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i do try and avoid the spoiler season ZOMGDISCARDISSOBROKENWTFBBQmalarky but :
U
Rapid Hybridization
Instant
Destroy target creature. It can't be regenerated. That creature's controller puts a 3/3 green Frog Lizard creature token onto the battlefield.
Could this be a viable card maybe as wish target? seems good with snapcaster and Snap and also seeing as we are looking for time not to win creature matches...
If Pongify didn't see play in this deck before, what makes you think this will see play?Quote:
Originally Posted by Liquid_elf
point taken...
hmmm the idea being that it is mana efficient creature removal and that it's downside could be easily be negated by a well aimed snap.. and it can be snapcastered back..
So...after seeing that gatecrash brought nothing for us, one spicy question: why solidarity is named solidarity? Anybody knows it?
GC.
Quoted from http://www.mtgsalvation.com/584-what-next-gearhart.html
Quote:
Originally Posted by Finn
Quote:
Originally Posted by David Gearhart
So...the name is a joke and means nothing?
Well, apart from the story itself, it is still a good name for the deck, since all the cards work very well together. There are so many little synergies, interactions and complex plays.
Sorry if this has came up before, I don't have enough time to read all the forum pages, but is Vision Beyond good enough to make MD or SB? even as a singleton? I think it has real potential since we can easily make it an Ancestral Recall, I was thinking it could replace Peek, or even Opt, but I wasn't sure, also, is snapcaster worth having as a 1 of? and what about snap mainboard? or the correct number of remands? I'm rather new to the deck, help would greatly be appreciated.
Sometimes it depends on the local meta, I try different things out in my solidarity deck all the time but I usually stick to the same 75 for most tournaments. One thing about legacy is it is a deck you have to play out hundreds of times alone just to make sure that you pretty much auto polite and don't make mistakes when the money is on the line. It is an extremely hard deck to pilot complacently. I have seen a few people play it and a lot make just stupid timing choices, card choices, or just keeping hands that should have been tossed. I solitaire my Solidarity deck about 50 times in an average week when I have nothing else to do.Quote:
Originally Posted by dougmtg
Thanks for the quick reply, but should I run it instead of opt or is the little bit of setting up better than the potential 3 cards? and may I see your list, just to compare with mine?Quote:
Originally Posted by Magic Fanatic
I could see one in the sideboard since it is conditional on you having 20 cards in hand, you really do not want an almost useless card in your hand early on.Quote:
Originally Posted by dougmtg
Opt lets you brainstorm and then cast to put that one card you really don't need on the bottom of your deck and add to your spell count at the same time. Or let you take an island or something that you know you don't want on top and get rid of it when you don't have a fetch available to shuffle with. Remember the fetches are there to shuffle away cards you do not want after using a spell to see your top card or brainstorm. Its secondary purpose is almost useless with the minuscule difference it makes in thinning your deck.
If you read this article it will help you out some. Solidarity
I play pretty much the original 75. I have a few cards I switch out depending on the local meta where I am playing. You would think in the format there would not be much differences in metas from place to place. I know if I am up in Springfield, Mo I need to watch out for Gaea's blessing, that is one of the few cards that if its flipped when you go off you pretty much just scoop. But if I go to Oklahoma city almost no one is concerned over Solidarity so really are not expecting it so that I can pull good numbers there. Then if you are in the Fayetteville/NW Arkansas area you see people playing standard and modern decks at legacy events.
I would give you this advice, don't have just solidarity as your only legacy deck. Have a second over even a third back up. My secondary s are Goblins and 2 land belcher.
If you are interested in Visions of Beyond, you should look at benthetenor's list from a while back:Quote:
Originally Posted by dougmtg
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...l=1#post636333
Visions of beyond was discussed around this time. Read http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...l=1#post610980 and the following pages for lots of discussions about the card, and the rationale for benthetenor's list.
I'm wondering, is twincast old tech now? because it seems very good in the control matches, where you want to copy your countered spell, or even copy a meditate to draw 8 cards. Or even Reset, to get a crap ton of mana, not only that it's also very good against combo decks that run the Ill-Gotten Gains, so you can infinite them out.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vacrix
I thought I'd stop back in and say hi. I've been working on a few other combo lists (UG Enchantress, Doomsday, and ANT) just to get a feel for the variety of combo available currently, and I thought I'd say that this deck might be becoming a good metagame choice again. The almost complete lack of Dredge, Maverick and RUG eliminates 3 matchups that ranged from average to poor, and the addition of Jund and BUG seem like fairly decent matchups. Not that this deck is particularly good against discard backed up with big creatures (it's definitely not great), but the absence of a frustrating matchup in Maverick is a plus. Something like Disrupt would be well positioned. I got myself caught back up in the conversation, though to be honest it seems like everyone's just been going around in circles.
To the new guys, for the love of God, read the thread. I know, I know, it's big. That means it's full of good information. I can guarantee you that if you have a question that's not about a completely new card, it's already been asked and answered at least twice before. What's more, simply studying this thread (and the old one, that one is a goldmine) will make you a much, much better player with this deck which is, admittedly, one of the most difficult ones to play correctly. For instance, Twincast. Yes, you can definitely hijack an Ill-Gotten Gains loop. But there are all of one combo deck that plays that card, and even then it's only in about half of the lists. Just running Remand is going to be just as good against IGG, and has tons more applications. Twincast is definitely very good against counterspells, but it also seems like the metagame is running away from FOW and towards Hymn to Tourach. Now is probably not the time.
If you want twincast, run snapcaster mage. Snapcaster also allows you to copy a spell later rather than requiring that the spell be on the stack with twincast in hand, which is huge. Snapcastering high tide is sweet. Or brain freeze since you actually get to cast the card again whereas twincasting brain freeze makes you look silly.
I remember when someone was playing TES against me while I was on solidarity a few years back. He went for ad nauseam and I remanded it. I played land go and he played nothing for a while and I didn't feel rushed in terms of combo'ing because he had nothing. So anyways he cast ill-gotten gains and I broke the game in half in response going for high tide, chaining together a lot of spells, twincasting the IGG, then proceeding to break the game. Felt great. Pro tip: Never cast IGG against solidarity, even if they have just 2 lands in play.
As for how good solidarity is right now, the right build could be really good. I'd pack 4 flusterstorm between maindeck and sideboard for one thing against ALL the discard that is being run right now (hymn and thoughtseize come to mind.) Snapcaster is also quite good against discard allowing you to buy back your key spells. I haven't experimented with this deck for a long while although I should since I have 4 snapcaster mages.
Nice to hear from you Ben.
Yeah i understand the feeling that we are constantly answering the same questions.
So....
What do you think are the major problems for this deck and what are some of the answers to the meta as it stands?
also do you we think we should be tuning for speed or for control?
For me, it looks like the "metagame" (which is a big thing, but I'm talking about what you would face at a very large tournament in general, like an average SCG Open or a Grand Prix in America) is slowing down. That's not a perfect statement though, since some decks are still plenty fast. Maybe more accurately, the premiere 1-drop in the format is Deathrite Shaman, where it use to be Delver of Secrets and/or Goblin Guide. That's probably the biggest thing that this deck has going in it's favor is that you're way less likely to see a Wild Nacatl or Goblin Guide than a Deathrite Shaman or a Llanowar Elves. Decks are more focused on going big or over the top of other fair decks, rather than trying to race unfair decks. This is, to put it mildly, a good environment to be playing combo in.
The negative side is that the disruption has changed. Most combo decks (this one in particular) are fairly well positioned against a counterspell or two, but things have shifted more towards relentless discard. I'm not really sure why things have moved that way, but it is what it is. As such, we need a good way to battle through all of the discard. We don't need to be as speedy as we once did, since things are, on average, a little slower, but we do need a solid answer to Thoughtseizes and Hymn to Tourach. And we need to maintain as much card parity as we can. Remand is a pretty good answer to overcosted (relative to Legacy, that is) threats, and Disrupt and Divert are strong against discard spells. And of course, Snapcaster Mage is a good way to get cards that have been discarded, but you lose a lot of tempo if that's your only plan since it costs a lot of extra mana and can be foiled with graveyard hate like, say, Deathrite Shaman. I'd say, in general, slow is probably more stable since we don't need to be as fast as we used to, but if we can't effectively answer the discard then it's pretty irrelevant.
Alternately, it may just be the case that any sort of storm deck is weaker in a field full of discard, since counterspells add to the storm count and can be played around, whereas discard harms your ability to go off in a very specific way. Solidarity is positioned well to go off in response to a discard spell, though most of them are going to be coming at your face in the first few turns, which isn't great. I think the most well-positioned combo decks in this environment are either something like UG Enchantress, which is capable of recouping its cards off of a Hymn to Tourach, or Doomsday which just needs a single card to go off with, and thus can float a Doomsday on the top with Brainstorms and Ponders until it's time to win. I do think that Meditate is a strong card in general against discard, but it's weaker against strategies that back discard up with creatures, meaning that it's less often the case that you can cast a Meditate just to restock. In general, if these BUG control decks gain more prominence, or at some point everyone decides to drop the discard in favor of Force of Wills and Counterspells, it would be a metagame very, very ripe for Solidarity. I will say, I like this deck's chances a lot more than when RUG was the top dog.
i alas live in a tiny little semi-frozen meta game (that's what i get for living at the bottom of the world now excuse me while i throw another hobbit on the fire...)
But what i have found is when i have faced BUG/Discard styled decks often the major advantage is that often people don't know the priority of our cards. This is at base one of the things that is very useful about solidarity. I have been playing it here abouts for maybe up to 6 months now people are therefore used to the deck. But it keeps doing things they don't expect. hell it keeps doing things i don't expect... not all of them good...
So often when people manage the 1st turn discard spell and see snappy/tide/FOW/etc.. they often either don't know what to take or just do something silly like snap taking the tide cause it's a tide deck...
As for tools available to us i think your exactly right remand/disrupt are the thing. a turn 2 hymn being remanded is such a set back tot he hymn deck. and makes their turn 3 or four hymn really weak (unless they are stupid lucky).
I find the BUG style decks much less annoying than the RUG decks were and my major problem is as i said new style fish decks with all the counter spells and all the pressure.
I thought I'd post a list so that you guys know where I'm at right now. I've spent a lot of time re-reading this thread and the old one to try and glean some more understanding as to why it was that I felt like I was fizzling more than is normal, in spite of a lot of the changes that I made (the Snap/Snapcaster Mage version) that would only, in theory, increase consistency, and I think that the conclusion I drew was that I was getting lazy with the deck. Because I could, I'd subconsciously force myself into making the big plays, rather than that safe ones, until I forgot how to play the deck on a razor's edge, and it made me sloppy. I would still absolutely advocate Snaps in a faster metagame, but I've sort of gone back to basics here:
12 Island
6 Blue Fetchlands
4 Snapcaster Mage
4 High Tide
4 Brainstorm
3 Peek
1 Visions of Beyond
4 Reset
4 Impulse
4 Remand
2 Brain Freeze
3 Meditate
3 Cunning Wish
2 Turnabout
4 Force of Will
SB:
1 Meditate
1 Stroke of Genius
1 Turnabout
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Echoing Truth
1 Rebuild
2 Brain Freeze
3 Twincast
3 Surgical Extraction
1 Ravenous Trap
The only changes in this list from Gearhart's pretty consistent mono-colored list are -2 Flash of Insight, -1 Turnabout, -1 Twincast for +4 Snapcaster Mage (which I feel merges the purposes of all of those cards into one convenient, consistent, card-advantage machine that didn't exist when Gearhart was still paying attention to this deck. Beyond that, Flash of Insight lost a lot of it's functionality with the M10 rules change, making Snapcaster Mage a better card for the deck, in my opinion), and then -2 Opt for +1 Peek, +1 Visions of Beyond. I'm back up to 18 lands for now, as the ability to consistently use Snapcaster Mage to draw more cards should help obviate the extra land once going off, and the extra land in the setup phase will mean fewer missed land drops over the course of a tournament. The re-addition of Remand will also help to ensure land drops, while at the same time providing a decent way to delay Hymn to Tourach decks. There is a chance that it should be 17 lands and 2 Visions of Beyond, but that is pretty minor and for now I want to be as consistent, game to game, as possible. But by playing 3 Peek and 1 Visions of Beyond, I maximize the chances of seeing Peek early, while minimizing the chances of seeing Visions of Beyond until it is, or could be, Ancestral Recall. For a while I was running a Three Wishes in that spot, but then I wanted to add in a 4th 1-mana cantrip. I feel that Visions of Beyond can be either a Peek or a Three Wishes, depending on where the game is at, so it's the right card for that spot.
For the sideboard, the extra Brain Freezes are there 100% to battle against Counterbalance or other hard control decks. There's not many decks in the format that play Counterbalance-Top, so there's not a huge need for a dedicated answer, but this allows me to run them out of mana (or do something stupid like put their top on top of the library) and then Brain Freeze them to make all of our spells resolve, like Seraphus advocates. It also allows for stringing together 2 Brain Freezes pretty easily in those sorts of matchups, which is often what you have to do. I feel that the proper number of Brain Freezes in the SB is probably actually 0, which is something that Gearhart always said, but I do think that we need them for Counterbalances. The Twincasts do pretty much everything. They come in against decks with counterspells, especially decks like RUG where you can get your spells around their somewhat limited Counterspell selection without losing tempo. They can also come in against some of the Storm based decks, as Twincasting an Ad Nauseum is really, really good, and getting their Duresses and Orim's Chants are even better than a Counterspell. There's a chance that they're also good against Dredge and Reanimator, as you can steal their Dread Return/Reanimate and take whatever creature they were going to beat you with, though that's probably not good enough to board in. But in general, Remands are pretty good against combo decks, which makes this version stronger against the current field.
The only problem I haven't been able to completely solve would be discard. Disrupt has historically been the card to answer that, but with all of the Deathrite Shamans floating around, I feel that it probably isn't going to hit as often as it used to. Misdirection and/or Divert are possible solutions, but pretty narrow overall and I don't like putting cards into this deck that would constitute a dead card when you're trying to go off. Remand is even questionable in that sense, but I think it provides enough benefit to negate how rough it is drawing it mid-combo.
I will say again, this deck that I have been working on is tuned for a metagame with way more Force of Wills than Hymn to Tourachs, so if the metagame shifts in that direction, this is probably ideally situated to strike. I particularly like the fact that it doesn't really care about Deathrite Shaman and completely doesn't care about Abrupt Decay and, to a lesser extent, Lightning Bolt, which means that a lot of the versatile removal that decks are packing right now are still dead cards against Solidarity, which is exactly what you want in a combo deck. The fact that we can also more or less ignore Maverick is a huge plus.
You list looks pretty solid. Except for the counter magic you opted for a "combo" version. I like the 1 of Visions because it's likely to be an ancestral recall than a poor cantrip. I used 18 lands almost since i began with the deck and it's a very good number inded, very good. The main problem i faced with solidarity and even (but in a very lower manner) with spiral tide is fizzle. Solidary is not a huge amount of mana deck so it's common going with meditate into 2-3 lands + useless counters and probably we have not enought mana to flash it back with mage in case we have it in hand. However, in my experince, mage was an incredible upgrade and lowed my fizzle ratio but not, yet, to an optimal rate. I run 3 up to now, you run a set. I also used to run repeal.
On the side: surprised of seeing stroke over zenith!
GC.