them up now though, in case Gatecrash gives UB something bonkers.

[xfxf]

I like High Tide only because of nostalgia, but I don't think the investment in Candelabras is the most efficient use of 6 weeks of rent money.

Wow, I'm so incredibly jelly of living in L.A. Try rent money for barely more than 1 week (London)... My sister lives in L.A. and complains about life being much cheaper over this side of the pond.

Thanks everyone for the responses. My conclusion is S&T decks are the strongest combo decks both in terms of raw power and in combo mirrors. Storm is a better pick only if you can play it at Lejay levels. But with my current budget I won't be able to branch into a new deck this year, so thanks again for the responses.

[Machahiko]

How about be the cool combo player. Either play Doomsday or SOLIDARITY. Master either one of those decks and enjoy the fame of being the freak that nobody wants to play against.

I myself play T.E.S. and I am always absolutely terrified when playing against good solidarity players, I would imagine Doomsday being pretty awesome also.

[Admiral_Arzar]

Thanks everyone for the responses. My conclusion is S&T decks are the strongest combo decks both in terms of raw power and in combo mirrors. Storm is a better pick only if you can play it at Lejay levels. But with my current budget I won't be able to branch into a new deck this year, so thanks again for the responses.

SNT is definitely the strongest ATM, but you will hate yourself if you build SNT and are stuck with playing that nonsense for a year. I would definitely storm staple it up and start learning.

[feline]

If you actually enjoy playing high tide, then I say go with that deck, only so many people get a thrill out of doing all that stuff for 5 minutes, though I suppose myself I am a bit bias towards the deck, I guess after hive mind combo wise, I'd look at omnitell or something like ANT / TES.