[Deck] Solidarity (Reset High Tide)

[Eldariel]

I won a tournament last weekend in Auburn with Gearhart's latest list and let me say that I'm very impressed with the way this deck has developed recently. Remand is simply amazing, and having eight maindeck counterspells is a really great feeling. I was a little hesitant cutting Words from the board but the only time I wished it was there was when I had to Stroke myself for cards and then flashback Flash to get to the Stroke for the kill. Words would have been easier but unnecessary. I kept eight blasts because, well its Auburn and I did end up playing against burn, but I don't think eight blasts is entirely necessary, just reassuring. I also kept a Brain Freeze in the board because for some reason I always seem to get extracted for it by bad players there.

I don't see your point here. Extraction removes the Freezes from the game, so you can wish for any of the removed Freezes after Extraction, making the sideboard Freeze completely useless. Actually, SB Freezes are only marginally useful if they do not Extraction your MB ones. And with Remand, even then they're superfluous practically always.

[Ewokslayer]

The past few weeks have seen very little discussion about the deck though, and I would like to see more thoughts on particular play styles so that people who aren't familiar with the deck can learn to play it. Basically every time Solidarity is mentioned on Starcity, The Mana Drain, and sometimes here everyone says that Deep6er is the only one who knows how to play the deck right. While I believe he is the best Solidarity player I don't think he is the only one who can pilot it correctly. But the vast majority of people who I have seen play the deck make incredible mistakes. I have beat Solidarity on workstation with Wombat. There really is no excuse for that.
It was MWS, what do you expect. I can't even really imagine trying to play Solidarity on that program. Endless tedious button clicking, sounds like fun.


So instead of constantly repeating well-worn and discarded ideas (ie splashing a color) perhaps we could look at situations, such as the above. I knew he had a Force to back up his Defense grid so I Forced pitching Reset instead of any of the other most likely candidates. I even had Cunning Wish in my hand to deal with the grid if I wanted to but since the game had gone on long enough I had enough land to kill on my own turn. Do others think this would be the right play?

The problem with trying to talk specific plays is that very often it is impossible to convey all the information necessary to make the best decision.

[Raatcharch]

The past few weeks have seen very little discussion about the deck though, and I would like to see more thoughts on particular play styles so that people who aren't familiar with the deck can learn to play it. Basically every time Solidarity is mentioned on Starcity, The Mana Drain, and sometimes here everyone says that Deep6er is the only one who knows how to play the deck right. While I believe he is the best Solidarity player I don't think he is the only one who can pilot it correctly. But the vast majority of people who I have seen play the deck make incredible mistakes. I have beat Solidarity on workstation with Wombat. There really is no excuse for that.

Agreed. I have been trying to get people to explain finer Solidarity strategy to me on this thread for a while, but few seem interested in discussing it. I feel like there are some key things about the deck that I am missing, preventing me from becoming a truely LEGENDARY Solidarity player.

[Koby]

There's no "secret" to playing Solidarity well.

In order to play the deck well, first you must playtest it. No, more than that. Yes, even moreso. If you don't know how close you can come to going off then you won't really make the right play regardless of how well you know to use the stack.

There really isn't much more than that. You build the deck and goldfish for a week to get the basics. Then playtest against real decks to understand how much time you can stall; how you can overcome a bad board position; understand how to react to disruption; learn how to judge the alpha-strike; and finally once you master these, it's just a matter of getting a lucky hand.

[Lego]

Do others think this would be the right play?

I don't remember who said it, but it was probably either Mike Flores or Zvi. I'll paraphrase a bit: The correct play is always the one that has the greatest chance of winning you the game. If it wins you the game, it was always the correct play.

So if you won by going off on your turn, it was the right play. I've done it numurous times. One time I drew my 8th card for the turn and I had like High Tide, High Tide, High Tide, Turnabout, Meditate, Meditate, Brain Freeze, Remand with something absurd like 6 or 7 land in play, so I proceeded to go off there. Sometimes it's simply the right move, and a lot of people forget about it. It leaves you with 4 extra dead cards while comboing off, but the lands are already dead anyway, and it's usually not much of an issue.

[herbig]

I don't see your point here. Extraction removes the Freezes from the game, so you can wish for any of the removed Freezes after Extraction, making the sideboard Freeze completely useless. Actually, SB Freezes are only marginally useful if they do not Extraction your MB ones. And with Remand, even then they're superfluous practically always.
Shit yeah. I was thinking about Blessings but I typed that up at like 3 am. My point is that the people I play against seem to side useless cards that make me hesitant to pull the Freeze out of the sideboard.

[Mad Zur]

I don't remember who said it, but it was probably either Mike Flores or Zvi. I'll paraphrase a bit: The correct play is always the one that has the greatest chance of winning you the game. Perhaps you are thinking of this article (http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/6596.html) by Flores.

If it wins you the game, it was always the correct play.

So if you won by going off on your turn, it was the right play. That is incorrect under the previous definition. It is possible to win despite, or even because of, an incorrect play. From the aforementioned article:

The fact of the matter is that making the right play will sometimes lead to loss, due to factors related or not, and making the wrong play will lead to victory a dizzying amount of the time, in such a way that you may never even notice that you are making mistakes at all (i.e. the point of this article). Anyway, as Ewokslayer said, there's no real way to determine whether or not herbig played correctly without more information. Mostly, that means the rest of his hand at the time and what his opponent was likely (considering the Defense Grid) to do to stop him.

[Lego]

That is incorrect under the previous definition. It is possible to win despite, or even because of, an incorrect play.

Touche. I should have said: While it may not have been the best play, it won you the game, so run with it.

I will say, there are times when it is the correct move to go off on your own turn, so think about it, and don't just discount it.

[Lukas Preuss]

Just to throw some new ideas into the world: What do you think about Submerge as anti-Gro tech?

"Submerge your Meddling Mage in response to Mental Note" is pretty cool.


It wasn't too bad during testing (the Gro matchup still isn't all that great), but I took Solidarity to a tournament with Submerge in the board, and I actually wanted to play against Gro just to test my new awesome tech... and then I didn't get paired against Gro at all...

So, what do you guys think? Has anyone else tested this card yet?

[Ewokslayer]

How many Submerges are trying to run in the board?
What did your sideboard look like at the tournament?

[Lukas Preuss]

This is what my sideboard looked like:
1 Chain of Vapor
3 Disrupt
1 Echoing Truth
4 Hydroblast
1 Rebuild
1 Stroke of Genius
3 Submerge
1 Turnabout

It's basically David Gearhart's Sideboard, that he played at the Duel for Duals -1 Disrupt, -1 Twincast, -1 Meditate, +3 Submerge. I'm not sure, how good Submerge is, as I said, since I didn't play Gro all day (there were only like 2 Gro Decks at the whole tournament)...

[Lego]

@ Lukas: I'd be hesitant to cut that Meditate from the board. It took a long time for it to get there, but it has saved me many a game. I hope at the very least you've put it in the maindeck, but then I question what you've removed there. Without Meditate in the board, Cunning Wish can't prevent the early fizzle.

[Lukas Preuss]

Okay. First of all, I wasn't even running Remand in the maindeck. That left me with some room for the fourth Meditate and two Twincasts in the maindeck.
Let me just tell you, that I didn't cut the Remands, because I didn't think they were good, but because I didn't own any and I didn't test it enough to feel comfortable with this drastic change right before the tournament.

I know Remand is amazing, don't bother telling me that it should belong in the maindeck. I think it does.


So, with that said, of course I ran the fourth copy of Meditate in the maindeck. I just ran a version of Solidarity (an older one than the one that is considered "the best") that had enough room in the mainboard for this. And I think it is not necessary to have a Meditate in the sideboard. It is nice to have some wishable card draw, but seriously, Meditate has been in and out of the sideboard since this deck exists. Whenever this deck could afford to run four copies in the maindeck, it did. I think it is fundamentally wrong to assume that Meditate has to be in the sideboard to prevent fizzling. I have played this deck at tournaments for more than a year and T8ed at every single one and I can't remember a single situation where I fizzled due to having four copies of Meditate in the maindeck. If you're afraid of fizzling, you could even run Three Wishes in the sideboard, as well as four Meditates in the maindeck.


So let me just put this together: I don't think my deck was all that great, I just wondered whether Submerge might be some actual anti-Gro tech or not. Let's just not discuss my decklist (this is not all that relevant to the discussion), but this one card. What do you think about it? Hot or not? :)

[URABAHN]

Agreed. I have been trying to get people to explain finer Solidarity strategy to me on this thread for a while, but few seem interested in discussing it. I feel like there are some key things about the deck that I am missing, preventing me from becoming a truely LEGENDARY Solidarity player.

A few things that come to mind that may help you. I've become a much much better player from when I first starting playing the deck. Decisions come quicker and I can "see" how to win. Here's my opinion on how to get better at playing Solidarity.

Start by playing a good build. I started playing with Zvi's build from the Legacy World Championships. Looking back on that deck, I think the way you played it was much different than Deep6er's build. I remember I usually generated 60+ mana then Wishing for Stroke. Deep6er told me the build was utter crap, Peer Through Depths is terrible and you never want to Wish for Flash of Insight. I thought I would get used to the deck first, then play his build, but he insisted I try his build. And you know what? Fuckin' amazing.

After you start playing with Deep6er's build, practice, practice, practice. Goldfish 10 hands a night for a week, then do it again, then play against a live opponent playing something with pressure like Affinity or Goblins. I probably averaged 10 hours a week practicing the deck for the last 2 months, because I wanted to play it in my salary capped Type 1 league. So far, it's paid off, I'm 8 wins, 2 losses and I understand what I did wrong in the two matches. What that means to me is when you think you're done practicing, practice more.

All that practice will allow you to make a good decision when you're in an unfamiliar situation. Today I lost against an Elf deck because I let Priest of Titania resolve, but countered Rancor thinking I could buy myself a few more turns if I countered that, not realizing my opponent had enough mana to play Ritual of Subdual and then Coat of Arms the following turn. Ouch. The correct play would have been to knock out the Priest and disallow the super-fast mana acceleration.

I love the little things about the deck, Meditate in the SB, playing Brain Freeze on yourself to hit Flash of Insight. The deck, when properly played, does just enough to win. You're not going to generate 60+ mana, you're going to take your time, dig, search, use Reset and Turnabout to keep it going (not to generate lots of mana), build up Storm, then Wish for the kill.

Playing in Virginia with Legacy's Finest helps too.

[Lego]

Well, sometimes you *are* going to generate 60+ mana and stroke for the win. There are just some times when you have 3 High Tides and 3 Resets in hand against an aggro deck and you Meditate into Twincast, Flash, Cunning Wish, Meditate, followed by another Reset and another Cunnning Wish. Sometimes the deck just makes you resolve 6 High Tides and create arbitrarily large amounts of mana. Just doesn't mean it'll happen often :)

[Carlos El Salvador]

I'm back, bitches!

But besides that, I love the development on solidarity. I am going to have to test out the disrupt tech, seeing as Threshold is almost always tapped out VS you. That should give you the required counterspells to win the game. I heard of the Remand, and I was thinking of it, just hadn't been playtesting 1.5 a lot lately. You see, I have been testing T2 like a heathen for the PTQ on my birthday. I don't know what all I need to change still. The deck is strong, and kicking ass. w00t!

[Lego]

It's good to see you back Carlos! I must not have read it, but I didn't think the Disrupt was for the Thresh matchup. I've always boarded it in against Deadguy, where it's killer, but I'd have to test it in the Thresh match :)

[Digikma]

Ive recently started playing Soliditary online as I can never find any legacy tournaments near Florida and have a few questions maybe some of the more experiances players of the build would help with.

Matches vs Homebrew / Black control are the worst for me. I usually spend the first few turns getting into combo position and the early duress / therapy's are usually enough to pick out my clutch cards. They can do this is as early as turn 1. The land destruction is also a pain as we rely on 4 lands to combo off. You dont always have a counter for the dureses and they can flashback therapy if they see you are protecting your hand. What do you guys do vs. these kind of builds?


Another point of interest I have been looking at is any type of graveyard retrieval. Counters in Landstill / Hand destr / or maybe needing to play an early reset or tide to save yourself, but not enough to go off. It doesnt seem to neccessary in Soliditary but it has crossed my mind.

My main concern though is the almost instant loss to black.

This is the current version im paying with.

Lands
4 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
10 Island

Spells
4 High Tide
4 Reset
3 Turnabout
2 Brain Freeze
4 Force of Will
3 Brainstorm
4 Opt
4 Impulse
1 Flash of Insight
4 Meditate
4 Cunning Wish
4 Remand
1 Twincast

Sideboard
SB: 1 Turnabout
SB: 1 Brain Freeze
SB: 1 Stroke of Genius
SB: 1 Words of Wisdom
SB: 1 Chain of Vapor
SB: 3 Hydroblast
SB: 4 Blue Elemental Blast
SB: 1 Fact or Fiction
SB: 1 Evacuation
SB: 1 Stifle

[Lukas Preuss]

Ive recently started playing Soliditary online as I can never find any legacy tournaments near Florida and have a few questions maybe some of the more experiances players of the build would help with.

Matches vs Homebrew / Black control are the worst for me. I usually spend the first few turns getting into combo position and the early duress / therapy's are usually enough to pick out my clutch cards. They can do this is as early as turn 1. The land destruction is also a pain as we rely on 4 lands to combo off. You dont always have a counter for the dureses and they can flashback therapy if they see you are protecting your hand. What do you guys do vs. these kind of builds?


Another point of interest I have been looking at is any type of graveyard retrieval. Counters in Landstill / Hand destr / or maybe needing to play an early reset or tide to save yourself, but not enough to go off. It doesnt seem to neccessary in Soliditary but it has crossed my mind.

My main concern though is the almost instant loss to black.

This is the current version im paying with.

Lands
4 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
10 Island

Spells
4 High Tide
4 Reset
3 Turnabout
2 Brain Freeze
4 Force of Will
3 Brainstorm
4 Opt
4 Impulse
1 Flash of Insight
4 Meditate
4 Cunning Wish
4 Remand
1 Twincast

Sideboard
SB: 1 Turnabout
SB: 1 Brain Freeze
SB: 1 Stroke of Genius
SB: 1 Words of Wisdom
SB: 1 Chain of Vapor
SB: 3 Hydroblast
SB: 4 Blue Elemental Blast
SB: 1 Fact or Fiction
SB: 1 Evacuation
SB: 1 Stifle

1. You don't need to run cards like Fact or Fiction, Stifle, or Words of Wisdom in the sideboard. You also don't need to run 7 anti-red cards. 4 should be more than enough (those should be Hydroblasts, because you can cast those without a red target to up your storm count). Evacuation is only really needed against White Weenie decks. If you don't have those in your meta, you can easily cut it, as well. Add some cards like Disrupt to the sideboard, to board them in against Suicide, Homebrew, and other decks that rely on discard in the early turns.
2. If you made those changes, you don't need 4 Cunning Wish in the maindeck anymore. Three copies should be enough.
3. You run 8 fetchlands. Is there any reason you only run 3 Brainstorm?
4. Try to squeeze 2 Peeks in the maindeck. They're awesome.

[Eldariel]

Out of experience, Brainstorms are the key against discard. You cast them to hide your important spells on top of the library so your opponent can only hit the less relevant ones. In short, if your opponent opens with a swamp, save those Brainstorms for Duresses. Also remember that the important spells vary from hand to hand and game to game. You might occasionally have hands that don't even need High Tide to go off, so feel free to let it go. You might want to hide a Meditate so you can refill your hand asap. Also, if he's using Cabal Therapy, try to have a Brainstorm handy, so he'll have to guess what you put on top of your library and what you've got in hand. It's much like playing combo in Type 1, as there you're bound to face Duresses and your only real protection is Force of Will. Rest is up to finesse. But yea, as said, Brainstorm is your #1 weapon against hand disruption.

Instant-speed graveyard retrieval isn't just strong enough to warrant inclusion in Tide, as it'd be almost always worse than other options, you have available. The closest you'll get is Flash of Insight-remove into Cunning Wish.

[CopperLeaf]

Having reviewed mosts of the posts, is there a general consensus that the builds with remand are the best at present?

[My Name Is Scott]

Having reviewed mosts of the posts, is there a general consensus that the builds with remand are the best at present?
Considering Deep6er has tested the deck some 5,000 times, use his list as a authorataive refrence.

[URABAHN]

*agrees with mynameisscott*

Against aggro, Remand can slow down your opponent just enough to give you 1 or 2 more turns before death. Play it.

[Obfuscate Freely]

Well, Remand isn't particularly good against Gro, which is Solidarity's most important bad matchup. It is conceivable that cutting some number of Remands is a good idea in some metagames.

However, Remand is extremely stong against black decks, which, as a group, are Solidarity's other bad matchup.

Remand is also great to have in lots of closer matchups (Goblins) and more heavily favorable matchups (...most other decks).

Ultimately, if there is so much Gro in your metagame that Remand seems suboptimal, you should probably be playing something else.

[Eldariel]

Isn't Remand useful against Thres in saving your own spells from counters though? I recall Gearhart mentioning that he Remands his own spells to save them from counters and go off a turn later against Thres.

[Ewokslayer]

He might have tried doing that at one point in testing, but it is awful and didn't really work.

Unless you have multiple High Tides in hand and choose not to play them you won't really be able to go off the next turn even with a saved Meditate or Reset. The only time Remand has been that helpful against Gro have been the times that Solidarity is mana heavy and card drawing low as it is actually feasible to Remand a Meditate and recast it in the same turn. As that is incredibly mana intensive that doesn't happen all that often. Remanding their counterspells is sometimes an option if they can't cast them again, either mana short or out of blue cards.

The biggest tools in the Gro matchup are Peek, Force of Will, Twincast, and just knowing when to go off and in what order to cast your spells.

[deadlock]

About Submerge, i think its too narrow to be used. Imo Meddlng Mage isnt such a threat. If you want creature bounce, i would run Snap, it can be used against other decks too and is not dead while going off (you will bring it in against with at least some creatures anyway).

Concerning Quicken and Scroll, the whole debate let me rethink about Mystical Tutor. It has a nice synergy with Peek, Bs, Remand and Disrupt and helps in games where the opponent puts much pressure on you (not so much in the controll matchup). Its a card that you want to keep till the perfect / last moment has come to use it. (in the turn before you want to go off or along with one of the cards mentioned). I ll test with +1 Mystical Tutor and -1 Remand, maybe its worthy.

[Ewokslayer]

Mystical Tutor still is not good for the reasons it wasn't good before.

Quicken + Merchant Scroll is also not very good. It doesn't improve the matchups that need improving and doesn't help the goldfish of the deck at all.

[CopperLeaf]

Not thats its really worth bringing up, but i have found hurkyll's recall to be an excellent wish target in the SB. Very versatile, and can be used efficiently versus legacy stax or affinity decks.

[Lukas Preuss]

Rebuild is strictly better, since Hurkyll's Recall is stopped by a Chalice set at two. If it ever happens to you, that someone sets Chalice at one and two, you'd want to have Rebuild. Chalice for three is very unlikely, though.

Oh, and it cycles! :)

[CopperLeaf]

Rebuild is strictly better, since Hurkyll's Recall is stopped by a Chalice set at two. If it ever happens to you, that someone sets Chalice at one and two, you'd want to have Rebuild. Chalice for three is very unlikely, though.

Oh, and it cycles! :)

I woudn't say its strictly better.. hurkyls allows you to wish at their eot and bounce their shit during their main phase, then you can go off when they try to cast it again.

since hurkyls costs 1 less, thats 1 less island in play you need to get your combo off..

they symetry of rebuild isnt worthwhile with regards to legacy since the deck doesnt use artifact mana.

But if you fear getting both chalice for 1 and 2, rebuild would be better.

[CopperLeaf]

In an effort to facilitate some worthwhite discussion, why not try to improve some of the decks matchups pre-board.

Would you counter a first turn duress if you opening hand had a force, reset, brainstorm and high tide in it?

Would you counter a sphere of resistance or try to bounce it before going off?

Do you keep opening hands with only one island? with only one island and a brainstorm? Do you brainstorm on the first turn to set up you hand/see what you've got, or cast it at the last possible moment.

Just some thoughts for duscussion.
\

[cathl]

Rebuild also has the added benifit of not targeting players. Granted I'm not sure that True Believer is a problem in most metagames, but Rebuild does provide that flexibility.

[FRM]

Rebuild also has the added benifit of not targeting players. Granted I'm not sure that True Believer is a problem in most metagames, but Rebuild does provide that flexibility.

I think both can be useful, but this is really a metagame choice. While having both at the same time is useless, i always bring them with me so i can switch depending on metagame: to me is pointless using rebuild if i only see occasional affinity without chalices. Also, i wouldn't wish for it to cycle, so i usually board hurkyl
About the use case scenario proposed by CopperLeaf, i usually keep on land hand only if i got one or more brainstorm or brainstorm + opt (any quantity), but of course it's a risk. I usually do keep 2 land hand if i have some cheap draw, which seems to happen most of the time to me. I wouldn't counter duress on 1st unless i can't cast that brainstorm to put back reset and tide, but also i tend to be more "attached" to early draw, since if i can cycle through my deck i will find another reset/high tide. I would protect on the contrary a meditate ;)
Instead, what will you do while on the draw when the opponent plays mana dark ritual? i would counter ritual fearing subsequent duress + hymn to tourach, but i don't know if it's worthwile...

[MattH]

I would basically never keep a one-lander without a Brainstorm OR 2+ 1cc cantrips.

I would counter the Duress if I did not expect further hand disruption.

[Lejay]

In an effort to facilitate some worthwhite discussion, why not try to improve some of the decks matchups pre-board.

Would you counter a first turn duress if you opening hand had a force, reset, brainstorm and high tide in it? \
I wouldn't if I had an island in play.
Otherwise it depends on opponent's deck. (For example : Does he have bigger threats and so will make me discard the force ?)


Would you counter a sphere of resistance or try to bounce it before going off?\
Yes unless I absolutely have to go off now (and have enough lands)


Do you keep opening hands with only one island? with only one island and a brainstorm? Do you brainstorm on the first turn to set up you hand/see what you've got, or cast it at the last possible moment.
\
One island + brainstorm is ok if the rest of the hand is good (tides, one impulse...).
The moment I will cast the brainstorm depends on my hand, the opponent's deck and the luck I experienced during the day (stupid but true).

[herbig]

Heres the list that I split for first at Kadilak's Dual Land draft on Saturday with, if anyone is interested:
4 Reset
4 High tide
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
4 Impulse
4 Remand
3 Turnabout
3 Cunning Wish
2 Flash of Insight
2 Brain Freeze
4 Meditate
2 Peek
2 Opt
3 Polluted Delta
3 Flooded Strand
12 Island
SB:
1 Stroke of Genius
1 Turnabout
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Echoing Truth
1 Evacuation
4 Hydroblast
2 Brain Freeze
4 Disrupt

This list is basically Deep6er's build except I really like having the 4th Meditate in the main deck. My sideboard plan for Grow was to side in two more Brain Freeze and hope to get into a counter war with double Freeze, which helped when I played against it in the semifinals. Also, Peek has proven to be solid to me. I never liked it before because Opt is so much better, but it allows you to combo without playing around something that isn't there. I played four rounds, IDed the final two, and played two rounds in top 8 and split for first. I lost two games, once to Salvagers, and once to Grow. My other matchups were Goblins, Loam control, Angel Stompy, and Deadguy.

[Burnout]

I lost two games, once to Salvagers, and once to Grow.
The plan to play two Brain Freeze in the Sideboard, isn't everything... I'm waiting for a better solution.... ;-)
But the salvager Matchup is on your side... What happend? I tested it with my brother 70:30 pre boarding, and after that the matchup seams to be identical because both decks have a wish board, and not so much Cards to do an efficient sideboarding... I mean salvager can go off verry early, but if you counter one card ...

[herbig]

The match against Salvagers involved a quick triple Duress, and then comboing. I couldn't do anything against that as I was stuck with no counters and no draw spells.

[Lego]

The plan to play two Brain Freeze in the Sideboard, isn't everything... I'm waiting for a better solution.... ;-)
But the salvager Matchup is on your side... What happend? I tested it with my brother 70:30 pre boarding, and after that the matchup seams to be identical because both decks have a wish board, and not so much Cards to do an efficient sideboarding... I mean salvager can go off verry early, but if you counter one card ...

I think you might me misunderstanding. He lost one game to each of those decks. Losing two games in an entire tournament isn't so bad, even if you're losing a single game in a good matchup.

Were there any situations when you wanted to wish for Meditate but could not?

[Lukas Preuss]

I really like your list, since I never liked the idea of having only 3 Meditates in the mainboard. There are some questions, though...

How did the 4 Brainfreeze plan work against Gro? Did you win the games because of it? My plan against Gro has been Twincast so far, but you don't seem to run that card at all. Deep6er's list ran two Twincasts (one main, one side), as far as I know... Why did you choose not to run Twincast at all?

[herbig]

I am a huge fan of keeping four Meditates main deck, since they are key to not fizzling. The only time that I needed to wish for draw was in the first round against Goblins. In my experience, the cases where you need to wish for a draw spell involve the ability to generate exorbitant amounts of mana. Wishing for Stroke then becomes a decent option, but is a risk against control. I can see the arguments for keeping a Meditate in the board though. In regards to the Grow matchup, I definately won the third game as a result of having more Freezes in the deck. I fizzled out and milled for 30 after fighting through counters but was able to untap and mill for another 9 cards because I had another Freeze in hand. Had I had only two of them in there I most likely would not have had that option. Against anything but aggro-control like Grow you either have no resistance or you have plenty of time to break through it. But with Grow you have to make a move quick, and under pressure, so having a Brainfreeze to use the storm that gets generated is very helpful. Very seldom would you get to straight combo out and play through your whole deck, as you usually do in other matchups. Twincast I haven't really liked since its pretty random to run so few, but there isn't enough space to fit more. Its also a dead draw pretty often, and the ability to Twincast Meditate is unnecessary. Also, if Grow attempts to counter High Tide, Twincast becomes too mana intensive to save you.

[AnwarA101]

Twincast I haven't really liked since its pretty random to run so few, but there isn't enough space to fit more. Its also a dead draw pretty often, and the ability to Twincast Meditate is unnecessary. Also, if Grow attempts to counter High Tide, Twincast becomes too mana intensive to save you.

I've never really liked Twincast in the deck. I know that it allows busted plays, but I've lost because it was my only 'draw' spell. The problem is that it only increases what you have in hand and not the resource that is scarce.

[Ewokslayer]

I've never really liked Twincast in the deck. I know that it allows busted plays, but I've lost because it was my only 'draw' spell. The problem is that it only increases what you have in hand and not the resource that is scarce.

Twincast does increase the scarce resource, (one Reset becomes two, one Meditate becomes two). However, where it is really lacking is when a resource is missing from hand.
I agree it is probably the weakest card in the deck (besides Peek which is only there because of Gro and other control). However, I don't know if the 4th Meditate is the best use of that slot.

[Krieger]

I think that having all the meditates in the main is a good idea. It is very mana intensive to have to wish for meditate and cast it. I like the idea of freeing up a spot in the sideboard. I like the plan of bringing in more brainfreezes against gro; it is much better than twincast because it takes up a lot of mana to be able to effectively play twincast and to force the spell you want to resolve to go through. The main problem with trying to beat gro is that you mana accelerant also allows them to get more counterspells on line. With that in mind what is the way to beat gro? Brainfreeze currently sounds like it is the best idea. Thoughts?

[Raatcharch]

So what comes out game 2 against gro for two Brainfreezes? I like this innovation a lot, but I haven't had the opportunity to test it yet.

[herbig]

I believe I boarded out a Meditate and Flash of Insight, but Gearhart suggested that I should have sided out at least one Cunning Wish, as it is probably much weaker against Gro than either of those.

[Ewokslayer]

The boarding plan against Gro should be flexible based on the color of Gro.
Against white Gro I like boarding in an Echoing Truth to deal with Mage along with the 3 Cunning Wishs.

[Deep6er]

I am a huge fan of keeping four Meditates main deck, since they are key to not fizzling. The only time that I needed to wish for draw was in the first round against Goblins. In my experience, the cases where you need to wish for a draw spell involve the ability to generate exorbitant amounts of mana. Wishing for Stroke then becomes a decent option, but is a risk against control. I can see the arguments for keeping a Meditate in the board though. In regards to the Grow matchup, I definately won the third game as a result of having more Freezes in the deck. I fizzled out and milled for 30 after fighting through counters but was able to untap and mill for another 9 cards because I had another Freeze in hand. Had I had only two of them in there I most likely would not have had that option. Against anything but aggro-control like Grow you either have no resistance or you have plenty of time to break through it. But with Grow you have to make a move quick, and under pressure, so having a Brainfreeze to use the storm that gets generated is very helpful. Very seldom would you get to straight combo out and play through your whole deck, as you usually do in other matchups. Twincast I haven't really liked since its pretty random to run so few, but there isn't enough space to fit more. Its also a dead draw pretty often, and the ability to Twincast Meditate is unnecessary. Also, if Grow attempts to counter High Tide, Twincast becomes too mana intensive to save you.



Okay, Herbig can attest to this, I said, and I quote, "With Herbig's win, I know it's going to restart the meditate in the board discussion. You kill babies." Anyway, I suppose it's time to state my position on this subject. Mike Herbig kills babies. He destroyed the belief that only I could play the deck well. Way to go Mike, people relied on that belief to live. Specifically babies. Way to go Captain McBabyKiller.

Oh, and the meditate thing. I like having 3 meditates and 3 potential opportunities. That's 6 draw 4's. Herbig said that you're less likely to have to wish for the meditate if you have all four in your deck, but I disagree. I think that having the meditate in the board (and the one Twincast in the main) is incredibly valuable.

The subject of one random Twincast in the main. Hey, I definitely think this is personal preference. A one-of (or perhaps adjusting others to 3/4 - ofs) has got to be incredibly powerful in order to justify its position in this deck. I think that Twincast is probably going to be one of the most powerful one-ofs to have in the main and having a second in the board to BOARD IN is nice too.

Anyway, 3 meditates in the main, random Twincast, and Mike kills babies. That is all.

[herbig]

I'm not saying my changes to the list are optimal, and the Twincast debate could very well be a personal preferance thing. Twincast is definately powerful. Just in my experience it does little against Goblins and mana can be too tight to use it against Gro. With only one in the deck the number of times it will become a detriment is very few though. Also, I wouldn't necessarily say that I have proven the skeptics wrong quite yet, since it could have been a random fluke. I'd like to seal another top 8 before I start boasting. I do kill babies though.

[Lego]

The only thing Michael Herbig has proven to me is that David Gearhart is very good at disguising himself. Cudos to you Gearhart, especially for the trick of disguising someone else as yourself and making them pilot the deck poorly. You correctly assumed that if people sat down to a Solidarity player who was not David Gearhart, they would not take the match seriously, and you could win. And no one would expect you to pose as Michael Herbig, especially when they assumed you were at the event yourself!!! I salute you!

[Raatcharch]

Is Evacuation still necessary in the board?

In all my testing, I have never cast it. If you have enough mana to wish for and cast Evacuation, you should be trying to combo out, not stall. Echoing Truth gives you a cheaper out against Meddling Mages. How often does a True Believer + Mother of Runes actually come up? Might it not be more worthwhile to place a Twincast in it's place, to help with the Gro matchup?

[Lego]

The Evacuation is basically there just in case you ever have the mana to cast it. Wish for it at EOT, untap, and then cast it during your opponent's attack step and you've basically won the game. It should buy you several turns to take your time setting up. I've wished for it a few times. Basically any time when I could Wish for Evacuation instead of going off is good for me.

It also has the added benefit of taking care of True Believer/Mother of Runes, if for some reason that worries you. If you want to take something out of your board and you never find yourself Wishing for this, I'd say it's certainly not an essential slot by any means.

[herbig]

I haven't found Evacuation all that useful. Its pretty solid against bad creature decks, but then you shouldn't be losing those matches anyways. I didn't have it in my sideboard for a long time after Philly but then put it back in when I had a few occasions where it would have saved me. For me, it rotates between other wish targets like Rebuild.

[Ewokslayer]

I agree, Evacuation's utility has been decreasing ever since it was put in the board. Angel Stompy doesn't really run True Believer anymore, and some builds don't have Mother of Runes either. Combine this "combo"'s scarcity with the fact that Solidarity now runs Remand to go along with Force to stop it and I don't see a problem with dropping Evacuation. But what would be the best spell to replace it with?

[Lukas Preuss]

Well, in my meta there is aways lots of Affinity, so I decided to go with Rebuild over Evacuation. It's basically a meta choice, I guess.

I've been trying Three Wishes (only if you're playing 4 Meditate in the maindeck) and Submerge in the sideboard, as well. Both don't really seem very promising, though.

[Spartacus210]

Hey guys, I've always been intrigued by this fascinatingly intricate combo deck. I played a little Legacy for a while, then passed it up for Vintage. Now that I've gotten to play pretty much every format, I wanna come back to Legacy for some combo action (I enjoyed Tendrils greatly in Vintage).

But since I'm playing FoW-less combo in Vintage, they're lonely. So I want to try to make Solidarity. Looks like good fun. A couple points that I'd like to get addressed:

A) Is there a primer for this deck anywhere? I'm not gonna bug the hell out of you guys for an exhaustive post on how you play the deck. I'm not bad at Magic, I can figure out the fundamentals. But a Primer would be immensely helpful to my understanding.

B) I've seen mention of the accepted "best build" designed and tweaked by David Gearheart. But I could not find an explicit build of it. Could anyone supply me this?

And now for some questions about the deck:

1) What do you see as the optimal number of fetches? I've seen as high as 8 and as low as 4. What are your thoughts on the subject?

Well, one question. Thanks a lot for help.

[Ewokslayer]

The Primer is on the Primer Page (http://mtgthesource.com/primers.html). It is a bit old but still useful.
The lastest verison of Gearhart's Build is here (http://mtgthesource.com/forums/showpost.php?p=57056&postcount=430)

The optimal number of fetches is 6. 8 tends to lend to too much life loss without any added benefit as it really is only useful with Brainstorm. 4 is usually too few to see when you want them.

[Spartacus210]

Awesome.

Thanks a lot for the quick reply. I'll get to reading and goldfishing and see how it all turns out.

[Zilla]

I agree, Evacuation's utility has been decreasing ever since it was put in the board. Angel Stompy doesn't really run True Believer anymore, and some builds don't have Mother of Runes either. Combine this "combo"'s scarcity with the fact that Solidarity now runs Remand to go along with Force to stop it and I don't see a problem with dropping Evacuation. But what would be the best spell to replace it with?
It should be noted that some Angel Stompy builds are running Glowrider over Rule of Law, as are some builds of Wombat and Rifter, which might be a good reason to keep Evacuation in the board.

[Lukas Preuss]

If multiple Glowriders are bothering me, I'd rather wish for Echoing Truth...

[Eldariel]

If multiple Glowriders are bothering me, I'd rather wish for Echoing Truth...

Glowrider can be supported by Mom or SoFI just as True Believer, the effect is just more devastating as both, Cunning Wish and bounce suddenly cost more.

[Lukas Preuss]

Right. It's just that
1. the percentages of facing a mono white deck packing Mother of Runes and Glowrider at a tournament are pretty low.
2. The percentages of them having cast both cards before turn 4 are pretty low.
3. Your percentages of being able to counter Glowrider are much higher.
4. Since you have won game 1, the percentages of losing a match against them (which is: losing game 2 AND 3 against them) because of Mother of Runes and Glowrider are pretty low.


Glowrider can be supported by Mom or SoFI just as True Believer, the effect is just more devastating as both, Cunning Wish and bounce suddenly cost more..
Evacuation doesn't help this at all. If Glowrider hits the table, I'd rather spend 7 mana (for Cunning Wish and Echoing Truth) than 10 mana (Cunning Wish and Evacuation) to bounce it.

Evacuation is by far the weakest card in the sideboard.

[Eldariel]

Evacuation doesn't help this at all. If Glowrider hits the table, I'd rather spend 7 mana (for Cunning Wish and Echoing Truth) than 10 mana (Cunning Wish and Evacuation) to bounce it.

Evacuation is by far the weakest card in the sideboard.

Well, yes, but it does give you an out against Mom+Glowrider, I guess that's the point here. You can either concede to that or not. Then again, spending 6 mana to bounce it is difficult enough and gives enough time for AS to win. I feel compelled to agree with you really. You'll win against AS often enough without Evacuation.

[Lego]

Basically, if Angel Stompy gets Mother of Runes and Glowrider, you're probably going to lose. Without Evacuation, you're definitely going to lose. Evacuation gives you an out against this rather unlikely, but still possible (I'm currently running them both) situation. It will probably come in much more handy in other bad aggro matchups, but if you're playing in a meta with some Angel Stompy, it's probably worth siding. You should win against other bad aggro anyway.

[parallax]

Does Spell Snare have a shot at the sideboard for Threshold? It counters Meddling Mage, Werebear and Counterspell. It also hits Hymn and Sinkhole.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Basically, if Angel Stompy gets Mother of Runes and Glowrider, you're probably going to lose.


If you have MWS, I would be more than happy to disavail you of this notion.

[CopperLeaf]

A quick note, does anyone feel that there is any room for any non-instants in the deck? I know that they're worthless and dead draws while the combo is going off, but so is land, and there are some pretty powerful non-instants out there that may facilitate the deck going off better.
I've found that i usually end up casting at least two-three of either opt/brainstorm/impulse (avg dig is 3) which means that you see the first 16-20 cards or so (7 cards, 3 draws, 6-10 thru draw) so it would be pretty safe to assume that you could get something down to set up the combo.

I know that this goes against the pretense of the deck, but is it even worth considering?

[herbig]

What cards are you talking about specifically? I don't like the idea of running non-instants. I've seen people run things like Chill, but there isn't really anything that is good enough to make me consider running non-instants.

[Lukas Preuss]

The best sorcery that could be run in this deck to set up the combo would be Merchant Scroll, since it acts as Demonic Tutor in a deck full of blue instants.

I tested a lot with Quicken and Merchant Scroll, but seriously, it's not needed in this deck. Apparently, you don't need Demonic Tutor in a deck full of draw spells... :)

[troopatroop]

Suggesting non instants in Solidarity, especially when not even mentioning Quicken, shows a very bad understanding of what this deck does. Regardless of the fact that you know that they would all be dead draws, I'm not sure you understand quite how awful that is. You can't cantrip into a Chill, or Helm, or whatever. That's just terrible. Even if you ran only 4, it would still ruin games that you should have won. It turns games into coinflips on whether or not you're going to drop your permanents before going off, or drawing into them and screwing you. The deck works wonderfully without them, They've all been tried, and they go against the gameplan.

[emidln]

In response to the 3/4 debate on Meditate, I'm really seeing Deep6er's point on having 6 copies. When I started testing, it went for 4 Meditates because a random from my local group helped me play the deck. Almost instantly, I thought about (a) finding some other draw-4 or draw-7, hopefully at instant speed, or (b) putting Meditate in the wishboard. Too often do I have multiple cunning wish in hand and not enough draw. Fizzling to drawing crap sucks. Hard.

[Lego]

Have you ever tried wishing for Stroke of Genius? I'm currently testing 4 main. I've been Wishing for Stroke of Genius a lot as a replacement for Meditate in my board. In some situations it is good, but a lot of times, I feel that I'd simply rather have a Meditate. There are even times when I've had to pay 10 mana to draw four, when Meditate in the board would have saved me 4 of that mana. I think I'll switch to testing 3/4 and see if it makes me fizzle more.

[Alfred]

Have you ever tried wishing for Stroke of Genius? I'm currently testing 4 main. I've been Wishing for Stroke of Genius a lot as a replacement for Meditate in my board. In some situations it is good, but a lot of times, I feel that I'd simply rather have a Meditate. There are even times when I've had to pay 10 mana to draw four, when Meditate in the board would have saved me 4 of that mana. I think I'll switch to testing 3/4 and see if it makes me fizzle more.

I don't own the deck, but I have played and tested against it a lot in my meta gauntlet, and let me tell you, Stroke is one of the best cards in the board, not only because it functions as a big draw spell, but also because this deck can often generate an obscene amount of mana with which to Stroke out an opponent. This is invaluable against decks that have SB'd Gaea's Blessings, or some way of making Brain Freeze less effective. It definately deserves it's spot.

[Lego]

You misunderstood me. I wasn't at all saying that Stroke of Genius doesn't deserve a slot in the board. I was saying that without Meditate in the board, I often had to wish for Stroke of Genius as my only draw spell in the board, and would often only cast it for 3 or 4 so that I would have enough mana to continue to combo. Because of this I think there is a definite need for another draw in the side. That's all I was trying to say, sorry it was confusing.

[b4r0n]

I assume that you'd need to Wish for the sideboarded draw spell when comboing out, correct? In that case, would Three Wishes (http://gatherer.wizards.com/gathererlookup.asp?set=Visions&name=three_wishes) be any good in the sideboard as an additional draw spell? It would let you run all four Meditates in the main, and still have access to a decent draw spell (albeit slightly weaker than Meditate) via Cunning Wish.

[Eldariel]

How about Three Wishes on the side? Would it be good enough to act as a pseudo Meditate in case you need to wish for draw. From the sound of it, 3 cards is often enough draw, and it's definately cheaper than to draw off Stroke.

[Raatcharch]

Depending on your metagame, Three Wishes could be a replacement for the oft-useless Evacuation in the board.

[emidln]

I've moved a Meditate to MD after some testing. The catch is, I replaced it in the board with Fact or Fiction. It has been working out well for me in testing today. Has anyone else tried FoF?

[Lukas Preuss]

Fact or Fiction seems a little too mana intensive. During the combo, it basically says: "Look at the top 5 cards of your library, if your opponent isn't completely retarded, take one of those cards and put it into your hand." There is a card that does the same for two mana - Peer through Depths.

I haven't tested it, but how often do you get two or more relevant cards off a FoF? I have actually played Peer through Depths in the sideboard as a one-of sometimes, but it wasn't really needed.

[herbig]

I agree that Fact is a weak card for this deck. I really just haven't had much trouble not having a draw spell in the board. Peer seems like a good option if you're running 4 Meditates main, since Three Wishes could easily screw you, and seeing 5 cards is most often much better. Really though I would suggest testing a Meditate in the board before you look to things like Peer, FoF, or Three Dreams.

[GreenOne]

I really find grat problems in the Gro matchup due to Mage. They usually name High Tide and support the mage with a fast clock and a bunch of counters.
I really have no outs for meddling mage on High Tide other than:
1 - Win in responce (impossible to do on turn 2)
2 - Counter it, win the counter war (this sometimes happens)
3 - Wish for bounce and bounce it (this is slow)
4 - Have like 7-8 islands in play and go off without tide (this is REALLY slow)

As anyone encountered the same problem vs Gro? I didn't see any sideboard choice to side in vs mage (well you can side in echoing truth and keep chain of vapor in the SB).

Has anyone tried Snap or Submerge or something similar?

Snap seems quite useful even if meddling mage never hits the board but a werebear/mystic enforcer does, it can generate mana with High Tide and buys you time when you need it.

In general, what does the opponent name with Mage vs you? and what's your answer to it? Maybe I didn't catch it.

Thanks

/EDIT/
The sideboard configuration I am currently running is
1 Chain of vapor
1 Echoing Truth
1 Stroke
1 Meditate
1 Turnabout
4 Disrupt
3 Hydroblast (There's only little goblins)
3 Snap / Divert (it depends on if there's more Gro or Pikula)
NO Evacuation (Angel Stompy doesn't exist here)
/END EDIT/

[MattH]

Mage naming Cunning Wish is probably as good a play as you can make. Threshold mostly doesn't care if you resolve High Tide, since it only shuts off Daze; with Mage on the board, it will focus all its counterpower at your draw spells.

[Ewokslayer]

Mage naming Cunning Wish is probably as good a play as you can make. Threshold mostly doesn't care if you resolve High Tide, since it only shuts off Daze; with Mage on the board, it will focus all its counterpower at your draw spells.

Are you suggesting that Meddling Mage should name Cunning Wish?
Because if that is the plan for Gro, I don't see myself ever countering Meddling Mage.

Good Gro players name High Tide.

Solidarity's answer to this is to board in a least one bounce spell so it doesn't have to rely on Cunning Wish resolving in order to win.

Solidarity is also capable of going off and building a significant Storm count without High Tide. Though even when I have done that I usually end up bouncing the Meddling Mage mid-combo to seal the deal.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Well, second turn Mage should name C. Wish if it's going to be followed up by third turn Mage naming Brain Freeze. Otherwise, I agree that High Tide buys the most necessary resource in the early game in the form of time.

[Ewokslayer]

Well, second turn Mage should name C. Wish if it's going to be followed up by third turn Mage naming Brain Freeze. Otherwise, I agree that High Tide buys the most necessary resource in the early game in the form of time.

That really only does something if you can
1) Be sure that the second Meddling Mages will resolve
AND
2) They don't board in any bounce Games 2 and 3.

Otherwise, they will just combo off and bounce the mage when their hand is filled with counters.

[herbig]

What IBA is saying is that resolving two Mages will almost certainly buy you enough time to seal the game. With Gro's fast clock, comboing out to find your one bounce spell and counters, without High Tide, will not likely happen without the Gro player being very unlucky.

[Ewokslayer]

If the Meddling Mages are naming Cunning Wish and Brain Freeze like IBA suggests, why don't you have High Tide?

Seriously, you should always expect the first Meddling Mage to name High Tide and deal with it accordingly.
The second Meddling Mage if it resolves will most likely name Brain Freeze. That gives Gro a swift clock from which you have to combo without High Tide and have to resolve a bounce spell.

[Rood]

My question is of all the matchups you guys have tested for Solid what deck do you guys find to be the toughest? With the newly added 2x Brainfreezes and Echoing Truths + Disrupts can Threshold really be that tough?

[Ewokslayer]

With the newly added 2x Brainfreezes and Echoing Truths + Disrupts can Threshold really be that tough?

Yes, and Disrupt sucks against Threshold, alot.

Deadguy Ale if they have a relevant board isn't particularly fun either.

[Rood]

Yea B/W confident deadguy wouldn't be too much fun. All the discard.....all the discard to rip the combo apart while they swing with a shade. You could still pobally combo around the hand destroy, though.

[Burnout]

What do you all think about the new 1 Mana counter in dissension?

Spell Snare U
Instant
Counter target spell with converted mana cost 2.
I Mean against Gro: Were bear; Daze; Counterspell; Meddling Mage;....
seems to be a good card. ;-) And in every Control Matchup usefull...

[herbig]

Does Spell Snare have a shot at the sideboard for Threshold? It counters Meddling Mage, Werebear and Counterspell. It also hits Hymn and Sinkhole.
Personally I think its already been suggested.
It seems interesting, except that it doesn't cantrip like Disrupt. I might try them out once I get ahold of some.

Edit: Snare also hits Pillar, Piledriver, Grid, those wacky white spells people try to disrupt us with... its actually starting to look like a nice idea.

[My Name Is Scott]

What do you all think about the new 1 Mana counter in dissension?

Spell Snare U
Instant
Counter target spell with converted mana cost 2.
I Mean against Gro: Were bear; Daze; Counterspell; Meddling Mage;....
seems to be a good card. ;-) And in every Control Matchup usefull...
Just thought I'd point that out.

[Lukas Preuss]

I don't think Spell Snare could be run in Solidarity. What would you take out for it? FoW? Now way, FoW is clearly better. Remand? No way, it doesn't only function as a counterspell but also as additional Brain Freezes.

Would you seriously like to run more counterspells in this deck? I think not. Would you run them in your sideboard? Against which decks would you side them in?

[parallax]

Would you seriously like to run more counterspells in this deck? I think not. Would you run them in your sideboard? Against which decks would you side them in?

Um, in the side.

Against Threshold.

Maybe Deadguy.

It counters Meddling Mage, Counterspell and Werebear. Unfortunately, it doesn't cantrip.

[Lukas Preuss]

Right. In this case, you have to ask yourself: "Is this any better than Disrupt?", because Disrupt is in the sideboard to help the Deadguy and the Gro matchup.

I'm not sure if it's actually better. I might try it, but I'm not too sure if the results will be amazing...

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

If the Meddling Mages are naming Cunning Wish and Brain Freeze like IBA suggests, why don't you have High Tide?

Seriously, you should always expect the first Meddling Mage to name High Tide and deal with it accordingly.
The second Meddling Mage if it resolves will most likely name Brain Freeze. That gives Gro a swift clock from which you have to combo without High Tide and have to resolve a bounce spell.


Disagree. If the first Mage names High Tide, then the second should name either Cunning Wish or Reset; there's little reason to suspect that it'll be easier to lethal Brain Freeze without High Tide/Reset, versus the ability to combo off without High Tide long enough to grab a C. Wish, and then make the Mage naming Brain Freeze irrelevant.

[Nightmare]

Disagree. If the first Mage names High Tide, then the second should name either Cunning Wish or Reset; there's little reason to suspect that it'll be easier to lethal Brain Freeze without High Tide/Reset, versus the ability to combo off without High Tide long enough to grab a C. Wish, and then make the Mage naming Brain Freeze irrelevant.I think the issue here is people thinking you're supposed to shut the deck off with Mages. This is an incorrect way to play it, unless you have like 3 Mages, 2 Fetch, 1 Force, and a Brainstorm as your opening grip. The goal with Mages is to stall out the Solidarity players ability to combo out before you win with beats. Naming High Tide slows them down immensely. Naming Cunning Wish says you can't effectively find bounce. The two combined end the game in just a few turns, and with a Bear or Goose alongside them, disrupt long enough for the game.

[Ewokslayer]

Disagree. If the first Mage names High Tide, then the second should name either Cunning Wish or Reset; there's little reason to suspect that it'll be easier to lethal Brain Freeze without High Tide/Reset, versus the ability to combo off without High Tide long enough to grab a C. Wish, and then make the Mage naming Brain Freeze irrelevant.

In reality I doubt it matters much. A second Meddling Mage resolving against Solidarity pretty much means you will lose. The effectiveness of the second Meddling Mage and what it names is probably more dependant on both players' hands at the time than anything else.

If you name Cunning Wish, you have most likely the one bounce spell boarded in to counter, Solidarity has access to Reset/Turnabout to generate mana but can deck you will double Brain Freeze or Brain Freezes over multiple turns.

If you name Brain Freeze, you have to counter 4 spells (Cunning Wish + boarded Bounce) or two spells (let Wish resolve and counter the bounce they wish for). Solidarity still has access to Reset/Turnabout for mana generation but can't deck you until a bounce spell has resolved.

If you name Reset, you have to counter 4 spells (Cunning Wish + boarded Bounce) or two spells (let Wish resolve and counter the bounce they wish for). Solidarity has access to Turnabout to generate mana (I don't know if that really counts but it will at least add to storm) but can deck you will double Brain Freeze or Brain Freezes over multiple turns.

All of the options are bad, especially when combined with additional counters and one or two other creatures.

Obviously, all of the above gets messed up slightly if Solidarity boards more than one bounce spell.

[Mad Zur]

Disagree. If the first Mage names High Tide, then the second should name either Cunning Wish or Reset; there's little reason to suspect that it'll be easier to lethal Brain Freeze without High Tide/Reset, versus the ability to combo off without High Tide long enough to grab a C. Wish, and then make the Mage naming Brain Freeze irrelevant. If they can combo off without High Tide long enough to resolve Wish->Truth and then continue, it's fair to say that they can probably combo off without High Tide long enough to kill you. The only real difference is that you can counter Wish, but you can't counter Brain Freeze, suggesting that the latter is the correct card to name.

However, if it's relevant what the second Mage names, it's probably because the Gro player doesn't have more than one counterspell anyway. In that situation, it may be correct to name Wish, because the Solidarity player can probably force it through.

So, if Gro is behaving anything like itself, the second Mage should name Brain Freeze, because that's the only card that it could have to worry about. If it's forced to rely on Mage to win, it can name Wish in an attempt to protect it.

[Spartacus210]

Recently I've been wondering about this, trying to figure it out (during class no less...). How does the mirror work out?

Do you both build up lands, playing random cantrips to sculpt a perfect hand and resolve it in one gigantic stack that nobody can keep track of? Or do you race for the combo ASAP and try to go off befor them?

Just curiousity and for future reference.

[Lukas Preuss]

Well, it depends.

David Gearhart described the mirror match as a Mexican standoff once. It's kind of like that. If you have the god hand, you can try to go off as soon as possible (like third or fourth turn) and pay attention to the number of High Tides you resolve. He can't use Reset, if you combo off as soon as possible during his turn, but if you combo off too late, he can just kill you without Reset (if you played enough High Tides). Otherwise, you just try to build up the perfect hand and try to win in response to him doing something.

I played the mirror match once during a tournament, lost game 1 because I comboed off too early, because I thought I'd have a good hand, won game 2, eventhough I comboed off during his third turn and fizzled (he comboed off sometime after that and I Brain Freezed him in response to one of his drawspells). We drew after that, because the Solidarity mirror match is one of the toughest freaking things in the world... :)

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

In reality I doubt it matters much. A second Meddling Mage resolving against Solidarity pretty much means you will lose. The effectiveness of the second Meddling Mage and what it names is probably more dependant on both players' hands at the time than anything else.

If you name Cunning Wish, you have most likely the one bounce spell boarded in to counter, Solidarity has access to Reset/Turnabout to generate mana but can deck you will double Brain Freeze or Brain Freezes over multiple turns.

If you name Brain Freeze, you have to counter 4 spells (Cunning Wish + boarded Bounce) or two spells (let Wish resolve and counter the bounce they wish for). Solidarity still has access to Reset/Turnabout for mana generation but can't deck you until a bounce spell has resolved.

If you name Reset, you have to counter 4 spells (Cunning Wish + boarded Bounce) or two spells (let Wish resolve and counter the bounce they wish for). Solidarity has access to Turnabout to generate mana (I don't know if that really counts but it will at least add to storm) but can deck you will double Brain Freeze or Brain Freezes over multiple turns.

All of the options are bad, especially when combined with additional counters and one or two other creatures.

Obviously, all of the above gets messed up slightly if Solidarity boards more than one bounce spell.



The odds that you're going to get to storm 6-7 and then have mana to Remand your Brain Freeze without High Tide or Reset are far lower than your being able to combo off without High Tide long enough to grab a Cunning Wish; the actual threats in this position are Reset, which can generate a good deal of mana without a High Tide, and Cunning Wish, which grabs answers. If you have a third beater, the second Mage should always name Reset. In no situation is it most likely that Brain Freeze will be the most dangerous card to you.

[lillelassie]

hi guys.. there is a thread about the new DIS-card spell snare.. it counters pretty much everything in solidarity's bad matchups.. has anyone been able to test?

meddling mage, hymn, sinkhole, confidant, werebear, counterspell, daze, sirocco, pillar, true believer and other hate cards.

it seems like an obvious choice in the sb, MD it sucks againt goblins (piledriver), but can always be pitched to FoW.

The card is crazygood agaisnt the 3 most important hate cards: mage, hymn and sinkhole.

[herbig]

Does Spell Snare have a shot at the sideboard for Threshold? It counters Meddling Mage, Werebear and Counterspell. It also hits Hymn and Sinkhole.


What do you all think about the new 1 Mana counter in dissension?

Spell Snare U
Instant
Counter target spell with converted mana cost 2.
I Mean against Gro: Were bear; Daze; Counterspell; Meddling Mage;....
seems to be a good card. ;-) And in every Control Matchup usefull...


hi guys.. there is a thread about the new DIS-card spell snare.. it counters pretty much everything in solidarity's bad matchups.. has anyone been able to test?

meddling mage, hymn, sinkhole, confidant, werebear, counterspell, daze, sirocco, pillar, true believer and other hate cards.

it seems like an obvious choice in the sb, MD it sucks againt goblins (piledriver), but can always be pitched to FoW.

The card is crazygood agaisnt the 3 most important hate cards: mage, hymn and sinkhole.


Check a few pages back, you might find some discussion there.

[Lukas Preuss]

Yeah, there was some discussion, but his question was: "did anybody actually test it?". Well, I haven't, mainly because I don't think it would be *crazygood*, but did anybody actually test Spell Snare by now? Was it any good?

[My Name Is Scott]

meddling mage, hymn, sinkhole, confidant, werebear, counterspell, daze, sirocco, pillar, true believer and other hate cards.

Yes! Finally, a one mana spell that can counter daze...D'oh!

The extra freezes/anything would almost certainly be better against gro, which is the main matchup you have to worry about. If you have a very deadguy/sui heavy meta, you could probably get away with running spell snare in the board. You have better options for the mirror, the card is bad against goblins, and you have better options for gro(some of which are the same as those that are good in the mirror...). I don't see any reason to run it over something else in the board.

[Koby]

I would disagree on Spell Snare. In this deck, Disrupt is just plain better. It can counter Sinkhole, Vindicate, Hymn, Duress, Dark Ritual if need be, and cantrips to boot.

[reignz]

pikula/deadguyale/homebrew/bw whatever you call it its the most common deck in my area, and spell snare seems good to me(admittedly w/out any testing). countering sinkhole alone almoast warrants its inclusion.

in addition to disrupt in the board, i considering droping hydroblast in favor of spell snare.

[Eldariel]

Ruckus: Spell Snare can counter Threshold's counters even when going off, while Disrupt will hardly affect them with all the mana they get from Tides.

[GreenOne]

pikula/deadguyale/homebrew/bw whatever you call it its the most common deck in my area, and spell snare seems good to me(admittedly w/out any testing). countering sinkhole alone almoast warrants its inclusion.


If Pikula is the only real problem in your area i suggest boarding Divert. Not only it effectively counters Vindicate (spell snare doesn't), but it crushes your opponent resources.

It's G2 and you opponent mull to 6 and is keeping a hand of Hymn, Vindicate, Specter, 2x Swamp, 1x Scrubland

Turn 2 Hymn, Turn 3 Vindicate , Turn 4 specter or
Turn 2 Hymn, Turn 3 Specter, Turn 4 vindicate.

That's a good hand vs solidarity but if you misdirect turn 2 hymn the opponent won't have mana to cast his threats or won't have his threats. Misdirecting sinkholes/vindicates/hymns has also sinergy with disrupt cause you can wreck their manabase.

However, divert is not great vs Threshold.
Try it if your metagame is many Pikula AND little threshold.

EDIT: Corrected the quote

[PTBNL]

Instead of Remand, I was wondering if anyone has tested plain old Counterspell. When goldfishing, I find that the deck usually has enough resources to combo off by turn 4-5 without the Remand tricks. In terms of disruption, Counterspell seems better. With Remand, delaying that turn 2 Sinkhole, Hymn, or Mage does us no good since we probably can't combo off on turn 3 to avoid it. Also, Counterspell seems better at winning those counterwars after High Tide resolves. With Remand, the extra High Tide mana helps our opponents re-cast their Counterspells. What do you guys think?

[Rood]

Instead of Remand, I was wondering if anyone has tested plain old Counterspell. When goldfishing, I find that the deck usually has enough resources to combo off by turn 4-5 without the Remand tricks. In terms of disruption, Counterspell seems better. With Remand, delaying that turn 2 Sinkhole, Hymn, or Mage does us no good since we probably can't combo off on turn 3 to avoid it. Also, Counterspell seems better at winning those counterwars after High Tide resolves. With Remand, the extra High Tide mana helps our opponents re-cast their Counterspells. What do you guys think?
Remand is an absolute house. Brain Freeze with Remand is key, also Remand will usually give you that one extra turn you need to kill. It's basically a Time Walk.
-100th Post W00T

[Lukas Preuss]

Remand is an absolute house. Brain Freeze with Remand is key, also Remand will usually give you that one extra turn you need to kill. It's basically a Time Walk.
-100th Post W00T

Don't forget that it cantrips, as well. Counterspell doesn't cantrip...

edit: - 200th Post W00T ;)

[herbig]

Yeah, I think the cantripping part is what makes it really great. Remand most often stalls for a turn, which is usually all you need.

95th post!

[Rood]

Don't forget that it cantrips, as well. Counterspell doesn't cantrip...

edit: - 200th Post W00T ;)
LOL funny stuff but yea it cantrips too which makes it really awesome and gives it way more than Counterspell.

[PTBNL]

Yeah, I think the cantripping part is what makes it really great. Remand most often stalls for a turn, which is usually all you need.

But it cantrips your opponent as well. On turn 3, it's OK because we can combo off next turn in response to the opponent re-casting it. But on turn 2, we usually can't combo off the next turn so Remand won't save us. Maybe we can find a Wish or Force the next turn, but in that case, it seems we're better off countering the threat in the first place.

[troopatroop]

Yes. But this is a combo deck where, when comboing, can't draw dead cards. Counterspell is a dead card. Remand = good card. Remand is nuts here.

[urza_insane]

I don't totally disagree with PTB on Counterspell. If the meta is full of B/W Confidant and Threshold I can see them being switched.

Something else I've been thinking about is Disrupt in the Side. This is one of the weaker cards being played, so what if this switched to Counterspell to bring in against Deadguy and Thresh? Is this, overall, a more useful tool?

[herbig]

Disrupt is pretty far from weak. Its ability to be used by turn 1 is what makes it so powerful, as well as replacing itself. Disrupt turns Duress, Sinkhole, Hymn into card advantage, and is used during the turns when those spells are going to be played, as well as when they are relevant.

[FRM]

Searching in the thread i did not find any discussion related to Gigadrowse. While i think actually it doesn't improve any of our hard matchups, i also think it deserve to be considered as replicated 2 or 3 times could be just enough to compare it to mana short which is/was often considered by combo deck to go undisrupted. What do you think about it?

[parallax]

Solidarity already plays Turnabout. It plays that role just as well without being dead mid-combo.

[GreenOne]

I suggest running Giga ONLY in the side and ONLY if you have the insane idea to run 4 maindeck Turnabouts...

(Damn.. after saying that i feel... dirty)

Ok, forget it, DON'T run Giga.

[herbig]

I suggest running Giga ONLY in the side and ONLY if you have the insane idea to run 4 maindeck Turnabouts...

(Damn.. after saying that i feel... dirty)

Ok, forget it, DON'T run Giga.

I'm not sure what your justifications for it are then, since no one plays four Turnabout. Gigadrowse could be cool sure, since it can't really be countered, but the Mana Short/Turnabout plan is never really necessary. Counterspells are something that can be played around effectively; if you're spending four mana to try to tap them out you are wasting a lot of resources.

[Rood]

I've got to side with herbig on this one. Gigadrowse is just a waste of your resources to tap out their creatures or something for one turn. It's just simple put not worth running in Solid cause it's already beastly....

[vanele]

Yo!
On the subject of gigadrowse, I can't see it coming in handy. The only place I could see them used is post board in place of resets but, that defeats the purpose of the deck, and wastes more space than the 2 Brain freezes sideboard plan.

Though one thing that has annoyed me is the disrupts in the board is, they are not that useful. The fact is they may counter the turn 2 hymn, but almost every game i get against black they drop a turn 1 duress, and if they arent stupid they may hold out for an extra mana. Also they are terrible against cabal therapy. Right now, i can not think of any reason to run disrupt over divert (its 1:30 am and my mind isn't working right, i suppose draw could be a problem...) I suppose it doesn't cantrip but it seems like it would be great when staling to set up the combo.
Thanks for listening! And I'll be trying diverts in my board if i can locate 4 before the tourny on saterday.

[Rood]

Yo!
On the subject of gigadrowse, I can't see it coming in handy. The only place I could see them used is post board in place of resets but, that defeats the purpose of the deck, and wastes more space than the 2 Brain freezes sideboard plan.

Though one thing that has annoyed me is the disrupts in the board is, they are not that useful. The fact is they may counter the turn 2 hymn, but almost every game i get against black they drop a turn 1 duress, and if they arent stupid they may hold out for an extra mana. Also they are terrible against cabal therapy. Right now, i can not think of any reason to run disrupt over divert (its 1:30 am and my mind isn't working right, i suppose draw could be a problem...) I suppose it doesn't cantrip but it seems like it would be great when staling to set up the combo.
Thanks for listening! And I'll be trying diverts in my board if i can locate 4 before the tourny on saterday.
Divert looks good but I'm curious as to how good it really is. This looks like the replacement to Disrupt but the non-cantrip might hurt you. But the fact that you can divert a hymn or Duress with screw with your opponent.

[Lego]

But the fact that you can divert a hymn or Duress with screw with your opponent.

I made this mistake as well. You can't Divert Duress as it says "Target opponent" Gerrard's Verdict, Hymn, Vindicate, Sinkhole, and even Cabal Therapy are all good targets though. It can do funny things in counter wars as well, essentially countering two of your opponents counterspells (Divert a Force to counter a Counterspell)

[Anusien]

Yo!
On the subject of gigadrowse, I can't see it coming in handy. The only place I could see them used is post board in place of resets but, that defeats the purpose of the deck, and wastes more space than the 2 Brain freezes sideboard plan.

Though one thing that has annoyed me is the disrupts in the board is, they are not that useful. The fact is they may counter the turn 2 hymn, but almost every game i get against black they drop a turn 1 duress, and if they arent stupid they may hold out for an extra mana. Also they are terrible against cabal therapy. Right now, i can not think of any reason to run disrupt over divert (its 1:30 am and my mind isn't working right, i suppose draw could be a problem...) I suppose it doesn't cantrip but it seems like it would be great when staling to set up the combo.
Thanks for listening! And I'll be trying diverts in my board if i can locate 4 before the tourny on saterday.
Well, Divert doesn't stop Gilded Light. It also has trouble with stuff like Boil or Duress.
Hey, if BW wants to give me a free turn before playing Hymn, that's wonderful. You can cycle it, if nothing else.
The other contender for that slot, in my opinion, is Spell Snare. It's been mentioned before, and while it doesn't stop REB, it does stop Mage, Hymn, Werebear, Counterspell, Sinkhole, Abeyance, Gilded Light and some other goodies.

By the way, Gigadrowse can't replace Reset, that's crazy talk. I can't see it being worthwhile because it still doesn't cut off Force of Will.

[GreenOne]

This has been discussed in the Spell Snare thread too. As reference, this is a summary of what was said in comparing the possible counters.
However I think that Divert shines against Deadguy, and spell snare might be good vs Gro (needs testing).

____________________

Against force of will Divert acts as a 2 sink effect, i see it not particularly bad in this scenario. It's also true that you can do silly tricks with divert like respond to force of will trying to combo out, the opponent counters one of your spell, you divert force of will to the other counter. :eek:

Against Sinkhole, Hymn:
Divert shines, Disrupt is great, Spell Snare is good, Force Spike is passable.

Against Counterspells targeting High Tide:
Spell Snare is good. Disrupt might be awesome. Divert might work, Force Spike probably won't.

Against Meddling Mage:
Spell Snare is great. Force Spike may or may not work. Divert and Disrupt are useless.

Against Force of Will:
Disrupt might be awesome, Divert and Force Spike are probably useless, Spell Snare is useless.

Against Duress:
Disrupt shines. Force spike is good. Spell Snare and Divert are useless.

Against Vindicate:
Divert is simply great. Disrupt shines. Force spike is good. Spell Snare useless.

Against Ritual -> Specter
Force spike is great, disrupt shines, spell snare and divert useless.

Against Ritual -> duress, Hymn
Disrupt shines, force spike ok, spell snare and divert useless (they discard 'em with duress, and then hymn)

Against Cabal therapy:
Divert and disrupt shines, force spike might be ok, spell snare useless.

Against Pyrostatic Pillar:
Spell snare shines, force spike might be ok, divert and disrupt useless.

The fact that it doesn't cantrip is the real problem concerning spell snare. I think solidarity can't support it: remand acts like a combo enabler, disrupt cantrips during combo. Divert doesn't cantrip but it enables 2 or 3 for ones, and that is like the card advantage done by cantripping.

[urza_insane]

I was wondering if somebody could post a Sideboard guide for the deck. I've looked over most of the thread and couldn't find anything recent.

I assume Hydroblast comes in for remand against anything red, but what is taken out for Disrupts? Are they boarded in against Threshold? I have heard many people say how much they dislike them in that match.

Any help would be great. Thanks!

[URABAHN]

Posted by Poron in the Rezzet thread


solidarity sucks.

chalice of the void by 1 and the game is gone. the only thing you have to counter are his bounce to your chalice and you can even kill him by lands

I'd respond to him over there, but I feel it's more appropriate in this thread. Po-ron, it's not about countering the bounce, it's about killing the Solidarity player before they can go off. If you give Solidarity all the time in the world, it doesn't matter if you have a counter for their bounce spell. Solidarity players play counters as well, y'know.

[Lukas Preuss]

Chalice for 1 without a decent clock doesn't do a shit against solidarity... Even if you're not bouncing it, you can still play a whole bunch of 1cc spells followed by a Brain Freeze or two...

[Poron]

without high tide? ou man i remember you there's another player in the game eh?! he disrupts you, attack you, etc. with a chalice down in how many turn are u supposed to win? 8-9?

[Kojiro]

without high tide? ou man i remember you there's another player in the game eh?! he disrupts you, attack you, etc. with a chalice down in how many turn are u supposed to win? 8-9?
You're probably right. Mods, you can go ahead and close this thread now.

[herbig]

without high tide? ou man i remember you, there's another player in the game eh?! he disrupts you, attacks you, etc. with a chalice down in how many turns are u supposed to win? 8-9?

You'd be surprised how often you will still win once Chalice comes down. If they don't present a threat greater than two power along with it there really is no reason to worry. Also, please read the forum rules regarding grammar and test the deck against opponents.

[Poron]

ehi ehi there's no problem at all :D. if u still can win with chalice ok, you play better then those i played against when sided with chalice.

no problems

Please read the LMF rules about posting. (http://mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=624) Proper grammar, including spelling and punctuation, is among the requirements.
- TOOL

[Pyrokinesis]

Gigadrowse was mentioned towards the top of this page, and rejected. I don't think it's being given enough credit. As a Cunning Wish target, it can give you a chance against Threshhold, cutting their counterspell power down to Force of Will*. This does bring the difficulty of going off on your own turn... which is nothing compared to going off against Gro.

*Unless they run Stifle. WHich they don't, unless you lose anyway.

[Rambo]

Why not just wish for turnabout?

Please avoid one-line posts.
- TOOL

[urza_insane]

Gigadrowse was mentioned towards the top of this page, and rejected. I don't think it's being given enough credit. As a Cunning Wish target, it can give you a chance against Threshhold, cutting their counterspell power down to Force of Will*. This does bring the difficulty of going off on your own turn... which is nothing compared to going off against Gro.

*Unless they run Stifle. WHich they don't, unless you lose anyway.

The reason it's not good in this deck is because it does about the same thing Turnabout does, except worse. If you want to run it as a single wish target though, I don't see it hurting the deck too much. If it works for you then keep playing it.

[emidln]

Gigadrowse was mentioned towards the top of this page, and rejected. I don't think it's being given enough credit. As a Cunning Wish target, it can give you a chance against Threshhold, cutting their counterspell power down to Force of Will*. This does bring the difficulty of going off on your own turn... which is nothing compared to going off against Gro.

*Unless they run Stifle. WHich they don't, unless you lose anyway.

From my testing, going off against Gro games 2 and 3 is actually rather simple (at least UGW and UGB). The idea that has worked for me is to let them resolve men but deny them draw spells/cantrips. They'll either (a) stall on land or (b) stall on counterspells. Either way allows you to combo out without much trouble.

Red blasts complicate things with UGR, but that doesn't appear to be in my meta.

[Nightmare]

From my testing, going off against Gro games 2 and 3 is actually rather simple (at least UGW and UGB). The idea that has worked for me is to let them resolve men but deny them draw spells/cantrips. They'll either (a) stall on land or (b) stall on counterspells. Either way allows you to combo out without much trouble.

Red blasts complicate things with UGR, but that doesn't appear to be in my meta.If you let me resolve men all day, I'll be happy. Counter my cantrips, they still hit the Yard. And if Meddling Mage resolves while you're busy stopping Brainstorms, you will not win.

[Pyrokinesis]

The reason it's not good in this deck is because it does about the same thing Turnabout does, except worse. If you want to run it as a single wish target though, I don't see it hurting the deck too much. If it works for you then keep playing it.
All Turnabout can do is bait a counter in the endgame stack war. If you even try playing it without High Tide having resolved, it'll just be countered. Gigadrowse, however, has replicate. They can't counter every single copy, and countering any is pointless. You play it at the end of their turn (tapping yourself out, as bad as that sounds) and go off during your own*. This, as I stated, reduces their counter power signficantly, since all they can do is alt-cast Force of Will.

As for Disrupt targeting cantrips, that hasn't worked very well for me. You need to draw them early and they're useless after your opponent hits three mana (not to mention how terrible they are in the endgame stack war).

* You could try High Tide, Gigadrowse you, next phase so your mana pool empties, untap spell. However, you need to have a Force of Will or for your opponent not to have one, as I doubt you'd have enough mana to fight a stack war afterwards. It could be a better plan, regardless.

[Ewokslayer]

All Turnabout can do is bait a counter in the endgame stack war.
Turnabout can also bait counters before stack wars, or uptap all your lands, or tap all there creatures.


As for Disrupt targeting cantrips, that hasn't worked very well for me. You need to draw them early and they're useless after your opponent hits three mana (not to mention how terrible they are in the endgame stack war). QFT, Disrupt sucks against Gro.



* You could try High Tide, Gigadrowse you, next phase so your mana pool empties, untap spell. Using Gigadrowse in an phase but end of turn seems poor as they can Daze a copy and replay the land they bounced and then have Counterspell mana up with a resolved High Tide.

[Obfuscate Freely]

Using Gigadrowse in an phase but end of turn seems poor as they can Daze a copy and replay the land they bounced and then have Counterspell mana up with a resolved High Tide.
I don't think it'd be unreasonable to expect a Daze to actually counter the copy it targets. Thus, if they have a chance to replay the land they return to their hand, they'll have UU open without you resolving High Tide.

I guess you hope to have more lands in play than they do, though. Afterall, Gigadrowse does rely on you having at least as many lands as your opponent, unless you want to burn untap effects to play it.

Oh, and fetchlands own Gigadrowse, too. It sounds really terrible.

[MattH]

Gigadrowse is, however, probably a pretty good Spring Tide weapon, not the least against Solidarity.

[Burnout]

Gigadrowse is, however, probably a pretty good Spring Tide weapon, not the least against Solidarity.

I don't understand this really! Is this a joke? I mean in response you can tap lands and take mana out of it --> untapspell

[herbig]

I don't understand this really! Is this a joke? I mean in response you can tap lands and take mana out of it --> untapspell
The idea would be to tap them out on their end of turn, but yeah, Turnabout would counter that. At least they would be down one Turnabout.

[Squircifer]

Greetings all...

I have decided to go out and get the cards to run a high tide deck. But before I actually trade/pay for the upper dollar cards, I need to ask if the deck is still worth it to play/buy/have?

I could proxy it all up and play for fun, but I am very tempted to have it for local tourneys and all that. I have been reading the posts and have a build in mind that I would like to get... most expensive will be the resets I think.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Squircifer

[mogote]

I have decided to go out and get the cards to run a high tide deck. But before I actually trade/pay for the upper dollar cards, I need to ask if the deck is still worth it to play/buy/have?
I would say that really depends on your metagame. If you know you'll be facing lots of Deadguy Ale and Threshold decks in your tournaments there will probably be better decks to choose from. In a field with more aggro and slow control decks Solidarity could be a great metagame foil. So it really depends.

[Wynk]

Just curious, what mana base does Solidarity run? Is there an accepted number of fetchlands in Solidarity? Most lists in the last 5 or so pages have 6-8 fetchlands and about 18-19 lands total.

[Lukas Preuss]

18 lands is usually enough, since you run Opt, Peek, Brainstorm and Impulse as well (you really want to play a land every turn before the combo, but you don't want to draw them during the combo turn).
Most lists run 6 fetchlands, since 8 fetchlands can get you dangerously into the range of some Aggro or Burn decks. If this is not a meta concern, you can easily go up to 8 fetchlands... 6 is usually enough to make Brainstorm good, though.

[MattH]

Just curious, what mana base does Solidarity run? Is there an accepted number of fetchlands in Solidarity? Most lists in the last 5 or so pages have 6-8 fetchlands and about 18-19 lands total.
I think you answered your own question.

[Wynk]

Lol, thanks Lukas for the confirmation. I just remember the days when Solidarity only ran islands and refused to run any nonbasic lands, even fetchlands, in fear of land destruction/stifle.

Thus when I saw the prevalance of fetch lands I was a bit confused and wasn't sure if the change was supported by the community or not.

[NANTUKO_SHADY]

I have to admit.. I love this deck, especially since I picked up 4x english resets for cheap. It goldfishes well and I like the deck's ability to get out of sticky situations with your wish board... One question.. I realize that threshold is probably one of our not-so-good matchups... but with so much threshold crawling around.. what can we do to defend ourselves against threshold all day??... There must be a breaktrhouugh card we can utilize to smash threshold to the floor.

[troopatroop]

Solidarity can only play instants. Threshold is also very resilient due to counters and cantrips. Their clock is quick and untouchable. I highly doubt that there is a single tech card that beats all of that.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Repeal would be pretty good. It's a Repulse against Werebears/Mages that can also return a troublesome Tanglewire or Sphere of Resistence that might come up.

[FallenOmnipotent]

I post this here b/c you guys would know it the best:
What single card gives you the most trouble? (e.g. Boil, Rule of Law, Glowrider, etc.)

[My Name Is Scott]

I post this here b/c you guys would know it the best:
What single card gives you the most trouble? (e.g. Boil, Rule of Law, Glowrider, etc.)
That's an easy one, Tropical Island.

[Zelyon]

Being a pure combo deck, there has to be one accepted final build.

The build that is the fastest and most consistent.

Seeing as how the original deck posted in almost 18 months old, I would love to see the current accepted final build posted here by a veteran who has tested this deck a good bit and hopefully won tourneys with it recently.

Thanks.

[urza_insane]

Being a pure combo deck, there has to be one accepted final build.

The build that is the fastest and most consistent.

Seeing as how the original deck posted in almost 18 months old, I would love to see the current accepted final build posted here by a veteran who has tested this deck a good bit and hopefully won tourneys with it recently.

Thanks.


Wow, quite a few demands and assumptions. Lets see...

#1 - There does not have to be one accepted build. No deck should have one accepted final build - every meta is different and changes should be made accordingly.

#2 - There are multiple lists only a few months old if you look on the most recent pages. Take a few seconds and you'll find them. Herbig's list from the Dual Land Draft or Deep6er's from Dual for Duels are probably your best bets.

#3 - The most important part of this deck isn't having the most recent list, it's testing the hell out of it. A few cards wont make as much of a difference as your skill with the deck will.

Good Luck

[dazed and confused]

I have been playing this deck for a while now and have practiced for months before i ever tried to play it in a tournament. The problem i have been facing is, What do i side out for disrupts? Every time i have played this deck i have not sideboarded. I know that sideboarding would have helped me against Deadguy Ale in the last tournament i played but, I never want to take anything out of the main-deck.

Can anyone help me with sideboarding?

[jrp]

Sideboarding is pretty tough with this deck, and I'm not sure that my stategy is correct, but I'll go ahead and throw it out there anyways (I want to get my post count up anyways :-) ).

Against Deadguy Ale
On the play:
-2 Peek -1 Flash of Insight -1 Force of Will
+4 Disrupt

On the draw:
-2 Peek -1 Opt -1 Flash of Insight
+4 Disrupt

I've been taking out one Force of Will on the play because hopefully I will have turn 1 Disrupt, turn 2 Disrupt or Remand, and I probably won't need more than one Force of Will throughout the entire game. Plus if it is necessary, having the Force in the sideboard (to grab via Cunning Wish) is sometimes nice against turn 3 Hymn/Vindicate/Sinkhole, especially when you have the turn 4 win. I leave all the Forces in on the draw though because I don't want Dark Ritual -> Hymn or Hypnotic Specter to happen. I would love to hear how Herbig, Ewokslayer, and Deep6er sideboard for this matchup.

-Jim

[herbig]

I don't really have a definate sideboard plan, but normally for Deadguy I would take out Remands for Disrupts, since they do essentially the same thing, with Disrupt being a turn faster. They are mostly about gaining tempo, but having too many can lead you to fizzle. Flash is also a card I often side out in a fast match like Deadguy. Also, nearly every game two I side in Chain of Vapor in anticipation of any random permanent they may have that will hinder you. That brings your bounce spell count from 3 to 4, which can often be the difference. Against Grow, this also gets around the double Mages naming Wish and Brain Freeze, which actually did happen to me once...

[Ewokslayer]

I haven't settled on a board plan against Deadguy mostly because I seem to keep boarding wrong against it and losing.
I am very good at drawing Disrupt and Remand in the wrong order in the matchup.
Right now I am trying
-1 Brain Freeze
-1 Cunning Wish
-1 Meditate
-1 Flash of Insight
for
+3 Disrupt
+1 Twincast

I really like Twincast in the matchup. That might be a hold over from the pre-Remand days when I would use Twincast to hymn and sinkhole my opponent to victory.

I am going to test removing Remand for the Disrupts and see what happens as I was doing better against Deadguy and similar decks before Remand was printed.

[GreenOne]

vs Deadguy i usually go:

-2 Peek
-2 Opt
-1 Cunning wish

+4 Disrupt
+1 Snap


Peek isn't much more than "U:draw a card" and so is perfectly substituted by disrupt. Opt is the other less exciting draw spell of the deck.

Snap is used to slow their clock down, bounce a Specter and isn't dead when going off.

I don't side out Flash of Insight because is a good card to get discarded. Sometimes a Hymn, a Virdict or a Specter will touch me and this a good discard target for me.

[AnwarA101]

I don't side out Flash of Insight because is a good card to get discarded. Sometimes a Hymn, a Virdict or a Specter will touch me and this a good discard target for me.

Perhaps if you are really lucky your opponent will Duress Flash of Insight out of your hand. Krieger pulled off this feat against me when I was playing Sui against him.

[Ewokslayer]

vs Deadguy i usually go:

-2 Peek
-2 Opt
-1 Cunning wish

+4 Disrupt
+1 Snap


I have tried something similar to this board plan and I believe it is flawed. Disrupt for one isn't as effective at finding cards as Opt.
By removing the other one mana cantrips you are slowing down the deck's velocity which is very important in this matchup to find land to replace those destroyed by Deadguy.
Additionally, by limiting the one mana cantrips to just Disrupt and Brainstorm you create too many situations where you will be forced to throw Disrupt out just to draw a card and keep searching through your deck.
I find boarding out cards that just sit in your hand waiting to be stripped by Deadguy for Disrupt to be a much better plan.

I have also tried boarding in Snap. It suffers from the fact that it only deals with 1/3 of the bad things they can do to you. And it doesn't draw a card.

[herbig]

I agree with Ewokslayer. Boarding out your cantrips lessens your ability to optimize your hand and cycle to lands. Plus, while Disrupt isn't exactly dead in that it cycles for two, this can be a huge disadvantage when trying to combo early and under the pressure that Deadguy has.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

I side out Force of Will, since I find it to be Hymn to Tourach 5-8 for my opponent against Deadguy and severely impairs the ability to go off when you're functioning off of maybe a Reset and a Meditate.

[Ewokslayer]

Jack could be right, but I like having a answer to a first turn Hyppie on the draw. Perhaps that is a board plan best suited for being on the play?

[urza_insane]

I too agree on the subject of keeping your 1cc draw spells in the deck when boarding - but I don't think boarding Meditate is correct. I've found that one of the best ways to beat Discard decks (such as deadguy) is to play Meditate as a setup spell. Often drawing 4 is worth giving them an extra turn. This play shouldn't always be made, but I've found it to be a worthwhile strategy in certain situations.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Jack could be right, but I like having a answer to a first turn Hyppie on the draw. Perhaps that is a board plan best suited for being on the play?


I also favor Repulse/Repeal over Disrupt, since the real threat to the deck is the clock, and both are much stronger against Threshold. And having answers to say, Sphere of Resistence is nice.

[Muradin]

My sideboardplan against Deadguy is:
-2 peek(doesn't help you at all in this matchup)
-1 flash of insight (the probability that they will discard it for you is not very high)
-1 force of will (you lose another card if you use it)
-1 turnabout(against deadguy you won't have that many lands when you try to go of. So with 3 lands in play and 1 high tide played this gains you exactly 2 mana more for a handcard. I think that is not enough.)
+4 disrupt
+1 twincast

[dazed and confused]

Thank you everyone for all the suggestions, they are all great and i will test out what i find is optimum.

I was olny using the Deadguy Ale as an example. The trouble is sideboarding in general. I have used your advice in last nights tournament and found that i almost always sided out Force of wills or 2 peeks, 1 FoW and 1 Flash of Insight for 4 disrupts or 4 hydroblasts.

Again thank you for the help

[NANTUKO_SHADY]

What would you people say the optimal sideboard against Threshold is...?? I think I have a general idea but some input from deep6er or herbig would be sweet..

[herbig]

I honestly haven't had the time to play much Legacy this summer since I've been getting into Vintage, so I couldn't really tell you exactly. My last major Legacy tournament was the Dual Land Draft, where siding in Brainfreezes definately helped against Threshold, but I really like IBA's suggestion of Repeal a few posts back, as well as his reasoning behind it. I'm going to be playing two tournaments this weekend with Repeal and I'll post how that works out. I'm also considering dropping the maindeck Brainfreezes to just one, with 2 or 3 in the board since the more I play the deck the rarer it is that I don't get the option of playing everything in my library anyways, Threshold excluded. I'd like to know what people think of that as well.

[herbig]

I went 3-2 last weekend at Altered running 4x Repeals in the board instead of Disrupts. I wasn't very pleased with them. I beat Deadguy round 1 without Disrupts but wished I had them to side in. Second round losing to suicide black was what really convinced me that Disrupts should have been with me. I never got to play against Gro where they might have come in handy. I think for now I'm going to be sticking with about the same deck I've been running, which I'll be playing at Gencon.

This thread has been pretty stagnant for awhile, how does everyone feel about the more or less standard build of Deep6er's, and how are you deviating from his list?

[GreenOne]

How does everyone feel about the more or less standard build of Deep6er's, and how are you deviating from his list?

I tested the divert plan a lot (testing gauntlet was IGGy, Goblins, UGW Gro, UGR Gro, Deadguy, Loam Confinament, Solidarity, Zoo, Belcher, Rift, Aluren) and is great vs Deadguy, but sucks against everything but it.

My choices (differences from Deep6er Richmond D4D):
No changes maindeck. Sometimes i run -2 peek +2 opt if i feel there will be less Gro in the tournament.

SB changes:
-1 Evacuation (no angel stompy in my meta)
-1 Twincast
-1 Hydroblast (with all the goblins hate running around the deck is losing presence in my metagame)

+1 Echoing Truth/Repeal (i needed another bouncer, used to take Truth, now testing Repeal and NOT loving it much)
+2 Snap

Snap is a must. I found it useful in really many matchups:

Goblin: They side out incinerators to bring in hate. I find it better than turnabout because it can buy you time before the 4th or 5th turn (5th turn if they have an active Port) and so before being at -2 life. It's tempo advantage against Lackey on the play and you can play draw spells in the same turn you play it (unlike turnabout). Watch out for SGC!

UGW gro: They side out Swords to bring in hate (or a blue card, Bardo docet). You can get rid of a meddling mage and combo in the same turn! It buys you an extra turn bouncing a werebear (like turnabout but not easily dazeable and they have to play again the threat, tapping some of their sources) when comboing off is not a dead card as it generates some mana (unless the opponent has only mongeese in the board).

UGR gro: Don't side Snaps in. They'll have 4 legal targets in the entire deck (werebears), and you don't need to get rid of Meddling Mages.

DeadGuy: Bouncering a pumped Shade or a hippie is great tempo advantage (as they have to replay the threat unless they tapped out to pump shade and have a slow clock). In this matchup Snap is better than turnabout because gets active before, consumes their tempo, doen's rely on having 4 mana and you can play a draw spell the same turn you play it.

Vs Random Aggro: i side it in vs heavy equipment decks like Faerie Stompy (God bless Eldariel for creating that deck, it can really unbalance the format). you can gain time bouncing equipped creatures or Sea Drakes (this gains a LOT of tempo). Don't side it in vs decks running burn.


The matchups where i found Snap useful appeared to be some of the difficult matchups.

Have you (Herbig and Deep6er) tested a couple (not more) Snaps in your SB?

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

I went 3-2 last weekend at Altered running 4x Repeals in the board instead of Disrupts. I wasn't very pleased with them. I beat Deadguy round 1 without Disrupts but wished I had them to side in. Second round losing to suicide black was what really convinced me that Disrupts should have been with me. I never got to play against Gro where they might have come in handy. I think for now I'm going to be sticking with about the same deck I've been running, which I'll be playing at Gencon.


The theory was always that Repeal would be worse than Disrupt against Sui strategies and decks packing Hymn to Tourach/Sinkhole, but usually better against decks that are more likely to be relevant.

Personally, I've current cut Force entirely from the maindeck as an experiment, running the Repeals in their slot, and so far I'm pretty happy with the change. Few decks run anything worth Forcing game 1, and if you can keep a deck off it's clock long enough to shape a decent hand and get a fistful of lands out there it's pretty easy to beat even aggro-control strategies. The only time I'd really miss Force is against first turn Lackey on the draw.

[Mad Zur]

Stalling Gro's creatures is not a good plan. Remanding them is bad enough because you don't end up ahead in mana and cycling is bad for your card quality. You may not buy a turn, but even if you do, the odds are low that you'll be able to take advantage of it because spending a card that could have been manipulation or a threat on a random card from your library is rarely helpful. Repeal is even worse than this: not only will it always cost you more mana than the opponent, it also can't target all their creatures. In addition, it has no alternative use in that matchup, which Remand thankfully does.

If you want to board against Gro, I'd suggest something that's actually threatening in a counter war, like Twincast.

[AnwarA101]

I went 3-2 last weekend at Altered running 4x Repeals in the board instead of Disrupts. I wasn't very pleased with them. I beat Deadguy round 1 without Disrupts but wished I had them to side in. Second round losing to suicide black was what really convinced me that Disrupts should have been with me. I never got to play against Gro where they might have come in handy. I think for now I'm going to be sticking with about the same deck I've been running, which I'll be playing at Gencon.

This thread has been pretty stagnant for awhile, how does everyone feel about the more or less standard build of Deep6er's, and how are you deviating from his list?

Why were you able to beat Deadguy and not Suicide Black? I imagine that Deadguy was running even more disruption than the Sui Black build. Was it the issue of having to deal with a swift clock?

I don't think disrupt is very good against Gro. I imagine you can counter their early cantrips to get tempo, but I think Deep6er found them less than useful in that matchup.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Stalling Gro's creatures is not a good plan. Remanding them is bad enough because you don't end up ahead in mana and cycling is bad for your card quality. You may not buy a turn, but even if you do, the odds are low that you'll be able to take advantage of it because spending a card that could have been manipulation or a threat on a random card from your library is rarely helpful. Repeal is even worse than this: not only will it always cost you more mana than the opponent, it also can't target all their creatures. In addition, it has no alternative use in that matchup, which Remand thankfully does.

If you want to board against Gro, I'd suggest something that's actually threatening in a counter war, like Twincast.


I'm already running 3 Twincast. With 1 as a Wish target.

Nimble Mongoose simply isn't relevant as Werebear, as it kills, by itself, a whole two turns slower. I've yet to play against Gro with Solidarity where the player didn't try to get out a Bear instead of a Mongoose, although I suppose this could theoretically change if they expected me to play Repeal.

I'm just simply baffled as to why you think putting Threshold's clock back a turn isn't relevant. I mean, I suppose if you draw nothing but lands, but then you were going to lose regardless, and Force of Will would be even worse.

Repeal also hits Enforcer/Needle on a Fetchland eot.

[AnwarA101]

I'm already running 3 Twincast. With 1 as a Wish target.

Nimble Mongoose simply isn't relevant as Werebear, as it kills, by itself, a whole two turns slower. I've yet to play against Gro with Solidarity where the player didn't try to get out a Bear instead of a Mongoose, although I suppose this could theoretically change if they expected me to play Repeal.

I'm just simply baffled as to why you think putting Threshold's clock back a turn isn't relevant. I mean, I suppose if you draw nothing but lands, but then you were going to lose regardless, and Force of Will would be even worse.

Repeal also hits Enforcer/Needle on a Fetchland eot.

The Gro player almost never ends up playing more than 1 threat against Solidarity because it has no way to answer it (Repeal is hardly an answer). You spend the rest of your draw spells finding counterspells. Playing Mongoose vs. Werebear isn't that important in my limited experience. You should almost never play Enforcer against Solidarity because they can go off in response and that would be terrible to cut off your counterspells.

[Obfuscate Freely]

I'm just simply baffled as to why you think putting Threshold's clock back a turn isn't relevant. I mean, I suppose if you draw nothing but lands, but then you were going to lose regardless, and Force of Will would be even worse.
Gro can optimize its hand at least as well as Solidarity, if not better, so buying time against them actually decreases your chances of winning until the point in which their library size becomes more relevant (because of storm) than the number of counterspells in their hand.

Bouncing their creatures every once in a while sounds like a very ineffective way of stalling to that point.

[parallax]

Given that the normal method of comboing doesn't work against Threshold, would it be possible to consider non-instant cards to board in against them. I'm thinking either creatures to slow their clock or enchantments to hose their cantrips.

Possibilities: Imaginary Pet, Dandân, Wall of Deciet. Stasis or Back to Basics.

[Mad Zur]

I'm already running 3 Twincast. With 1 as a Wish target. Force of Will, then. Or Counterspell. Something that actually forces your spells through instead of hopes to stall a turn.

Nimble Mongoose simply isn't relevant as Werebear, as it kills, by itself, a whole two turns slower. I've yet to play against Gro with Solidarity where the player didn't try to get out a Bear instead of a Mongoose, although I suppose this could theoretically change if they expected me to play Repeal. I have no clue what kind of Gro players you've been playing against, but that's a decision they should rarely be in a position to make. What they should be doing is choosing between draw spells, not creatures; any creatures they end up with are the ones they couldn't put back in the library.

I'm just simply baffled as to why you think putting Threshold's clock back a turn isn't relevant. I mean, I suppose if you draw nothing but lands, but then you were going to lose regardless, and Force of Will would be even worse. It is relevant, but it's worse than something a real threat could do. A Repeal might stall a turn, essentially getting you two random cards, which might affect your ability to win the counter war. An actual counterspell, however, would be guaranteed to trade with one of theirs. It can even give you four cards if it forces a Meditate through. But the key is, Repeal doesn't always stall a turn. Or do anything at all. A counterspell is always a counterspell, no matter what creatures the opponent has in play.

Repeal also hits Enforcer/Needle on a Fetchland eot. If the Gro player is unable to board out Pithing Needles (any blue card is better) and unable to shuffle one back, he might play it, and the fetchland he names might be in your hand at some point. If so, you might even care. That is, however, so unlikely that it is not a decent argument for a card. Enforcer should never be played.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Force of Will has been less than amazing against Gro for me as each counter they use is already depleting your hand. Stll, ultimately I don't find Repeal to be amazing enough maindeck. I'm still not really fond of Force, which does very little g1.

[herbig]

I don't like the idea of playing non instant answers, not that it is crazy, I just like the ability of sideboard cards to at least do something when they are drawn during comboing. I agree that Force does very little game one, but have no real alternatives aside from more draw, like Peer or something similar. Is anyone playing Solidarity this weekend in Virginia. If only I had a ride, I could use some more duals.

[jrp]

I'll be playing Solidarity on Day 1 at least, even though the field will probably be Gro-heavy. Gro-Dodge™ FTW!!

Quick question...does anyone feel that evacuation is still necessary in the sideboard? I can only recall using it twice, once against Angel Stompy to get True Believer + Mom off the board, and once against Life.dec with multiple Meddling Magi in play. Angel Stompy doesn't usually sideboard True Believer anymore, so I think I might switch my evacuation for a second Echoing Truth (or something else....maybe the last Brain Freeze?).

My current sideboard (Note: All 4 of my Meditate are maindeck):
4 Disrupt
4 Hydroblast
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Turnabout
1 Echoing Truth
1 Brain Freeze
1 Stroke of Genius
1 Twincast
1 Evacuation

[Lukas Preuss]

I'd change Evacuation to another Brain Freeze, especially if you're expecting a Gro-heavy metagame.

[NANTUKO_SHADY]

I don't understand how to play against GRO.. I am fairly new to solidarity.. and I can't win a game against GRO to save my life.. I don't know if I am playing wrong or what.. but what's the general strategy against them???

[urza_insane]

I don't understand how to play against GRO.. I am fairly new to solidarity.. and I can't win a game against GRO to save my life.. I don't know if I am playing wrong or what.. but what's the general strategy against them???

In all honesty, the accepted strategy is to avoid playing against Threshold (UGW Thresh specifically). If you think you'll have to play against a lot of Thresh (I assume you mean the same deck when you say gro) then I wouldn't play Solidarity.

However, if you do get stuck against it, the best plan is to go for multiple smaller Brain Freezes. Wait for them to play multiple spells in a turn and capitalize on that. Throw out a few more cheap spells and Brainfreeze. Then find yourself another Brainfreeze and hope you have enough mana/storm to mill the rest of their deck.

This is all assuming you have 4 Brainfreeze between the main and side.

[NANTUKO_SHADY]

Thanks urza.... now.. what exactly would be the sideboarding plan for thresh???

[Tao]

First of all: I am no Solidarity player, so my suggestion could be totally wrong: I was wondering if anyone considered Sensei's Divining Top as a card for this deck.

It is too weak for the maindeck but maybe it is a great SB-Choice against decks that play a lot of Discard or LD.

[Ewokslayer]

Sensei's Divining Top has several problems with it for Solidarity.
1) It is not an instant
2) It is slow
3) It is mana-intensive
4) It doesn't really do much

[dontbiteitholmes]

Soooo.... I think it's about time to shift this discussion to the Solidarity mirror. Is Hindering Touch the answer? Seems like it could break the mirror if you were the one running it.

[herbig]

Is Hindering Touch the answer?
Elaborate on that because I can't see how it would help at all.

Also, does anyone know any of the lists from last weekend? I'm really interested in discussing those.

[dontbiteitholmes]

Elaborate on that because I can't see how it would help at all.

Also, does anyone know any of the lists from last weekend? I'm really interested in discussing those.
Umm ok well as I was walking up to people playing the mirror and there were like 10 spells on the stack with High Tide in effect I was thinking how sick it would be if you could throw about 15 Storm copies of "counter target spell unless it's controller pays 2" into the mix. Also I'm assuming it would be a fairly good answer to Brainfreeze being cast. In the end I'm going to go with the response of "you asking me how this helps the mirror is like asking how to play the deck, I could write for 10 pages and barely scratch the number of situations where holding a Hindering Touch would be cool in the mirror."
As to whether or not it is a good idea that will be left up to people with more experience in the deck then me to figure out but I just figured I'd throw it out there since all of a sudden all those Resets that got sold for $20 seem to be showing up all over the place and you can pretty much count on playing the mirror at a large tourney.

[Lukas Preuss]

I played the Solidarity mirror once at a tournament and noticed that Disrupts are pretty good. Just counter your opponents first spells (Brainstorm, Impulse, you name it). If you're lucky, you might make him miss land drops. At the very least, you're drawing a card and he is not.

If you disrupted your opponent for long enough, you might want to combo out on his turn's draw phase as fast as possible (not later than turn 4). He will have only 3 lands and won't be able to use Reset, if you're lucky.

If you don't manage to get into a better position by turn 4, you should wait for him to combo out on your turn. Than combo in response to him (to one of his draw spells would be best). Basically, it comes down to skill and luck.


I think Disrupt is the card you need in the mirror, since it is also good against Deadguy. Twincast (!) and Brainfreeze are good, as well.

[T is for TOOL]

Clearly you people have yet to realize the secert mirror tech that is Dandan! No one wants to attempt to combo first in the mirror, as you must first supply the High Tides to your opponent. The solution is to drop a 4/1 on turn 2 or 3 while you are safe from their combo and ride it to victory. :smile:

[Ewokslayer]

"you asking me how this helps the mirror is like asking how to play the deck, I could write for 10 pages and barely scratch the number of situations where holding a Hindering Touch would be cool in the mirror."

Cool and effective are not the same thing. Solidarity can do many cool things but usually they aren't the best path to take. It doesn't particulary help that Hindering Touch would have to be in multiples in your sideboard to show up and would be completely useless in everyother matchup.

I played the Solidarity mirror once at a tournament and noticed that Disrupts are pretty good. Just counter your opponents first spells (Brainstorm, Impulse, you name it). If you're lucky, you might make him miss land drops. At the very least, you're drawing a card and he is not.

If you disrupted your opponent for long enough, you might want to combo out on his turn's draw phase as fast as possible (not later than turn 4). He will have only 3 lands and won't be able to use Reset, if you're lucky.

If you don't manage to get into a better position by turn 4, you should wait for him to combo out on your turn. Than combo in response to him (to one of his draw spells would be best). Basically, it comes down to skill and luck.


I think Disrupt is the card you need in the mirror, since it is also good against Deadguy. Twincast (!) and Brainfreeze are good, as well.
Disrupt is not good in the mirror at all. It quickly becomes irrelevant and doesn't dig deep to optimize the hand.
Going off as fast as possible is very dangerous as you tend not to have the mana to respond to there spells when they try to highjack the stack. They may only have three lands in play but you are casting the high tide for them.

The mirror comes down to making land drops and knowing when your hand can combo off and when it has to wait for your opponent to try for it.
There isn't one correct answer in whether you should be the aggressor or not in the matchup it requires the evaluating the gamestate constantly.

Though winning game one helps alot as it forces your opponent into the aggressor role regardless of the quality of their hand to fullfill that role.


Clearly you people have yet to realize the secert mirror tech that is Dandan! No one wants to attempt to combo first in the mirror, as you must first supply the High Tides to your opponent. The solution is to drop a 4/1 on turn 2 or 3 while you are safe from their combo and ride it to victory.
You are such a bad man.

[NANTUKO_SHADY]

Augh.... the solidarity mirror is a headache in the making.. my advice, bring plenty of tylenol and lots of water.. besides that, I would have to agree that Hindering Touch seems hardly useful, it is indeed useless in almost every other match-up, and it doesn't seem strong enough against solidarity for it to be there in the first place. Now I'm not exactly sure what the card is to break the solidarity mirror, but hopefully there is something out there. And btw... what exactly do you all think is the best sideboard strategy in the solidarity mirror???

[ShaheenSoorani]

Spam deleted. Please do not post personal messages in any forum, especially the LMF. Please read the Site Rules (http://mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=624) -Jander

[Spartacus210]

Disclaimer: I do not claim to know this deck. I just screw around with it a little bit.

But I think Hindering Touch could be interesting. It would come down to a meta-call, but maybe a 1-of in the SB for Wish purposes would be pretty good. They Brain Freeze, off their High Tides you should be able to ramp up a little bit of mana and Wish for Touch. Merits some kind of testing?

[Eldariel]

If you want something to that effect, just run Stifle on the wishboard. It has other uses besides stopping opponent's win condition (in other match-ups) and only costs 1 to boot.

[Mad Zur]

If you have enough mana to cast Wish->Stifle or especially Wish->Touch, it would almost always be better to let the Freeze hit you until it mills a Flash of Insight, allowing you to continue to respond without spending a card.

[Drkdstryer]

Letting Freeze hit you until you mill a Flash, and then trying to Stifle the Freeze to save yourself does nothing - the trigger on storm has already gone off and there is nothing left to Stifle. However, you can still use Hindering Touch to counter everything left on the stack.

I love the idea of Hindering Touch, personally.

[Mad Zur]

That's not what I mean. You don't need to stop the remaining copies at all, just kill your opponent before they resolve.

[Eldariel]

If both are low on mana, you can even just freeze them out in response to their freeze. This of course provided that they can't Stroke you out this turn (the likely scenario being them going off on your turn and dying in their drawstep. Since you can't use Resets, it might be that you're a bit low on mana).

[matyburger]

Having played the mirror a handful of times, I see it as coming down to one player making a move (normally on his opponent's turn), and then a gigantic stack war being fought over the first untap effect... Pretty much whoever has their untap effect resolve first is going to win the matchup...

Really, the mirror match doesn't need Stifle, Hindering Touch, or for that matter, any card other than the 3x SB Twincasts... It comes down to one (or more) critical stack wars, at the end of which, one player will be essentially out of resources (mana, cards in hand), and the other player will be able to go off virtually unimpeded from that point forward.

[NANTUKO_SHADY]

I would have to agree with matyburger on this one.. cards such as Stifle and Hindering touch only go so far in preventing the opponent from going off. If they win the stack war and have access to more control of the stack and more resources... most likely Stifle and Hindering touch's powers will be quite limited. However, possibly taking outt he evacuation for a Stifle in the board wouldn't be a terible idea. I do like the idea of Stifle better than Hindering touch. Stifle seems to do more and has more random uses in other match-ups as well. I know the issue was brought up before, but no one really touched base on it. What is the best sideboard strategy and gameplan against u/w/g u/g/r Thresh?? I tend to board out 4x Remand and bring in 4x Disrupt in an attempt to hose their early resource spells and keep them off the counters they want. But every time I am matched against Thresh, I lose. I don't know if I am playing it all wrong or what?? I try to go off in sessions with multiple little brainfreezes.. but it never seems to work. Their clock is too fast, which makes it so I can't even have enough time to "go off" again after I have spent most of my hand from previous turns. Input would be nice, seeming as I do not want to lose to Thresh and 0-2 drop in the Dual Land Draft.... :wink:

[GreenOne]

Many Solidarity builds ran 3xwincast in the sideboard (including Deep6er) at the D4D instead of BEB. Is it a metagame choice for the mirror and control (if it was expected) or not? wasn't goblin rampant enought to justify the SB BEB?


Is the current shared sideboard packing 3x twincast instead of BEB?
Is it a metagame call?
Why?

[Lukas Preuss]

Many Solidarity builds ran 3xwincast in the sideboard (including Deep6er) at the D4D instead of BEB. Is it a metagame choice for the mirror and control (if it was expected) or not? wasn't goblin rampant enought to justify the SB BEB?


Is the current shared sideboard packing 3x twincast instead of BEB?
Is it a metagame call?
Why?

I think BEBs are not necessarily needed if you don't expect a lot of Red hate (Pyrostatic Pillar, Sirroco, etc.). These cards can win the game on their own, because they are devastating in some cases. But if Goblins don't pack any hate, the smart Solidarity player will most likely win the game without Blasts, because without any help from the sideboard (game 1), Solidarity is faster or more disruptive (FoW, Remand) than Goblins. If you look at the D4D's decklists, you will notice that many of the Goblin players didn't run any red anti Solidarity cards in their sideboards. They ran Gaea's Blessing (wtf?), Armageddon, etc. But BEB doesn't help against those cards.

So yes, I think this might be the correct sideboard choice when you expect the mirror match but no hate from red decks.

[NANTUKO_SHADY]

Hm... I will have to mess around with the 3x Twincast... I am currently testing with just one Twincast in the board, perhaps more would be convenient. However, I like the reasurrance of BEB in the board. Also, what is everyone's opinion on running 1x Meditate in the board rather than 4x mainboard?? Also, is anyone planning on going to the DLD in Syracuse that plans on piloting solidarity??

[GreenOne]

Ok, this make sense.
But are Twincast a valuable resource to fight threshold (counter war) or BW confidant / BR sui (additional disruption) too?

This may seem a noobish question, but i never tested Twincast a lot..
vs which matchups do people side 'em in?

Just to be sure, you can twincast an opposing Reset to untap your lands even if is your turn, right?

[Krieger]

Ok, this make sense.
But are Twincast a valuable resource to fight threshold (counter war) or BW confidant / BR sui (additional disruption) too?

This may seem a noobish question, but i never tested Twincast a lot..
vs which matchups do people side 'em in?



You side in the twincast against threshold only and the mirror. You side it in in the place of remand. This allows you to get key spells to resolve.


Just to be sure, you can twincast an opposing Reset to untap your lands even if is your turn, right?

Yes because it is a copy it is not being played.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

If you side it in against the mirror and Threshold, wouldn't you just be better off at that point playing it main and the Remands side? Especially as Twincast also lets you combo off faster/without High Tide more effectively against Goblins, who have no chance of countering your original target game 1?

[Lukas Preuss]

If you side it in against the mirror and Threshold, wouldn't you just be better off at that point playing it main and the Remands side? Especially as Twincast also lets you combo off faster/without High Tide more effectively against Goblins, who have no chance of countering your original target game 1?

I think this is a great idea... just this morning I toyed around a bit with my Solidarity deck (haven't picked it up for months), and I thought that I would really like to cut the Remands (I was only running 3 copies) for 2 Twincast and 1 Brain Freeze. This would give the deck a better game 1 against Threshold. It would make the deck faster, as well, although it would lack some of the disruption.

What do you guys think?

[GreenOne]

I didn't test twincast a lot (i just play 1 maindeck and 0-1 side). But i think remands are great disruption and combo cards. Slowing down goblins a turn can win you games. Dunno, just find twincast too situational to run in many copies.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

I've found it really hard to lose to Goblins unless they get first turn Lackey, in which case Remand becomes almost useless, where Twincast gives you greater speed and power, and a good deal less dead cards whilst comboing off. Remand only seems preferrable against lower tier decks and Deadguy Ale, which isn't seeing much play and is a lesser threat than Threshold, both in terms of numbers seen and difficulty of the game.

[Tacosnape]

I've found it to be a lot better to have both Remand AND Twincast in the mirror, as Twincast can copy their counterspells and combo pieces, and Remand can allow your spells to dodge Force of Will.

I've been cutting High Tide in the mirror (It can still be Cunning Wished for), which has been working really well, as I've just been borrowing the High Tides of my opponent, which has been netting me excellent resource advantage. And once I get about eight or nine lands, I can go off without it while still having mana open to respond to whatever I need to respond to. I have no idea if there's some crucial flaw in this plan I haven't thought of, though.

[Ewokslayer]

I've found it really hard to lose to Goblins unless they get first turn Lackey, in which case Remand becomes almost useless, where Twincast gives you greater speed and power, and a good deal less dead cards whilst comboing off. Remand only seems preferrable against lower tier decks and Deadguy Ale, which isn't seeing much play and is a lesser threat than Threshold, both in terms of numbers seen and difficulty of the game.

Remand only seems preferrable against lower tier decks and Deadguy Ale,
Isn't that statement redundant?
Considering the Tier 1 decks are Solidarity, Goblins, and Threshold I wouldn't say that Remand isn't good against the top Tier.
It is ok to decent in the mirror (It isn't the worst card in the deck but it certaintly isn't twincast.)
Against Goblins it makes game one much easier and does very often maintain its usefullness in the face of a first turn Lackey. Its power is deminished significantly in that case but it can still buy you another turn or so depending on the Goblins they are dropping off it.
Against Threshold, it blows. alot.

Even if your statement was correct and Remand was only good against the lower tier decks that still represents about 64% of all the decks at a Legacy Tournament.


I've found it to be a lot better to have both Remand AND Twincast in the mirror, as Twincast can copy their counterspells and combo pieces, and Remand can allow your spells to dodge Force of Will.

I've been cutting High Tide in the mirror (It can still be Cunning Wished for), which has been working really well, as I've just been borrowing the High Tides of my opponent, which has been netting me excellent resource advantage. And once I get about eight or nine lands, I can go off without it while still having mana open to respond to whatever I need to respond to. I have no idea if there's some crucial flaw in this plan I haven't thought of, though.
The crucial flaw in that plan is that you have no way of going off yourself. You will be forced into taking the defensive role regardless of your hand. This is especially bad if you lost game 1.

[parallax]

I thought you didn't go off with High Tide in the mirror. You just wait and play out 8-12 lands. I've seen a few Solidarity mirrors and I don't remember High Tide featuring prominently in them. I think boarding out some number of Resets might also be wise. You don't know when you will be forced to go off. Not all four of them, though.

[Ewokslayer]

High Tide isn't necessary to start going off, but generally whoever can abuse the mana it generates the most will win the stack war. That doesn't necessarily mean that they will win the game though. That will depend on the other cards in their hand, if they have a deck left, etc.

[to1701]

Why is Solidarity named after a bad white common? This deck should totally be called Undertow.

(babble removed)

Hello, and welcome to The Source! Please read the Forum Rules (http://mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=624), which are different for the LMF than the rest of the site. ~Nightmare

[quicksilver]

I actually like the name solidarity, not because of the magic card but because of the definition of solidarity. Solidarity means to stand together, to co-operate towards a common goal. And that is exactly what the deck does. Each card in the deck contributes to the combo by adding storm. They all work together and as a team, they accomplish the job which none of the cards could do on their own. Solidarity is a great name for the deck.

[to1701]

Isn't there some story about this deck being named after that white card though? I could have sworn I read that recently , somewhere. Unless it isn't true. I do like your way of explaining the solidarity definition and of how it works in the deck. But, that story of how it got its name from the white card, just really kills it for me. ( I still would rather call it undertow)

[quicksilver]

In all honesty I do beleive that is were the deck got its name from. Virginians have a habit of naming their decks after bad un-related cards; rabid wombat is an example. However I like to think that the name turned out to be more than he was expecting. Something that started off for the wrong reasons but ended up great. So my suggestion is if you don't like it being named after the white card then do what I do and think of it being named for unity and cooperation.

[troopatroop]

I remember the story vaguely.

They were drafting 8th or 9th edition I think, when someone mentioned how they drafted the card Nausea, and how they were toast. They were browsing through their pack at that moment when they realized that Solidarity answered Nausea. They picked the card and at a critical moment in the game, Solidarity countered Nausea, and won. They then pranced around in a circle singing, "Solidarity! Solidarity! Solidarity!", in wonder of how such a terrible card won the game for them.

That is why the deck is named Solidarity.

That is also why Roopey named Nausea what he did.

Those crazy, crazy virginians.

[herbig]

I prefer Solidarity, as I think the deck is distinguished enough from extended Tide decks enough to warrant a different name and Deep6er has the right to provide one, it being his creation. Besides, Reset High Tide sounds extremely lame. But, while we have Gearhart on the line, would you care to comment on the Twincast board, as well as accept my challenge of a Reset High Tide duel at Kadilak's tournament?

[GreenOne]

I really hate discussing on the deck's (fantastic) name, so i'll pass on.

I've got a playing question. I usually play brainstorm and than impulse when going off to "shuffle back" dead islands. However i don't know if is always the optimal play. Fortunately, this thread is filled with the best Solidarity players in the world. I think it's time to suck up their brains and learn something :smile:

Consider this:

It's game 1 vs Goblins and you're forced to go off with 4 lands in play.
Your hand is actually Brainstorm, Impulse, Island. Storm count 6, 1 mana in pool, 2 untapped islands, one active High Tide and a reset played.

1- What do you do?
2- and if you had 4 untapped lands?
3- and if you had storm count 20 and already tapped all his creatures with turnabout?
4- and if you had Flash of Insight with 7 blue cards in grave?
5- What if your hand was only brainstorm and impulse?
6- What if your hand was brainstorm impulse and 2 or more islands?

[Lukas Preuss]

1 - I'd cast Impulse and than Brainstorm, searching for Reset. This way you see 7 cards. One of them will hopefully be Reset. If you don't hit Reset with the Impulse, you take a draw spell (Meditate) since you need this to continue the combo after you played the Reset you find with Brainstorm.
2 - Same, but here it is not that important to find Reset. Turnabout should be okay, too.
3 - Same, you're searching for Brain Freeze now, though.
4 - Same. This is great since you can use the Flash after Brainstorm to put two crap cards on the bottom of your library.
5 - Still the same... you really want to see those 7 cards.
6 - see above.

All in all, I can only say that, if you're low on resources, I'd always cast Impulse first, because this way Impulse is way more effective. You could just fizzle right there if you don't use Impulse to its full extend. This is too dangerous.

[GreenOne]

1 - I'd cast Impulse and than Brainstorm, searching for Reset.

Well, here i'm not really sure: if you cast brainstorm first you look only 3 cards, but you can find a turnabout too as you still have 2 untapped islands. Indeed you want to see those 7 cards, but what about shuffling away a dead island and see 4 cards instead of see 7 cards but -1 card in hand?



4 - Same. This is great since you can use the Flash after Brainstorm to put two crap cards on the bottom of your library.

Do you cast impulse, brainstorm, flash or flash, brainstorm, impulse?

[Lukas Preuss]

Well, here i'm not really sure: if you cast brainstorm first you look only 3 cards, but you can find a turnabout too as you still have 2 untapped islands. Indeed you want to see those 7 cards, but what about shuffling away a dead island and see 4 cards instead of see 7 cards but -1 card in hand?

Right... you could do that, too. I think both options are possible, although you have to take other things into consideration as well. For example if you already cast an Impulse and put a Turnabout on the bottom of your library, or if you already removed one Reset for FoW...



Do you cast impulse, brainstorm, flash or flash, brainstorm, impulse?

Hm.. this is really a tough descision. I can't really descide on what play would be best... I guess it depends on the entire game state... I find it very hard to just calculate these things without playing the situation... as I stated above, there are quite a few other aspects to it, as well.

[NANTUKO_SHADY]

I am fairly new to Solidarity and all i hear people telling me is how good Twincast is against Threshold. I can see where Twincasting a reset or a high tide or something could be very useful, but is that the interaction that Twincast best performs? Am I missing something?? I feel like I am not truely understanding the powers of Twincast...

[dre4m]

I am fairly new to Solidarity and all i hear people telling me is how good Twincast is against Threshold. I can see where Twincasting a reset or a high tide or something could be very useful, but is that the interaction that Twincast best performs? Am I missing something?? I feel like I am not truely understanding the powers of Twincast...
07-22-2006 03:37 PM


Protecting your combo against a counter-heavy deck is important, and Twincast can fork a counter back at the counter or at the spell you've just cast, but beware of twincasting a spell before passing priority, as they fizzle the twincast if they counter the original spell.

[NANTUKO_SHADY]

@Dre4ms: I'm not sure I exactly understand what your trying to say to me. How exactly does the Twincast fizzle if you cast it before passing priority?

[Nightmare]

@Dre4ms: I'm not sure I exactly understand what your trying to say to me. How exactly does the Twincast fizzle if you cast it before passing priority?You: I Meditate. In response to my Meditate, I Twincast, targetting Meditate. Pass Priority.
Opponent: In response to the Twincast, I counterspell your Meditate.

End result: You've been 2 for 1'd and you draw no cards.

[dre4m]

Thank you, Mr. Nightmare.
The moral of the story is: Don't get greedy when the threshold player has three cards in hand and double blue open. I am thinking about playing this deck at Legacy championship, because I love the Solidarity Mirror and have played it extensively, and it seems to be able to survive most of the hate for it. I also always look forward to playing against Spring Tide.

[quicksilver]

I love the Solidarity Mirror
Yes I too love holding up the entire tournement for 2 hours while still being on turn 0.

Also spring tide? I haven't seen anyone play that in at least a year, and never at any sort of major tournament. I think nearly everyone realizes that it is inferior to solidarity.

[dre4m]

Actually I had a twenty minute discussion with some guy who claimed he had played Solidarity for months on Magic League, and he was massively belligerant in claiming that Spring Tide was somehow better. I personally place my faith in Solidarity alone, but the matchup is wonderful for you if you ever get to play it. Imagine... someone playing all your Tides FOR you! And building storm count as well! Except that they can't do it on your turn, so you can always use Reset!

Good times, goooooooooooooooood times.

[Lukas Preuss]

Acually, Spring Tide is much more played in Germany than Solidarity is. People choose it mainly, because it has a faster clock... It is a full turn faster than Solidarity. Because of that, it has almost an auto-win against any form of aggro, including Goblins and Affinity (which can occasionally race Solidarity). It's matchups against the other DTB are not worse, either.

The only thing that really is worse is the Solidarity matchup... but since Solidarity is not played very often, this is not an issue around here.

[NANTUKO_SHADY]

Ok.. so I know that Deep6er touched base on the whole mirror match strategy in the first page of the thread. However, I have only played the mirror match once, and it was probably the longest most strenuous thing I have ever done in magic. I would like to know an in depth strategy of the Solidairity mirror.. including side board strategys. Deep6er said earlier that Reset was trash in the mirror and that you want to dig for freezes and lands. So is he implying that it is better to wait for the opponent to go off and then just freeze/stroke them in response to their own brainfreezes?? I brought this up because of the upcoming Dual Land Draft in Syracuse, and I'm sure there will be a quite a few High Tide decks running around. If I am to receive a headache from the mirror, I would at least like to know I played it the right way.

[Tacosnape]

High Tide isn't necessary to start going off, but generally whoever can abuse the mana it generates the most will win the stack war. That doesn't necessarily mean that they will win the game though. That will depend on the other cards in their hand, if they have a deck left, etc.

See, to me, the best way to exploit High Tide is to not be the one who plays it. While this does allow your opponent to dictate when the mana comes and when it doesn't, it also puts your opponent one or more cards and one or more mana down in the stack war. I'll sometimes leave one Tide in, but not often. I'd much rather be able to abuse both Twincast AND Remand, as Remand lets you bounce-counter their Twincast targets (Though you have to be careful not to deck yourself with Remand.)



You: I Meditate. In response to my Meditate, I Twincast, targetting Meditate. Pass Priority.
Opponent: In response to the Twincast, I counterspell your Meditate.

End result: You've been 2 for 1'd and you draw no cards.

While this is correct, your earlier logic is either off or your wording is confusing. I think the latter. You -have- to Twincast your Meditate before you pass priority, unless you're assuming your opponent will play some Counterspellesque spell on it. In which case, it doesn't really matter if you Twincast the Meditate or Twincast the Counterspell, you'll still get 4 cards net. The only way to get the double Meditate is to take the double-or-nothing risk.

Also, what does Disrupt help that warrants it stealing Hydroblast's slot? I've never found Disrupt to be all that strong in the mirror, against Goblins, or even against Threshold. It only seems to shine for me against discard or as a grab-counter against someone getting Armageddon happy.

[Nightmare]

While this is correct, your earlier logic is either off or your wording is confusing. I think the latter. You -have- to Twincast your Meditate before you pass priority, unless you're assuming your opponent will play some Counterspellesque spell on it. In which case, it doesn't really matter if you Twincast the Meditate or Twincast the Counterspell, you'll still get 4 cards net. The only way to get the double Meditate is to take the double-or-nothing risk.I'm not really sure what earlier logic you're referring to, as I just answered a question about how the fizzle happens.

@ Hydroblast vs. Disrupt: Disrupt is a counterspell that can target any spell and cantrips for the same amount of mana as Hydroblast. In other words, even when they can pay the 1, it's never dead. Yes, Hydroblast can target Goblin Lackey, but that's not nearly as important as countering the Hymn to Tourach.

[dre4m]

@ Hydroblast vs. Disrupt: Disrupt is a counterspell that can target any spell and ...

Actually, it can target only an instant or sorcery, but those are usually all you're worried about anyways.

[NANTUKO_SHADY]

4x Disrupt is sooo crucial for this deck. We have a fairly weak matchup against black discard and B/W Confidant, which happens to be in the LMF forum and is getting alot of work done on it. Disrupt is one of the sole reasons we can beat B/W after the board. Disrupting hymn to tourach and Sinkhole or Vindicate in the early turns is almost like Time Walking them. By the time they have enough mana to go play another relevant disruption card, you should be ready to go off with all of the cards off of disrupt and the free turns.

[herbig]

You -have- to Twincast your Meditate before you pass priority, unless you're assuming your opponent will play some Counterspellesque spell on it. In which case, it doesn't really matter if you Twincast the Meditate or Twincast the Counterspell, you'll still get 4 cards net. The only way to get the double Meditate is to take the double-or-nothing risk.
This is also incorrect. The play here would be to Twincast the Meditate and leave both Meditate and Counterspell on the stack until you draw into either another Twincast or Force of Will to get the original Meditate through. The only time you would Twincast before passing priority would be if you are reasonably certain they can do nothing to stop you.