[Deck] Solidarity

@silent Requiem: Your matchup against UW Stoneforge, did you feel it was worth fowing the SFM? Even with Batterskull, that's a 4 turn clock (so turn 6 death to the Solidarity player pending more creatures coming into play). I would imagine just eating the damage and saving the FoW for counter wars. I think Solidarity doesn't need to bother with SFM as much as other 'control' and combo (tendrils) deck does. I would like your insight on why you played the fow, were there other variables that affected the matchup or was it just a habit that we FoW bombs in Legacy?

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Originally Posted by Silent Requiem

I'm not quite clear what went down here. What I'm getting is that you played Tide, Tide, Trap (to up the storm count), Freeze, Freeze, which left him with loads of stuff in his GY and 6 cards in his library.

You then go on to say that you could have cast Tide, Tide, Freeze, Freeze, Trap, which would have resulted zero cards in his GY but 12 more cards in his library.

Personally, if I had decided to go off there, I would have cast Tide, Tide, Trap - retain priority - Freeze - retain priority - Freeze. The Brain Freezes would have resolved before the Trap, but the trap would still have boosted the storm. He would have been left with no GY and only six cards in his library, which, even with a Narcomeba on the table, is unlikely to win him the game.

Edit: Of course, depending on the number of lands I had, I'd probably have cast Brain Freeze on myself.

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Well what happened was I went tide tide reset freeze freeze trap which left him with 6 with no yard. If I had trapped between the freezes he would've been at 3 but with a pretty big yard. I didn't even think of trapping and freezing in response which would've definitely been the right play but I don't think he had dredged that turn because he had discarded therapy instead of his dredger. Freezing myself was probably the right play because I had plenty of mana. I just panicked and hoped to get the without thinking it all the way through.

EDIT: I could've gone freeze trap and freeze number 2 in response which would've left him with 3 and no yard. Freezing myself probably would've been better though.

Also, I've been thinking about g2 vs ANT and I think I should've either played flash for 0 (if that's a legal play) then flashed it back to dig for a force. I had 7 or 8 cards in my yard and 2 forces left. Either that or freeze myself and hope to hit my other flash before my 2 forces. Or maybe built as much storm as I could and freeze him in response to the ad nauseum and hope to hit his business (he didn't play wishes but I don't know how many tendrils he had. Probably 1 or 2). How would you guys have played it? Here's the gamestate as best as I can remember: I had 2 islands and 1 fetch all untapped. He had 3 tapped lands and a lotus petal with no mana floating and no cards in hand. Ad nauseum was on the stack. Ad nauseum was the 5th spell that turn. He was at 17 and I was at 19. I believe he had 46 cards left in his library. I had 5 or 6 spells in my yard which I think were force, misstep, impulse, reset and opt and 47 cards in my library (I had cracked a fetch already).

EDIT EDIT: What I meant is that I would have 7 or 8 cards in my yard to feed flash after casting my 2 tides.

ONE MORE EDIT: Vs dredge I forget if I had a reset or not but either way I had 5 or 6 lands and 2 tides so I had plenty of mana.

PROBABLY THE LAST EDIT: Vs ANT I boarded out 1 turnabout 1 cryptic and I think 1 remand for 3 flusterstorms.

BLAH: @Metalwalker, I don't want to speak for silent, but I probably would've made the same play because we tend to have better game going long vs control so in such a threat light deck you either but a ton of turns or eat a counter. Of course if Jace landed 2 turns later that's quite rough but it's possible to win through him and he's a much slower clock.

Also, in case you didn't catch it from my last post I had 2 tide, flash, and bf in my hand. Vs ANT that is.

Alright, I edited that post enough already plus I want to bump this thread again :P

My math skills are quite awful but I think that Vs ANT the best play would've been to go tide, tide, flash for 0, freeze him. That would mill 27 so if he had only 1 copy of Tendrils that's ~60% chance of hitting it and if he had 2 it's about a 40% chance (I think). If I decided to go tide, tide, flash for 0, flash back removing 7 that's ~30% of hitting one of my forces. If I tried to go tide, tide, freeze myself and hope to hit my last flash before my forces that's significantly less I think (but I don't know how much) plus it could potentially ruin my ability to win. The last option would be let AN resolve and hope he wouldn't flip the tendrils so that depending on how much he flipped and how many more spells he needed for the setup (at least 3 spells I think: dark rit/LED/I Tutor or dark rit/dark rit/grim tutor) which would probably mean that I could get his whole library or at the very least vastly increase my chances of hitting his tendrils (36 cards + however many he flipped). Still, I'm not sure what the actual percentage of him flipping a tendrils would be or it's possible he could cantrip into one without pushing storm high enough for me to deck him. This option has too much variance that I don't think there's even a way to put a percentage on it. Anyways, he did flip into a tendrils which meant that if he didn't kill himself I needed to hope that he played some mana then some cantrips to build storm high enough that I could freeze him in response to a cantrip for lethal.

Also, is flash for 0 a legal play? It doesn't say x can't be 0 so I assumed it would be and for example green sun's zenith can be for 0. It just seems weird to cast a flash for 0 and something about it makes me wonder if it's legal.

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Originally Posted by Silent Requiem

I'm not quite clear what went down here. What I'm getting is that you played Tide, Tide, Trap (to up the storm count), Freeze, Freeze, which left him with loads of stuff in his GY and 6 cards in his library.

You then go on to say that you could have cast Tide, Tide, Freeze, Freeze, Trap, which would have resulted zero cards in his GY but 12 more cards in his library.

Personally, if I had decided to go off there, I would have cast Tide, Tide, Trap - retain priority - Freeze - retain priority - Freeze. The Brain Freezes would have resolved before the Trap, but the trap would still have boosted the storm. He would have been left with no GY and only six cards in his library, which, even with a Narcomeba on the table, is unlikely to win him the game.

Edit: Of course, depending on the number of lands I had, I'd probably have cast Brain Freeze on myself.

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I think he did tide tide freeze freeze trap which left 6 cards in the library and no gy, if he had done tide tide trap -retain- priority double freeze it would of hit the entire library and left nothing in the yard right?

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Originally Posted by wolfstorm

I think he did tide tide freeze freeze trap which left 6 cards in the library and no gy, if he had done tide tide trap -retain- priority double freeze it would of hit the entire library and left nothing in the yard right?

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Gah! Doesn't anyone read my posts? I explained this already. You are right about what happened except that I couldn't trap before the first freeze because he had discarded a therapy instead of his dredger last turn. What I could've done is tide tide freeze trap hold priority freeze number 2 which would've left him at 3 in the library with no yard. Freezing my self was probably the correct play however.

EDIT: I don't know if he would've been able to get there in 3 turns but my life was getting kinda low from narco pokes (maybe a zombie or 2 as well).

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Originally Posted by Metalwalker

@silent Requiem: Your matchup against UW Stoneforge, did you feel it was worth fowing the SFM? Even with Batterskull, that's a 4 turn clock (so turn 6 death to the Solidarity player pending more creatures coming into play). I would imagine just eating the damage and saving the FoW for counter wars. I think Solidarity doesn't need to bother with SFM as much as other 'control' and combo (tendrils) deck does. I would like your insight on why you played the fow, were there other variables that affected the matchup or was it just a habit that we FoW bombs in Legacy?

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As I had won game one, I was on the draw. My opening seven was a slowish hand; plenty of draw, some combo pieces, an FoW and a superfluous card (say, Cryptic Command or an extra Turnabout). I decided to keep, as I had the tools to slow him down, and had most of the cards I needed to combo. So I knew even before he started playing that I was likely to use FoW to buy time; the "dead" card and the card advantage of being on the draw allowed me to do so in reasonable safety.

When he played the turn two Stoneforge, I considered whether or not to counter. I knew from game one that he played both Batterskull and Jitte, and this means he is a little faster than "just" Batterskull. I've also played against this player before, and he knows that Jace is often a poor play against me unless you have plenty of disruption (I often kill people with their own Jace activations). This meant that his deck was very threat light. Stopping his clock early might well buy me several turns.

There were three possibilities I considered:

1) If I don't counter, he gets +1 card advantage and a clock.

2) If I FoW and he has no counter backup (or choses not to use it), he gets +1 card advantage, but no clock. The quality of his card advantage will be lower, though, as I get to discard a superfluous card.

3) If I FoW and he counter Forces, we get the same result as 1), but now has one less counter to stop me comboing off.

Based on the above factors, Forcing the Stoneforge seemed like the right play. Even in hindsight, I'm still happy with the decision.

What I did not consider (because the odds were so low) was that he might have a second Stoneforge in hand. Forcing the Stoneforge was still correct, in my view (his clock would have been much faster if I had not), I simply did not gain as much time as I had hoped for. My slow hand, plus some poor luck (falling behind on land drops, and so having to dig for land in my own turn), meant that I was tapped out when he had lethal on the board.

Rupus and requiem, many thanks for your reports, quite illustrating for me.

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Also, is flash for 0 a legal play? It doesn't say x can't be 0 so I assumed it would be and for example green sun's zenith can be for 0. It just seems weird to cast a flash for 0 and something about it makes me wonder if it's legal.

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You can play FoI with X = 0, I'm quite sure about it.

BTW, I've been goldfishing Th00mor's deck, previously posted on this board.

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Digital.../tourn/2608689

I conclusion: Just too slow. I tried 6 times with this results:

- I fizzled 3 of them, 2 on T4 and eve one on T7!! All of them I locked myself with hands full of lands and counters.

- I have successfully decked the 'enemy 'twice on T4, but it's not game over until his next turn.

- I have successfuly killed the 'enemy' (decked + BSZ) once, on T3 without starting draw!!! lucky me, 2 tides, reset, meditate on the first turns, & some luck did the trick.

I can conclude, 20 lands for this deck is too much. 7 counters is a good number for the first match, I think. I guess this guy was successful because he was able to delay going off for more than 4 turns consistently.

¿What do you think of 1 High tide on SB for wish? I guess that's safe against Extirpate, Surgery andthose combo-killers, but's so situational, I prefer having the 4th tide on MB, I am equally ****ed if my opponent target reset, after all. Anyways I find myself most of the time wishing for Meditate, and sometimes for Turnabout.

Regards.

Hi,

I'm french and I built my Solidarity deck severals years ago. I've always gold-fished (for trainning) or played against casual players. :wink: This year, I tried a Legacy tournament with a 1-1-4 result. No surprise, I didn't know Legacy and his metagame : unable to identify opponent's key cards to counter in order to slow down them or not die. :laugh:

I played his old list (post-MBS/NPH) :
MD :
- 12x Island
- 4x Scalding Tarn
- 2x Misty Rainforest

- 4x High Tide
- 4x Reset
- 3x Turnabout
- 3x Brain Freeze
- 4x Brainstorm
- 3x Cunning Wish
- 2x Flash of Insight
- 4x Force of will
- 4x Impulse
- 3x Meditate
- 3x Opt
- 1x Peek
- 3x Remand
- 1x Twincast

SB :
- 1x Brain Freeze
- 1x Meditate
- 1x Turnabout
- 1x Stroke of Genius
- 1x Twincast
- 2x Echoing Truth
- 2x Hydroblast
- 2x Wipe Away
- 1x Chain of vapor
- 1x Hurkyl's Recall
- 1x Ravenous Trap
- 1x Mindbreak Trap

How, I'm not an regular Legacy player (too few tournaments in my city), I would like to talk about matchup and sideboard (on the draw/on the play) with you in order to improve my tournament performance. :smile:

At time, I'm starting to update my list with the last Silent Requiem's list. I didn't like to splash green for HP (I'm so happy to see an opponent's hand full of Wastelands) but more I think about more I think it is a reasonable risk. So, when did you side in your four Flusterstorm ? I would like to understand the presence of these cards before investing in 4 commander packs ! :tongue:

Thanks a lot for this great thread and yours helps !

PS : I'm sorry for my rusty english... :rolleyes:

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I can conclude, 20 lands for this deck is too much. 7 counters is a good number for the first match, I think. I guess this guy was successful because he was able to delay going off for more than 4 turns consistently.

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With respect, I've played 100s of goldfish hands with very similar builds (FoW over MM, but that makes no difference for gold fishing) and had very different results. I don't think there is anything wrong with decklist you linked.

That said, I do prefer PtD over Opt when playing with 20 lands.

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I didn't like to splash green for HP (I'm so happy to see an opponent's hand full of Wastelands) but more I think about more I think it is a reasonable risk. So, when did you side in your four Flusterstorm ? I would like to understand the presence of these cards before investing in 4 commander packs !

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In truth, I think 4 Flusterstorm was more than I needed - I never sided in more than 2 or 3 - but I did not run into any fast combo. Flusterstorm helps any matchup where the opponent wants to resolve important sorceries or instants. This includes:

Reanimator
Show and Tell
Landstill
Discard
Storm combo
Hypergenesis
Dredge
Merfolk
Etc

Basically, anything that isn't aggro. It's simply a broken, broken spell. I've had a couple of tournament games where it has countered more than one spell at a time. I don't see it ever coming out of my sideboard.

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Originally Posted by Silent Requiem

With respect, I've played 100s of goldfish hands with very similar builds (FoW over MM, but that makes no difference for gold fishing) and had very different results. I don't think there is anything wrong with decklist you linked.

That said, I do prefer PtD over Opt when playing with 20 lands.



In truth, I think 4 Flusterstorm was more than I needed - I never sided in more than 2 or 3 - but I did not run into any fast combo. Flusterstorm helps any matchup where the opponent wants to resolve important sorceries or instants. This includes:

Reanimator
Show and Tell
Landstill
Discard
Storm combo
Hypergenesis
Dredge
Merfolk
Etc

Basically, anything that isn't aggro. It's simply a broken, broken spell. I've had a couple of tournament games where it has countered more than one spell at a time. I don't see it ever coming out of my sideboard.

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Flusterstorm is so awesome. I love the feeling of building up a huge stack then just hitting everything with flusterstorm, especially if one of their "real" spells is on the bottom of the stack. It feels like I'm just machine gunning everything off the stack. Not to mention flusterstorm + remand is basically a 3 mana counter than doesn't even cost a card (assuming they don't have enough mana that you need the original to resolve). It also leads to some funny lolwut? moments when opponents have no idea what the card is. 3 in the board feels fine for me. I agree with you about PtD if you are running 20 lands.

@Ninakoru: Thanks for the info (about flash that is). Definitely a good thing to know. I've been playing 1 tide in the board, but as far as I can tell that's something that has been debated forever and there's no real answer other than play what feels right to you. Besides it "just working" for me, I think the fact that any deck can play a free (albiet not uncounterable) Extirpate makes it a reasonable call. Granted, unless they resolve multiple extirpate effects you can always go off through one because no one piece is essential (if they hit reset you can just use tides and turnabouts, if they hit tide you just have to lean a bit heavier of reset, if they hit anything else you just chuckle). For what it's worth I find myself wishing for BSZ more than anything else.

@Silent Requiem (and everyone else too): Thanks for explaining your play of forcing the mystic. It seems like a very good play when you put it into terms of CA like that and I'm definitely going to start keeping CA vs card quality vs clocks in mind. I'm still interested to hear how you would've played that hand of mine in G2 vs ANT. For reference again, here was the current game state (as best as I can remember):
Me
Hand: 2 tides, BF, FoI
Board: 2 Island, 1 fetch all untapped
Yard: fetch, force, misstep, impulse, reset and opt
Life: 19
Mana floating: none
The force had been hit by duress so there was nothing pitched and 47 cards in my library.

Him
Hand: none
Board: 1 tapped island, 1 tapped trop, 1 tapped underground sea, 1 lotus petal
Yard: not super relevant but he had the pieces to go for an IGG loop, however my force would've shut that down. (He couldn't IGG for duress, infernal tutor, LED because it wouldn't have produced enough mana or storm, which is why I think he went for AN in the first place).
Life: 17
Mana floating: none
He had 46 yards in his library. He was playing UB with a green splash for xantid swarms so there were no wishes to worry about but I do not know if he had 1 or 2 tendrils (it's very unlikely he had 3 or 4).

Ad nauseum was on the stack and it was the fifth spell played that turn. Looking back, I think that the most correct play would've been to go tide, tide, flash for 0, freeze him in response to AN and hope to hit enough business that he couldn't go off. Maybe there's some play that I'm missing that would've gaurenteed a win though. What would you have done.

@Silent Requiem : Thanks for the explaination. What do you side out in this case (merfolk matchup for sample) ?

@rupus : I didn't know the trick with Remand. It's really fun ! Thx !

How many copies of Brain Freeze targeting yourself do you usually put in the stack in order to find Flash of Insight or to clean dead cards from Brainstorm ?

How do you play the Elf matchup ? This deck is too fast for me and I'm very bothered by Wirewood Symbiote (cancel bounce target) or Summoner's Pact (cancel tap all effect for Nettle Sentinel).

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With respect, I've played 100s of goldfish hands with very similar builds (FoW over MM, but that makes no difference for gold fishing) and had very different results. I don't think there is anything wrong with decklist you linked.

That said, I do prefer PtD over Opt when playing with 20 lands.

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Uh, I will goldfish some more once I get more free time. I guess 6 games is not enough to get accurate feelings of how the engine works. I guess PtD is a better option in those builds, but I think having extra cantrip to rise chances to sculpt your hand in T1 is quite important.

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For reference again, here was the current game state (as best as I can remember):

...

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If you don't mind I will put my personal reasoning in this situations.

The opponent is going off, he has a combo deck that has quite HIGH chances to kill you inmediately in that situation, you don't have chance of correct answers other than using the BF.

You are probably going to lose, so your best bet is to interact in some way to lower his chances of success, so exactly that:

AN -> Tide -> Tide -> FoI X=0 -> BF

And see what happens.

Regards.

You play flash of insight twice in the spell chain to get one more storm and potentially find another card in the top X cards to up the storm count further, increasing your chances. But yes in response to AN I would tide tide FoI for 0, FoI for almost all the blue cards in your GY sans force of will and one blue card (for IGG), try to find a card to play off the top that ups the storm count, then brainfreeze them.

@mtgaddict
I actually just discovered that the other day. It seems like every time I play the deck I learn a new interaction and that's what I love about it. When I freeze myself to remove chaff from a brainstorm I usually just put 1 copy targeting myself but in some situations I leave 2 or more (if I have another BS in hand or I think I might need a flash too). I'm I do it to get a flash in my yard I usually just put all of them at myself became if it whiffs I'm o dead anyways because freezing myself for flash is my last plan and I don't know how many cards I will need to feed it (obviously I don't do it for more than my library and leave the copies in the stack once I hit flash and enough blue cards). That way I have extras in case I need another flash or to remove chaff from a freeze or something. I've never played vs elves but I would imagine there's only a few cards you really want to counter. Glimpse of nature is the biggest problem probably followed by visionary and lords. Symbiote doesn't matter so much without visionary generating CA and without glimpse or lords it's really just a bunch of 1/1s. If they do get a lord into play then you need to stop quirion ranger otherwise they might be able to get enough mana to do something dirty. Cunning wish for hibernation seems like a good play too but it's kind of slow. Maybe that's a situation where you might want to blow some tides or resets just to get it off earlier. Like I said I've never played elves though so maybe silent requiem or seraphus or someone else has a better answer for you.

@ninakoru

Yeah that probably would've been the best line of play. Luckily for me he ended up losing to his own flips but it always kind of sucks to win a game like that.

@Dark Ritual
Unfortunately, if I flashed twice I would've been out of mana. The only reason to do that would be to dig for a force but I think freezing him like ninakoru said would've been better from a statistical standpoint. If I was playing 4 forces and hadn't used any or had 1 mana open (for a flusterstorm) then that would've been the right play I think.

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Originally Posted by rupus

I actually just discovered that the other day. It seems like every time I play the deck I learn a new interaction and that's what I love about it. When I freeze myself to remove chaff from a brainstorm I usually just put 1 copy targeting myself but in some situations I leave 2 or more (if I have another BS in hand or I think I might need a flash too). I'm I do it to get a flash in my yard I usually just put all of them at myself became if it whiffs I'm o dead anyways because freezing myself for flash is my last plan and I don't know how many cards I will need to feed it (obviously I don't do it for more than my library and leave the copies in the stack once I hit flash and enough blue cards). That way I have extras in case I need another flash or to remove chaff from a freeze or something.

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It's exactly what I do. I'm not too bad ! Thanks for your explaination.

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Originally Posted by rupus

I've never played vs elves but I would imagine there's only a few cards you really want to counter. Glimpse of nature is the biggest problem probably followed by visionary and lords. Symbiote doesn't matter so much without visionary generating CA and without glimpse or lords it's really just a bunch of 1/1s. If they do get a lord into play then you need to stop quirion ranger otherwise they might be able to get enough mana to do something dirty. Cunning wish for hibernation seems like a good play too but it's kind of slow. Maybe that's a situation where you might want to blow some tides or resets just to get it off earlier. Like I said I've never played elves though so maybe silent requiem or seraphus or someone else has a better answer for you.

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In fact, I sided in Repeal for Elf matchup but they were useless. I didn't think to blow tide and reset in order to Cunning Wish an Hibernation.
For the game 1, I would like to use the storm count of the elf player. But it is very hard to count the storm and the cards in the library discreetly in order to combo on in response to an Glimpse of nature's trigger. Anyone has a trick ?

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Originally Posted by mtgaddict

It's exactly what I do. I'm not too bad ! Thanks for your explaination.


In fact, I sided in Repeal for Elf matchup but they were useless. I didn't think to blow tide and reset in order to Cunning Wish an Hibernation.
For the game 1, I would like to use the storm count of the elf player. But it is very hard to count the storm and the cards in the library discreetly in order to combo on in response to an Glimpse of nature's trigger. Anyone has a trick ?

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Well, using their stormcount is usually the best plan. And keeping the stormcount isnt that difficult, and you usualy dont need to worry about how high it is, or how many card they have left since usualy its more then enough stormcount. Also they tend to draw the most of their deck themselves.

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Originally Posted by mtgaddict

It's exactly what I do. I'm not too bad ! Thanks for your explaination.


In fact, I sided in Repeal for Elf matchup but they were useless. I didn't think to blow tide and reset in order to Cunning Wish an Hibernation.
For the game 1, I would like to use the storm count of the elf player. But it is very hard to count the storm and the cards in the library discreetly in order to combo on in response to an Glimpse of nature's trigger. Anyone has a trick ?

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Well games 2 and 3 shouldn't be a problem as you can count openly, they already know your deck. Even though most Elves decks have switched to Emrakul as their kill some used to and probably still do play Grapeshot or Brainfreeze as their kill so if you are keeping track of storm it might not be too suspicious. Cards in library is something that I also have trouble keeping track of and I'm trying to do it better. The best way I've found so far is just making tick marks on my lifepad then subtracting them from 60. It's a bit suspicious to be doing that and there's probably a good chance that a smart player will put you on a tide deck if they notice but I think it's worth it to be able to have that information immediately available to you. With some practice I'm sure that's something you could do in your head but I find myself already trying to keep track of so many things I don't trust myself to keep it straight in my head.

EDIT: Also, don't wait until you are about to go off to do your counting, keep track of it with a die or on your lifepad while they are comboing.

EDIT EDIT: Keeping track of things on paper is always better than using die. If there's a dispute judges will side with the person who has something written down 9 times out of 10.

@overseer1234 : You're true. But I would like to know when I can combo on before they stop their combo. ;)

@rupus : I think that the ticks are really suspicious. :) When my opponent knows that I play Solidarity, I count on my lifepad. So, at game 1, I count the storm only when I want to slow down him :

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- Elf: "I don't play storm"
- Me : "Ok"
- Elf: "Oh, I... End of turn"

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:P

At time, I try to not fizzle, count already main played cards and don't forget FoI in graveyard. When I'll do it perfectly, I'll try to memorize stacked cards in the bottom of the library (is there any pattern to stack cards with FoI ?). The final step will be to count (in my head) remaining cards in opponent library and opponent storm count.

Well, disappointing night for me. I went 0-2 drop.

Round 1 - David with 4c Countertop
He won the roll and led with trop, top. I had a sketchy 5 land hand and just went land go. He had turn 2 balance and I almost scooped it up. Anyways, he eventually had a big 2/3 pinging me for a while while I hit my land drops and got a cantrip in every now and then. I had like 7 lands in play and be had lethal if I passed back so I put a bunch of stuff on the stack and eventually he was tapped out with a 3 on top. Storm was at 5 and I had a freeze and an impulse. Impulse hit freeze number 2 and that was that. Game 2 and three he had top balance and got beats with a pretty fast clique and I couldn't do it. At one point I messed up and froze myself with only 1 storm and he countered it with the balance. I scooped it up but I forgot there was still 1 copy. It probably wouldn't have mattered but it probably didn't matter because I needed a flash in those 3.

Round 2 - Tom with Merfolk
G1 I cantripped a bit and couldn't force through a turnabout to stop lethal. Same with g2 except he wasn't quite as fast. I tried to go off but miscounted my mana and was 2 short of freezing myself flashing back FoI and praying for a reset. I think I could've got there but I payed mana for a misstep otherwise I would've had the extra 2. Oh well.

Round 3 they repaired and I got a bye so I just left instead of sticking around for round 4.

I was happy to beat countertop at least once. I'm convinced I need to go back to 4 force. One the plus side I picked up a trop so I'm going to try silent's green list next week.

@mtgaddict
Game one they probably won't stop until they have emrakul so you should be safe. Otherwise you can always just go off on their EOT if they break the chain early so that shouldn't be a huge problem. Sure getting them with a glimpse trigger is cool but trap or extraction can deal with emrakul and letting them die on their draw step works just as well.

For FoI I always put business on top and land on bottom but unless you are stacking the majority of your deck it doesn't matter too much. Generally I put meditate on top and make the 4 below some combination of tides, untaps and cantrips. This is a good thing to do because you can stack it so that if meditate resolves you have the ability to play through the rest of the cantrips below it. Still, if its not the majority of your deck its not a huge deal but its good practice.

I'm having a really difficult time deciding what build to take to nationals (and, by extension, GP Amsterdam).

PtD or Opt?

Green splash or mono blue?

4 Tides main or 1 in the Wishboard?


My gut feeling is that Opt is better than PtD right now. I'm also thinking about going back to 4 Tide in the maindeck, because it's harder to be disruptive when you need to cast Cunning Wish before you combo. This suggests a deck very similar to the one in the opening post, which makes a certain sense. The banning of Mystical Tutor and the printing of Mental Mistep have slowed the format significantly, pushing the fundamental turn back to near where it was when Solidarity was last a contender.

But I also feel that the Green splash is pretty strong in a random meta, and that suggests 4 Wishes, which in turn suggests 1 Tide in the wishboard.

I hate these transitional periods where I have to review every last detail of my build.