[Deck] Solidarity (Reset High Tide)

I completely agree with the decklist posted there. 18 lands (6 fetch), and 5 cards left to fill with Twincast/Flash, Tutor or any other of the debatable card choices.

Quote:

---

How is this good when facing a fast clock? More elaboration please.

---

Um...pretty self explanatory. When facing a fast clock (ie, when you need to combo out turn 3-5), you need High Tide. Mystical Tutor allows there to be 6-7 High Tides in your deck and greatly increases the chance you'll find one before turn 3-5.

Regarding the Chalice situation, it can be bad if they have them set at one and two, but honestly the amount of games you'll play where the opponent has two Chalice's in play is so negligible that it's not worth sporting Rebuild in the sb. Evac, on the other hand, is useful in enough situations that I think it merits a sb slot.

Wishing for a Flashed Brainfreeze is a good point, since sometimes you might need for of them if you're up against multiple Blessings. Although I'd really love to free up another sideboard slot I don't think I would risk taking it out, since there are many times where you're stretching for a kill.

Quote:

---

How is this good when facing a fast clock? More elaboration please.

---

The idea was to highlight the arguments for and against the card in the previous posts without starting another argument. For elaboration, look up in the thread, where you argued against this point yourself. I personally don't think Mystical Tutor does anything the rest of the deck can't already handle.

Quote:

---

How do you deal with True Believer and Mother of Runes, for example?

---

Evacuation is a pretty useful card. True Believer/Mother of Runes seems pretty unlikely though, and can be dealt with by having both Chain of Vapor and Echoing Truth in hand. There is always the dreaded double Mom...

On the Stax issue, yes, you can get locked out by having two Chalices on the board, but I don't think wasting a slot to combat something that no one really plays is worth it. No one packs Blessings in Type I to deal with Solidarity.

How about one draw spell in the board so that cunning wish isn't dead when you need to dig into your deck rather than find an answer to a threat? Why did people stop running 1 meditate in the sb? If you need 4 meditates main, then how about at least a peer through depths or a thirst?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ewokslayer

That is usually not the case though. If you target yourself with all the copies of Brainfreeze in order to hit a flash you would have to let all the copies resolve before the Brainfreeze is in your graveyard at which point you have most likely decked yourself.

---

Or you could play it correctly and let another copy of Brainfreeze be milled into the yard then Flash it away with the other Freeze and its copies still on the stack. :p

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ewokslayer

If you target your opponent with any or all of the copies of Brainfreeze you can only remove it and wish it back if you don't hit a blessing. If there isn't a blessing than why do you more than one Brainfreeze?

---

I have no idea why you would need more than one brainfreeze. My point was that once the deck goes off, you can easily get a hold of a Brainfreeze, so putting one in the SB is a waste.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ExpectLess

Quote:

---

How is this (Mystical Tutor) good when facing a fast clock?

---

Um...pretty self explanatory. When facing a fast clock (ie, when you need to combo out turn 3-5), you need High Tide. Mystical Tutor allows there to be 6-7 High Tides in your deck and greatly increases the chance you'll find one before turn 3-5.

---

The deck combos consistently on turn 4 without it. I don't have a hard time finding High Tide by turn 4, I have a harder time trying to hit all of my land drops. Mystical Tutor can't fetch lands and it doesn't allow the deck to consistently win on turn 3 either. So I ask again: How is Mystical Tutor good when facing a fast clock?

Just wanted to share some results with you. Went to a local tourney yesterday, 21 persons showed up, which I consider pretty good. Tournament was 5 Rounds of swiss + Top 4. I played a standard Solidarity build (Twincast, 2 Flash of Insights, 12/6 Lands split and an 8 BeB plan). Here are my results:

Round 1 - UB Random Discard
Game 1: After 4 turns, my 4 Meditates are already gone in my 'yard...not having the chance to even play one. I lost this game...
Game 2-3: Won those 2 but was pretty close, Duress, Therapy, Blackmail and Ravenous Rats are pretty mean.

2-1, 1-0

Round 2 - Rg Vial Goblins
Game 1: I win when he puts too much pressure on me, he gets an active Kiki on Ringleader, but that's too slow for this deck.
Game 2: Too fast for me, didn't have the chance for anything.
Game 2: He makes a huge mistake by not playing his 2 petals before playing his Lackey, which meets my BeB (which he could've countered with his 2nd Petal). He's short and does nothing...

2-1, 2-0

Round 3 - UW Landstill
Game 1: This game takes forever, I finally combo out during my turn so that he doesn't get an untap, I feared Counterspells...
Game 2: I crap out, after playing 2 Meditates, and we start the 5 extra turns right after that, however, Landstill can't deal 17 damage in 3 turns...

1-0, 3-0

Round 4 - Affinity
Game 1: I beat him just before having lethal damage on the stack.
Game 2: He shows me double Pyrostatic Pillar on turn 2 and 3 both meeting my FoWs, leaving me with, pretty much nothing in hand, he beats me down with his Ravager
Game 3: Therapy ripped my hand apart a little to much, and his beats were just enough.

I was lucky however, the guy was leaving, so he gave me the win... :D

2-1*, 4-0

Round 5 - UW Landstill
ID, giving me and my friend a spot into Top 4

ID, 4-0-1

Top 4 - UW Landstill
Game 1: A normal Landstill matchup I guess, he draws card with Standstill, I get a good hand, and combo off after 1 or 2 tries
Game 2: He doesn't see his 'hate' soon enough (only a Meddling Mage hit the table, naming High Tide). I have the time to combo out without High Tide, using pretty much all untap effects and finishing with 3 Brain Freezes.

Top 2 - UW Fish
Game 1: He isn't fast enough, he does however Daze, and Spiketail me a couple of times, but it wasn't enough.
Game 2: I don't think he had any relevent card to board in, and I also won this one, Twincasting a couple of times the same Meditate.

I was really happy to finally get the chance to play with Solidarity, having my reset for a couple months, but no tournaments in sight. I was also happy about playing Twincast all day long, except for the one in the board which I find totally useless. Which brings me to discuss on the SB a little bit. This is what I used in the tourney:

1x Stroke of Genuis (Pretty good, wished a couple times)
1x Twincast (Never even though about wishing for...)
1x Words of Wisdom (Wished for 1-3 times in the day)
1x Turnabout (Wished for constantly)
1x Chain of Vapor (Wished for it once)
1x Echoing Truth (Didn't have to wish for it)
1x Evacuation (Never wished for, but I refuse to lost to MoR and Mage)
4x BeB
4x Hydroblast

I'm going to change Twincast for some other relevent draw spell for the future tournaments, however, I'm still not sold on which yet. Peer Through Depts is definitly a valid choice, I don't know about what else could be used.

As for the matchups I faced, I found them all pretty easy, except for Affinity which was without a doubt really difficult, but you shouldn't see those normally anyway.

Oh, and for those not running Flash of Insight, think about it twice, it was ridiculously broken every time I had the chance to play it, and my opponents mouth always dropped when they saw me Impulsing 10+ cards...

Congrats on your win, :). I've also found the SB Twincast pretty useless, and I want to switch it for a Misdirection, since having a free counter available is really nice for the control matchups, and can be randomly good vs. a burn spell, too. Thoughts?

Luis

Just one thing to note guys, the Twincast is not there to be wished for. It's to be sideboarded. You SB it in for control matchups to give you a little edge for counterspells and such. I SB it in for Gro, Landstill, and other weird control decks and such. BTW, congrats on the win with solidarity :)

Alright, fair enough, I guess it makes more sense now. But do you really need/want 4 Twincasts vs. those decks, though? Don't you think 3 is enough?

Luis

Absolutely. In all of my testing (which is rather extensive) I always like having access to all four. There have been a couple of games where the fourth twincast (and my higher chances of drawing it) have been key to my victory. Also, twincast allows you to reanalyze the possibilities of going off on your turn for whatever reason. Don't forget to keep in mind that twincast should not be played as a combo enabler exclusively, it can and does serve multiple purposes.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Deep6er

Absolutely. In all of my testing (which is rather extensive) I always like having access to all four. There have been a couple of games where the fourth twincast (and my higher chances of drawing it) have been key to my victory. Also, twincast allows you to reanalyze the possibilities of going off on your turn for whatever reason. Don't forget to keep in mind that twincast should not be played as a combo enabler exclusively, it can and does serve multiple purposes.

---

Quoted for truth

Twincast is AMAZING at fighting through control elements. It makes your hand 10x more flexible as well (meaning instead of being strictly untap or draw, it functions as additional pieces of whatever your opponent aims their counters at).

On that note...it is just retardedly good in the mirror. I will let everyone figure out why for themselves (If that is too much of a challenge for you, I suggest you go playing vial Goblins.)

@ Deep6er: I find myself wishing for Twincast very often against control/solidarity mirror, so I was wondering if "Twincast is not there to be wished for" was really just a careless oversight or if you really haven't found yourself wishing for it in these games either.

In my experience, perhaps the deck's biggest flaw is the inability to dig for combo pieces (namely High Tide) while it is digging for land, and the dig it has left over after it finds those 4 land drops can often not do enough, so I was wondering if you have any possible suggestions here.

Actually it's very rare when I have an issue finding a High Tide. It might be that you are keeping hands that are different from the standards that I keep. Usually, I do a very calculated risk analysis on whether or not I should keep my hand. Very different from the 'If it has lands, keep it" strategy that some other people seem to employ.
@RayD3: Cunning Wish is so unbelievably important that wishing for Twincast may not actually be the best call. I've played the Solidarity mirror a couple of times (too many and you want to kill somebody) and in those games I've found that saving the Cunning Wish can be absolutely imperative at times. I've also found that the mirror can usually be won by the player who knows how to BEST play the matchup. I've played against venisonmixup when we were both playing the exact same build but I won because I'm the better Solidarity player (No offense Jesse K, you're still a cool guy :) )
Yes, the inability to exactly tutor up the High Tide can sometimes affect you but it's not something that's ever going to change. Personally, I don't like the weaknesses of Spring Tide as opposed to the weaknesses of Solidarity. (Not to mention that I made Solidarity and thus, is my project) I know for a fact that I am one of a handful of people that play Solidarity to its fullest potential and at this point I know that people who don't know exactly how the deck functions will fail with it. Solidarity doesn't really have the "Oops, I won" Dragon-ish kind of thing that rewards the player who just drew what they needed. I know exactly what the deck is capable of doing and I know I'll usually do well with the deck.

I'm currently running 4 peer through depths to find high tide more consistently, it's also good in combo so I'm rather happy.
@deep6er: I am very timid in mulling with this dec since mulligans seem to hurt so badly in assembling all the nescesary tools (lands, draw, high tide, untap effect) do you feel it is worth it to chuck your average 3 land hand with meditate turnabout and random dig to find a high tide?

It's actually not a question of finding high tide as much of just a question of getting a good hand. This is definitely one of the few decks where a mulligan to six doesn't hurt you as bad as if you were mulliganing with an aggroish kind of deck. Therefore, I always take that kind of information into account when I see my first hand. If it doesn't seem like it isn't any good or lacks dig something along those lines then I feel free to ship it back. It's important to consider that Solidarity can overcome the disadvantage from a mulligan.

Quote:

---

Very different from the 'If it has lands, keep it" strategy that some other people seem to employ.

---

I personally find myself doing this more often than not mainly cause of the land count. Last Saturday I took this to a GPT in LA. I just find adding an extra land to add to much and doing the 12-6 not really opening too many hands with more than 2 lands which I am fine with. But one game i had one land and no fixers in my first hand, no land in the second, oneland but the rest was Cunning Wish/twincast type stuff so i essentially ended up mullling to 4 which while it was a decent hand it didn't do so well againt Reanimator.

Which brings me to ask the question of how our matchup vs. them is? It seems that if you don't have an opening force then you will lose in a matter of turns, but if you have the force. then you need to have a lot of fixing to regain the CA lost. But if you have a lot of fixers and a force then you have no land?

btw the night before i was testing with my friend playing Landstill and we decided that Twincast is the best card in the deck. we were planning on playing 6 main board and 3 sided but thoght that might be illeagal. :p

I do believe that this deck is amazing tho as well as flash of insight, i prolly made a few play mistakes as far as impulsing and mulling is concerned but hey what can i do i placed 9th playing the deck for the second time. [oops]

If you actually need to worry about Reanimator, you could always try fitting in Snap, which also nicely generates a little mana while comboing out against aggro.

Hi, I'm your average ptq player. Wizards says play Legacy, I play legacy, so here I am. I'm a combo player at heart, so if there is a combo deck that is competitive in any given format... I'll try to play it. Done quite a lot of reading on your fourms in the past few weeks, tweaked and tweaked the list. I started out with Zvi's from his article on mtg.com that he would have played if he could have found Resets.

12 Island
4 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta

4 Opt
4 Brainstorm
4 Impulse
4 Meditate
4 High Tide
4 Twincast
4 Reset
3 Turnabout
4 Cunning Wish
4 Force of Will
1 Brain Freeze

Sideboard

4 Blue Elemental Blast
3 Chain of Vapor
3 Flash of Insight
1 Echoing Truth
1 Turnabout
1 Mana Short
1 Brain Freeze
1 Stroke of Genius

So, with your various builds how do you sideboard for various matchups? It doesn't do much good to play x games verses a given deck, and not know how to sideboard. So I'm hoping to find some suggestions about sideboarding against various matchups. For example:

With Zvi's list, I would board against the average goblin build:

+ 3 Blue Elemental Blast
- 3 Twincast

I'm not asking you to tell me how to board with this list, if you've played the deck and have a given way to sideboard against this matchup or that matchup with your decklist and board to share how you would sideboard.

If this has already been covered in the past, I only read back like 5 pages, then let me know and I'll go back more.

Thanks.

Well, first of all, my version of Solidarity runs more than one Brainfreeze maindeck, because there are times when you need to cast two (or even three) to win, because you can't get a high enough storm count.

My version only runs 18 Lands, as do most other builds I've seen... this seems to be enough, considering the fact, that you have plenty of spells to dig for lands in the early game but you don't want to see a whole bunch of them when comboing. :)

But, well, these might be minor changes, you should run the version you feel most comfortable with.


To adress your question: Against Goblins (and Burn, i guess), I usually board in six Blasts, because red clearly is your archenemy. Cards like Pillar, Sirocco, etc. are pretty ugly and can ruin your day if you can't handle them... [oops] I only run six Blasts in my Sideboard, some other people run eight Blasts, but I think six might be enough if your Meta doesn't have Goblins all over the place...

Against Control, I board in my fourth Brainfreeze. I know most people don't run four copies between the mainboard and the sideboard, but I always loved to have four of them against control. Having two or three Brainfreezes in hand against control is pretty nice... you basically can't go wrong with that... :D



Oh, and you should consider Words of Wisdom in your Sideboard as a kill condition, since Stroke is sometimes just a little to mana intensive...

Yes, I do like words in the board. I ran desire/cold shower in extended season.

I'm also interested in what you take out. Just because you have x cards against a deck, doesn't mean you have x cards you can take out of the main deck. You don't want to weaken the decks focus by adding too many sideboard cards. I'm trying to figure what people take out for cards.

Quote:

---

Done quite a lot of reading on your fourms in the past few weeks, tweaked and tweaked the list.

---

The list you've posted is actually an exact copy of Zvi's build and is not optimal by anyone's definition.

Your sideboard is going to need Words of Wisdom in order to kill when your opponent is swinging for lethal damage. Stroke of Genius is often too expensive or has already been wished for to draw cards for yourself. Lower the land count by at least one island, twenty is far too many, especially with eight fetchlands. More Brainfreezes are necessary. Keep in mind you are not really running more than one because you don't want to cast as many spells. Replacing two of them with more draw spells would make the deck much more consistent, if not for Gaea's Blessing and their synergy with Flash of Insight. In the absense of Blessing it might be feasible to run one, but everyone seems to think Blessing is a good trick.

Quote:

---

you should run the version you feel most comfortable with

---

No, there is in fact an accepted (by myself at least) optimal build a few pages back, posted by Deep6er, who is the original creator of Solidarity. While I haven't met the guy, I do have a lot of respect for what he says, since he has had the most tournament and testing experience with the deck. You cannot run whatever you feel like and expect to have a good version. Especially with combo decks, there is an optimal build that will grant the greatest ability to combo out while affording a degree of protection. Whether or not that has ever been found for any deck is really unclear, but I tend to trust those who have devoted the most time to finding it. I'm not saying you should copy lists blindly. Your expected playing field should be taken into account. Mainly, your slots devoted to twincast and your sideboard options are all you should be tweaking. In some fields Solidarity may not even be a competitive deck.

For Philly, I'd say the eight blasts are essential. Burn decks are cheap and goblins will be everywhere.

Sideboarding generally consists of replacing your Twincasts and Forces for blasts. Anything else must rely on Cunning Wish and Force of Will to be dealt with.

On a side note, don't ever play Mystical Tutor or Accumulated Knowledge.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by herbig

The list you've posted is actually an exact copy of Zvi's build and is not optimal by anyone's definition.

---

Right, I didn't want to start any type of discussion on the correct decklist, just what to subtract and add when sideboarding.

On a different note, how do you be blessing? Just wait till you can cast a big stroke?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Deep6er

Ok, so here's the newest list. I piloted it to a finals finish at the $500 dollar legacy event splitting with t is for tool for 250 apiece. I didn't do so well in the legacy championship but that was due to entirely different circumstances.

4 High Tide
4 Reset
3 Turnabout
3 Twincast
3 Brain Freeze
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
4 Opt
4 Impulse
2 Flash of Insight
4 Meditate
12 Island
4 Flooded Strand
2 Polluted Delta
3 Cunning Wish

Sideboard
1 Twincast
1 Stroke of Genius
1 Turnabout
1 Words of Wisdom
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Echoing Truth
1 Evacuation
4 Hydroblast
4 Blue Elemental Blast

Against the red decks I board -4 FoW -3 Twincast and -1 Meditate to board in the 8 blast. That has made my matchup against them absolutely ridiculously in my favor. Just one more note, Mystical tutor and Accumulated Knowledge do not BELONG IN THIS DECK! I'm absolutely serious. Just this one time believe me. It's so absolutely necessary for the 8 blast because there are a lot of cards that are so bad for solidarity to see. Sirocco, Blood Oath, Pillar, and shit like that are really, really bad to see on the other side of the table.

---

This one correct?

Why only 6 fetch? Don't you want to filter as much land out of the deck as possible before you win?


Double post merged.
-braves



Edited By braves54321 on 1127237365