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There's a point that seems relevant; with Pikula's success, it seems like black, for so long the red-headed step-child of Legacy, will be back in force. I saw people starting to throw together the deck as we were watching the finals. The absence of a strong black presence in the meta-game was a huge boon to Solidarity; if it returns, that seems highly problematic for the deck. Thoughts?
*Team Bikini High-Five*
Edited By SpatulaOfTheAges on 1131951871
I think this is a very relevant point. It should also be added that black is making a resurgence also in the Tog archetype with the growing popularity of the dredge mechanic. A lot of these builds are running Therapy, with Duress either maindecked or in the board. It looks like black will no longer be the least-played color, and this doesn't bode well for Solidarity.
Congrats to Green, the new Black of Legacy. Congrats to Black, the new White of Legacy. Congrats to White, the new Blue of Legacy.
Blue and red, well, They're pretty much still Blue and Red.
Yeah, I guess It's very bad for solidarity. Pikula had a decent deck, but suicide black I think is still not that totally awesome. As far as how i did, I made day 2, to go 0-5 to Goblins, NQG (The top 4 list), Ravager, Goblins, Goblins. I lost intrested almost after facing NQG...
I played Solidarity, coming in 75th with a 6-2 record. My loses were to Sligh and Red Deck Wins that both raced the hell out of me. I'm pretty happy with my performance though. Seven out of eight matches were red, three being Goblins. Congratulations to Gearhart, your matches were probably the most fun to watch.
I played solidarity and first round played this guy named Jessie who was playing stax vault, ity was a great match and we actually drew which put me in the draw bracket all day, not good for me. I was wondering if anyone knows him, I'd like to talk with him again. He said he was from VA and knows Gearhart since the two of them were chatting with me on solidarity tech after that first round. I had a blast playing the deck and will continue to do so in the following legacy events that occur in my region.
Please change your text color to something that doesn't burn my eyes out---Frogboy
Edited By frogboy on 1132073433
Ok, so here's the newest list and a couple of things that I found.
4 High Tide
4 Opt
4 Brainstorm
2 Peek
4 Impulse
4 Reset
3 Brain Freeze
2 Twincast
3 Cunning Wish
3 Meditate
3 Turnabout
4 Force of Will
2 Flash of Insight
4 Flooded Strand
2 Polluted Delta
12 Island
Sideboard
1 Meditate
1 Turnabout
1 Words of Wisdom
1 Stroke of Genius
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Echoing Truth
1 Rebuild
1 Evacuation
3 Blue Elemental Blast
4 Hydroblast
(Edit: Oops, I forgot the sideboard. Thanks to the guy who PM'd me and brought that up.)
Now, on to a couple of interesting things to note.
1) Contrary to popular belief, High Tide was NOT hated out of the format and in fact the only real "hate" cards that I came across were things that were invaluable in other combo matchups in general. There was NOBODY playing Sirocco or other extremely narrow hate cards.
2)I finished 11-3 out of the two days. Here were my three losses.
Paul Lyons with Goblins/w. Game 1 I beat him. Game 2 He ABEYANCES me. I responded with ABEYANCE!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! and lost the game. Game 3 I make a retarded mistake involving abeyance that cost me the game.
Michael Krumb with Affinity. Game 1 my hand is insane but I had to main phase Impulse to hit the third land (I had the turn 3 go off in hand) and I was unable to get around the vialed Meddling Mage. Game 2 he has ALL FOUR MEDDLING MAGES. I'm not going to beat that.
Dennis Tsao with R/w/g Zoo thing? Game 1 he drops turn two Pyrostatic Pillar. I respond with "Are you serious? You play maindecked Pillars? Are you joking me?" I then proceed to inquire about his goblin matchups and he responds with "Pillar is insane against goblins." I neglect to mention that his deck curves at 2 and just calmly lose. Game 2 He has no idea what I'm playing but it doesn't matter he drops turn 3 Pillar and I still don't have the blast. Ridiculous. Let me clarify something, I'm definitely not bitter but he says he was 6-0 against goblins and lost to Wombat and Landstill. His manabase was terrible at best and he had no draw engine to speak of. I don't know man.
Anyway, let me say that Peek is FUCKING INSANE. Congratulations to Anwar (AnwarA101) for the suggestion a LONG time ago and his continuing insistence of its inclusion in the maindeck. In case you're curious, I pulled the Twincast from the board and replaced it with a Meditate. I found that it's so unbelievably important to keep the 60-40 matchup against goblins consistent through the match and pulling out some of the strength against control is fine because of the deck's already favorable matchup against control.
Edited By Deep6er on 1132262488
First of all, congratulations on your finish.
Could you please explain why Peek is so good? I haven't tested it or anything but it seems that most of the time it would just be U to draw a card. Does knowing your opponents hand really help that much? How exactly does it help the Goblin matchup?
QFT. Peek was something I mentioned to some people a couple months ago as something to go into Solidarity as well as Gro. Being able to see the opponent's hand is incredible as it shows whether or not they have a bluff, and also gives you an estimate as to how much time you have to work with to set up combo. Note that in Gro, eot Peek to turn 2 Meddling Mage has tits written all over it.Quote:
Anyway, let me say that Peek is FUCKING INSANE. Congratulations to Anwar (AnwarA101) for the suggestion a LONG time ago and his continuing insistence of its inclusion in the maindeck. In case you're curious, I pulled the Twincast from the board and replaced it with a Meditate. I found that it's so unbelievably important to keep the 60-40 matchup against goblins consistent through the match and pulling out some of the strength against control is fine because of the deck's already favorable matchup against control.
Peek-> Therapy in Tog also seems to have big jugs.
I played 3 Sirocco in my sideboard at GP: Philly, playing Zoo. Sadly, I never once played against Goblins, or Solidarity-but I did get my butt handed to me by Lam Pham.
First of all, congratulations to your 9th place finish at the Grand Prix... Good job! :)
So, on to the changes you made to the deck. Just let me get this straight. You cut one Meditate and one Twincast from the maindeck to include Peek, right? You also cut one Twincast from the Sideboard for a Meditate.
Now, you only have 3 cards in your maindeck, that provide you with card advantage (not counting Twincasts). Doesn't this seem to be a problem? I'm sure Peek is great, I will most definitelly test it, but somehow it feels wrong to cut Meditate and Twincast for it. Wouldn't you rather cut some other cantrip, like Opt?
most versions play 3 medidate main and the 4th in side to be tutored for with cunning wish so that hardly seems to be the issue
but 11-3 is a nice finish indeed
any news on how other tide decks fared ?
coverage of the GP only gives us top 8 decks and some randomly selected decks but not much statistics about what decks were being played and how they did
First off I have to say that watching Deep6er playing at GP Philly was highly amusing. I was part of the Zebra Herd at the GP, and it was awesome having someone interesting to watch instead of the normal boring, stolid play that most people showed. 'grats to Deep6er for your finish, and for displaying the dominance of MTGSource over TheManaDrain (I think round 5 day 2??). I don't play legacy much, I'm mainly a 5-color player, but after seeing the diversity of the field this past weekend, I may try to put together something. I don't know if any other Tide decks finished well, I think two or three made day two. Lam made it to the Top 8, his deck was interesting, but he got smashed by Pikula. There were a lot of Flame Vault decks, most of which did pretty horrible. The Game was there in number, one person showed up trying to run the Colossus/Dragon Flame tech that doesn't work. There was a BRU home grown control deck that did pretty well, running stuff like Maher, Fire/Ice, Daze, and Lavamancer. It looked like it was almost a Fish base that had gone horribly, horribly wrong. I'm pretty sure one WW deck made T8, along with two Goblins. Affinity was there in number, lots of them made day two, but I don't think any T8ed. Iggy Pop was probably the most interesting deck I saw, it uses Ill Gotten Gains and Dark/Cabal ritual to set up a huge Tendrils. Pikula's deck looked really solid. Sideboard StP and Darkblast provided good control against anything with little creatures (maindeck Engineered Plague was great for him against little red men). Oh, and I saw lots of people playing SB Tivadar's Crusade, which made me happy (I love that card - even if it is mostly useless). That's about all I remember from the weekend.
While the rise of black decks maybe a big problem for Solidarity isn't the 3 top8 finishes for Gro an even bigger problem? Pikula's deck and Gro have the same elements that make it a positive matchup against Solidarity - disruption/counters + a clock. I saw almost all of David's matches on Day 2 and I saw him beat control decks, but aggro-control would have been another story.Quote:
Originally Posted by SpatulaOfTheAges
Just a very quick note:
4 Flooded Strand
2 Polluted Delta
should almost certainly be
3 Flooded Strand
3 Polluted Delta
As I have seen many a deck side out completely useless card for Pithing Needles.
I know it is quite insignificant, but it can occasionally make the difference.
Anyway, great job Gearhart. I was pulling for you the whole way. Just out of curiosity, how many games did you lose to not finding Tide?
1) People will always say switch the Fetches. I'm never going to. People who side in Pithing Needles just in the small hope that they hit a fetch are losing the game anyway, so it makes little difference.
2) I only lost 2 games to not finding Tide.
3) Thanks. I was pulling for me too. :)
What strategie, sideboard Cards are you goingt to play against Pox, or heavy Discard Decks?
I've played 10 roungs against pox and lost all 10!!!
The Discard ist too much! You cant go into Combo, because the Carddraw is missing, or the Untap spells...
Is there something against this Deck type?
No. Actually we don't have an answer to heavy discard and land destruction. Solidarity's plan on dealing with this problem has always been hoping that Pox won't be played at a good tournament.Quote:
Is there something against this Deck type?
Sadly (well, from the Solidarity player's point of view), with Chris Pikula's success at the Grand Prix and the rise of Black White Aggro Control in Legacy, this will most likely change in the future.
Yes you do. You have the ability to go U/w and run cards like Spiritual Focus in the sideboard. White gives you access to instants like Abeyance anyway and possibly cards like Solitary Confinement which can be abused in the way that Enchantress abuses it.(although that seems way to slow and vulnerable to Vindicate, as well as kicking your normal draw phase in the junk...just a thought). Someone else mentioned Misdirection in another thread relating to this discussion, as shooting a Hymn back at a Black player is a fine way to screw with their strategy. Perhaps a higher proportion of early game conditional countermagic ala Daze and Force Spike might become necessary. Who knows? But if the archetype is truly so fragile that it cannot adapt, then does it truly deserve to be a DTB as opposed to a spectacular metagame deck?Quote:
Originally Posted by Lukas Preuss