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Of those decks, the only one that doesn't care about disrupt is Goblins. You also cited 3 combo decks, and Disrupt is really golden against those.Quote:
Originally Posted by i-never-smile
I'd suggest a counter heavy list in this metagame, basically, your list -1 Peek, -1 Peer through depths (giving information to the opponent is a bad thing, especially if he runs cabal therapy like ichorid), +1 Disrupt, +1 Disrupt/Remand main.
Well, I just got back from my very first Legacy tournament. My performance was underwhelming, but I had a great time. There were 16 players, but they were all tournament veterans, with recognizable decks.
My deck list was as follows:
4 High Tide
4 Force of Will
4 Reset
4 Brainstorm
4 Impulse
4 Opt
3 Remand
3 Cunning Wish
3 Meditate
3 Turnabout
2 Twincast
2 Flash of Insight
2 Brain Freeze
3 Flooded Strand (that's all I have)
15 Island
SB:
1 Stroke of Genius
1 Brain Freeze
1 Meditate
1 Turnabout
2 Wipe Away
3 Disrupt
3 Echoing Truth
2 Blue Elemental Blast (I know, I know)
1 Rebuild
Round 1: Counterbalance
Game 1 I mulligan once and keep a one land hand that I know I shouldn't (I even said that at the time). Why did I keep it? Partly nerves, I think; I didn't want to start my very first (real) Legacy game with only 5 cards in hand. I was also afraid that I might be running up against time (I had never played timed rounds before), so I didn't want to waste time fretting about my hand.
Four turns and no land later, the game was a foregone conclusion.
In game 2 I sided in some Disrupt (that I never saw), and went off in response to a turn 3 Counterbalance. It was tight, but I could have taken the game. However, I made a stupid play defending the combo against counters. With I had a FoW, 2 Meditate, and a Turnabout in my hand and 4 mana floating and a Reset on the stack. He FoW, and I countered with my FoW. Unfortunately, I threw down the Turnabout rather than the Meditate (I just tossed the two cards on the table). Before I corrected my mistake, he countered my FoW. If I had thrown down the Meditate then I simply would have "gone around". Instead, I fizzled, and he took the game.
Round 2: ANT
Quite deflated, I started my next round. I had no idea what he was playing, but when I saw the Orim's Chant on turn 4 with a mox on the table, I knew it had to be some kind of combo, so I went off. I played well, and the deck responded. First game to me.
Game 2, I sided in the disrupt, but was unprepared for his sideboard. He brought in 4 Xantid Swarm and dropped one on turn one and two. He attacked, and went off on turn 3.
Game 3, I sideboarded in some bounce (which I never saw), and went off in his attack phase in turn 4, the turn after he resolved a Swarm. I think I played well, but I had a Meditate on the stack with 2 mana open, so I needed a Reset in 4 cards. It was card number 5 and I fizzled. He then killed me with my own storm.
He told me afterwards that he had not been ready to go off, and I could have waited. What he says is true, but there was no way for me to know that, and I still feel that I made the right call in going off. I just couldn't string it together.
Round 3: Stax variant
This deck was very fast, with him dropping a Tanglewire on turn 1. I just kept playing lands and went off on turn 4 with two lands untapped. He thought he was safe. High Tide plus Reset proved him wrong.
Game 2 I boarded in some bounce, which I never saw (it's a trend with my sideboard). He had a god hand, though, with Tanglewire turn 1 (FoW), Smokestack turn 2 (FoW), Tanglewire turn 3 (Remand), and Chalice for 1 AND 2 on turn 4. I had practically emptied my hand with FoW, and I never recovered.
Game 3 I had learned my match one mistake, and I mulliganed to 5. Good hand, but his was stronger, with a morph/beater dropping on turn 1. He then kept me busy dealing with his artifacts while his 5/5 beat me down in 4 turns.
Round 4: Spring Tide variant
Game 1 I win handily, after having to "kill" him 3 times, as he kept trying to recover with my kill on the stack. Awesome game. Probably one of the most fun magic games ever. Not quite the mirror match, but enough to keep it interesting.
Game 2, I go off and kill him, but he responds with my kill on the stack. We both had loads of mana, so that was not an issue. I have only a Remand and a Twincast. He Wishes for a Trickbind, and I let both resolve (he Trickbinds my Brain Freeze). I then Remand my Brainfreeze, and replay it. He then casts Silence, which I Twincast. He leaves that on the stack and Brain Freezes me. Everything resolves (we have both been decked), but it's his end phase, so I lose in my draw step.
We had gone to time, so there was no game 3. Edit: It was not until I got home that I realized that I had actually won my last game (and therefore my last match) because my various meditates meant that I had actually skipped my next few turns, so my opponent would have to draw before I did.
After all that, I finished 15th out of 16. Disappointing, but not unexpected. Not only was it my first tournament, but in each game I was seeing that particular deck for the first time, while every one of my opponents seemed to know my deck inside and out.
What is encouraging, however, is that (first match aside, where I simply made very poor play decisions) I won all of my game 1s. I think this is because I have lots of practice comboing off, both in real games and gold fishing, and I am reasonably competent with the deck. What I am NOT familiar with is comboing off through hate. Every person I played seemed to have effective sideboard cards that helped them significantly, whereas I never really felt that my sideboard really did anything (wishboard aside).
I also didn't feel that there were any matches that simply couldn't be won. I may have screwed up lots, but I never felt that Solidarity was simply over matched.
All said and done, I'm really glad I travelled the two hours (each way) to go to the tournament, and I am really looking forward to my next (more local) tournament in Septemeber. I generally feel that my maindeck is solid, but I will review my sideboard, and read primers on all the decks I faced.
Comments?
-Silent Requiem
First of all, a question. Did you ever miss more fetchland? Have you ever cast a Brainstorm without being able to fetch right after. I'm experimenting with how many fetchland I can cut from this deck without hurting it.
I can only agree that knowledge of your opponents deck is just as important as knowledge of your own. Test as much as you can against every kind of deck, and be sure you know what to expect from decks. It's pretty crucial, as it can determine which cantrip choices or Wish target you need to go for at what times.
The feeling you will always have with Solidairty (except for some rare cases where the opponent gives you 10+ turns) is that every game will be extremely close. You generally are only able to combo through the amount of hate the opponent has related to the time he gives you (if he gives you more, he will have more hate, but you have a better hand too).
Until recently I only had two flooded strand, and they were definitely not enough. Three was a huge improvement, and I generally did not find myself lacking for shuffle effects. I'm looking forward to going up to four flooded strand, but I have a feeling that this might be sufficient.
-Silent Requiem
Well, it's good that you are feeling happy with the deck. Apart from Spring Tide, you certainly didn't have easy matchups. I don't have much experience against ANT (have played a lot against TES though) but it seems to me that you made the right decision trying to combo off; as you said, you had no way of knowing he wasn't ready, and you can almost always just asume that they "have it". Just think that if you had decided to wait another turn and it turn out your opponent went off on turn 4 after attacking you would have felt really bad for not trying to win when you had the chance.
Test a lot against hate and better luck next time. At least now you have a good idea of the meta.
@ Bahamut: why do you want to cut fetchlands?
@ Everyone: has anybody tested maindeck Misdirection? I'm not suggesting it, but i played against Antti Malin in a recent tournament. I was playing CounterTop and he was playing Solidarity with MD Misdirection (not sure how many though, probably just one), which seemed like an odd choice. I know it wasn't there instead of Twincast as i'm sure i also saw Twincasts on his maindeck. However, i don't remember seeing Flash of Insight, neither during our match nor the other games i saw him playing, so that's probably where he had the Misdirection.
I don't think it was a great card for him. He did counter stuff with it but it seems like it was too much card disadvantage for him. But i just wanted to see what everyone thought.
He should be playing Arcane Denial instead. He counters his own spell and draws four cards the next turn, or use it on his opponent's turn and win before the opponent has his next upkeep.
Well, I have had some time to digest my experiences, and these are some of my thoughts.
First, Meditate is our only real card advantage spell (though FoI does provide card advantage). This means that when my hand empties, either because of playing lands, mulliganing, or using FoW, it is really hard to refill my hand except with the old "draw-go".
However, I did see Accumulated Knowledge used to great effect, and it seems to me that we are in an even stronger position than most to abuse this card, because we are very likely to see multiple copies in a single turn. The question, of course, is what do we take out?
Now, I searched the old Solidarity thread before posting, and this issue has been raised before, but without any clear resolution. The decklist is tight, with perhaps two slots open, whereas AK would need four. The obvious candidates are Opt and Impulse, but these have clear early game advantages over AK and are often used to ensure our early land drops.
I would be very interested in hearing from other people on AK, though, as I think it has huge potential against discard, in prolonged games, and mid combo.
I have also thought a lot about the cards brought in against me: chalice, counterbalance (it feels like a hate card) and swarm.
What I noticed about all of these is that they are all permanents, and they are all low casting cost. In fact, anything that is not permantent and low casting cost would be pointless, as we own the stack, and are fairly fast. This being the case, what about Repeal? Obviously, this does not work on chalice for 1, but otherwise it is a fairly inexpensive, cantripping way of dealing with hate cards.
With regards to Arcane Denial, I don't think it's a good idea. If you are using it to counter your own spells you are spending two cards and at least 3 mana to draw 3 cards next turn (+1 card advantage). With AK, for example, you can spend two cards and 4 mana to get +1 card advantage now, and you do not need to cast the spells at the same time. AK also offers further advantages down the line.
-Silent Requiem
Why did you Force of Will turn 1 Tangle Wire? Smokestack is a good use of Force of Will and he probably couldn't have cast Tangle Wire on turn 3 so you wouldn't have needed Remand. On your turn 4 when he casts the two Chalices you likely would have an Island untapped with a Force still in hand and a much improved position as Cunning Wish is still pretty easy as long as one of your cantrip slots (1 or 2) is available.Quote:
Round 3: Stax variant
This deck was very fast, with him dropping a Tanglewire on turn 1. I just kept playing lands and went off on turn 4 with two lands untapped. He thought he was safe. High Tide plus Reset proved him wrong.
Game 2 I boarded in some bounce, which I never saw (it's a trend with my sideboard). He had a god hand, though, with Tanglewire turn 1 (FoW), Smokestack turn 2 (FoW), Tanglewire turn 3 (Remand), and Chalice for 1 AND 2 on turn 4. I had practically emptied my hand with FoW, and I never recovered.
Also, what idiot runs out Turn 1 Tangle Wire against Solidarity on the play?
Now that's what I call feedback! :laugh: It's also exactly what I was looking for: specific tips for improving my matchups.Quote:
Originally Posted by emidln
You are quite right, I should have let the turn 1 Tanglewire resolve and be grateful for his poor play. However, I had never faced this kind of deck before, and had no idea what else he might play. I thought Tanglewire was bad, until I saw the Smokestack! I won't make that mistake again.
In fact, the game was quite the educational experience, as it was also my first experience of the abuse possible with Chalice and Crucible, both of which now feature quite high on my list of things to counter.
-Silent Requiem
Stax is a weird matchup for Solidarity. From the Stax player's perspective, we only have 12-17 cards that actually matter at all. We can't put pressure on Solidarity through the attack step because we try to win with 2/x dudes so we're left with these cards:
Chalice of the Void
Trinisphere
Smokestack
Armageddon/Ravages of War
(Sphere of Resistance/Rule of Law out of the sideboard for ultraparanoid people who like to waste slots)
Now, the good thing here is not all of these are actually must-counters. In the early turns (1-3), Smokestack is usually a must counter unless you can win before sacrificing to it (this gives you a full untap + their turn). Trinisphere sadly isn't quite as good as a Stax player might hope because Turnabout can be spent to turn it off and randomly Solidarity just makes a bunch of mana and wins anyway with Trinisphere untapped. Trinisphere is pretty good on turns 1-2 as it will stop Solidarity from effectively playing defense and sculpting so something like a geddon or Smokestack can resolve. Chalices are largely hand-dependent for effectiveness. When I was playing Stax, I always tried to get Chalice @ 1 and Chalice @ 3 opting to give up Remand/Reset/Impulse for Brainstorm/addition 1cc cantrips, and Meditate/Cunning Wish. This strategy will pay off for the Stax player as long as Solidarity doesn't maindeck or have available to it twincasts to turn on Meditate despite Chalice of the Void. Postboard, they'll probably try to Chalice @ 2 and Chalice @ 3 if they have anything at all to do turn 1/2 that isn't Chalice. Geddon effects are obvious must-counters as are things like Rule of Law, if present.
It boils down to Stax needing resolve some sort of LD (Smokestack/Geddon/Ravages) to have a chance to beat Solidarity. The obvious corner cases (3x Chalice at 1, 2, 3) excluded, if this doesn't happen, Solidarity will either combo through what Chalice/sphere effects resolved, or wish for a solution. When playing red stax I found game one situations to be unfavorable due to the lack of mass LD (I had Boil afterwards) and postboard situations to be very favorable. With white stax, it seems that both preboard and postboard are favorable to stax, although not enough to put the matchup out of reach for an experienced Solidarity pilot.
Emidln pretty much said it all. Stax is actually a pretty positive matchup for us, which is in contrast to other forms of combo (although these can have decent matchups too). The only must-counters are Geddon and early 3Spheres and Stacks. Remand is insane against them by the way.
Regarding AK: I have tested this card before, and it has the same problem as Think Twice, but it's even worse than that card. Think Twice was originally added to give us the edge in aggro-control matchups by gaining more cardadvantage. I found it to be too slow though, and many other players felt the same. AK is arguably even slower, as it requires you to find a second one to actually gain an advantage.
Also, don't forget that your Wishes are cardadvantage too. Also, FoI can be much more than just cardadvantage. If you manage to stack your deck, you basically gain huge virtual cardadvantage, which pretty much insta-wins the game. Mind you you only need 1 card from your hand to do this (Brain Freeze), together with some mana and storm.
Im curious why Solidarity isnt played very much in today's meta. Is it because of the prevalence of cards like Chalice, Counterbalance, and Trinisphere? Bahamuth just stated how our matchup against Stax is fairly positive. Im just curious why such an awesome deck such as Solidarity doesnt see more play.
Playing a rarely-seen deck is advantage against all the unsuspecting and unprepared opponents, is it not?
Decks are faster and decks pack better disruption while Solidarity really hasn't gained or changed much in the last few years.Quote:
Originally Posted by dal9ll
If you look at the matchups this deck has as a whole and compare them to those of Tendrills combo, you'll be better off playing Tendrills combo over this, except for some rare metagames. One of the reasons is that that deck does much better against aggro while maintaining solid matchups against the rest of the field. The edge Solidarity always had, which is beating control, can be done by DDFT now too.
I agree with the above. You will find that most Solidarity players now play the deck because it is a joy to play, while still being farely solid. It is no longer a competitive choice, simply because other decks can do the same things much faster.
I have been playing proxy ANT against my Solidarity for practice, and that deck, with a novice pilot (me) can go off on turn 1 if it is not disrupted, and can reasonably expect to go off on turn 2 or 3 with protection. It's just a much better storm combo deck if you need to go off fast (like against aggro or other combo).
If the meta was more control heavy, Solidarity would be a better choice, because it is far less linear, harder to disrupt, and can go off in bursts if necessary (whereas the cost of ad nauseum makes this unlikely for ANT).
The only way Solidarity can get any faster is if it is somehow able to get more than one island into play each turn or an island is printed that produces more than one mana (without sacrificing any earlier land drops). While each of these are possible, I wouldn't hold my breath.
Edit: Alternatively (and more flavourfully), a cheap card that gave you control of your opponent's lands until end of turn would also work.
-Silent Requiem
The unbanning of Frantic Search would also do the trick. You still wouldn't be able to go off before turn 3, but going off turn 3 would become a serious possibility.Quote:
Originally Posted by Silent Requiem
the unbanning of frantic search would be very nice. The deck right now is very solid but very skill intensive.
A good way to find cards, your boarded in, is to play 1 Mystical Tutor in the wishboard. I saw this in several lists and it looks like it works out quite well. Echoing Truth is only good against Decks, who produce a lot of tokens early. So if those decks arent a factor in your meta, i would prefer playing 3-4 Wipe Away in the Sideboard, because its just so much better. The Turn you wanna go off, you can just bounce the hate permanents like Xantid Swarm or Counterbalance. When you play against ANT with Xantid Swarm, i would most likely go off in their upkeep, because the mana you take into your manapool is still avaiable in their draw step, so you can untap with Reset. Apart from 1 Meditate, i play Peer Through Depts in my Wishboard to find Instants, while im in the Combo. Saved my ass, sometimes, so i dont want to cut them. Twincast is a good card against most decks, but it can also be a dead card, while we are in our combo, so i would give those 2 spots to other cards in the Maindeck.Quote:
Originally Posted by Silent Requiem
My current list looks like this:
4 High Tide
4 Force of Will
4 Reset
4 Brainstorm
4 Impulse
3 Opt
3 Remand
3 Cunning Wish
3 Meditate
3 Turnabout
2 Disrupt
2 Flash of Insight
2 Brain Freeze
1 Whispers of the Muse
3 Flooded Strand
3 Polluted Delta
12 Island
SB:
1 Stroke of Genius
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Meditate
1 Turnabout
3 Wipe Away
1 Echoing Truth
2 Twincast
2 Peer Through Depths
1 Rebuild
2 Disrupt
I play 2 Disrupt in my Maindeck, because its never a dead card. There´s just so much to counter earlygame and no opponent expects you to counter a Brainstorm f.e.. Against Burn or Suicide/EvaGreen i take in the full playset of Disrupt. I´m currently testing 1 Whispers of the Muse in the Mainboard. Dunno yet but in theory it doesnt seem like a bad card. The Slot was given to Peek before. Early Game you can cantrip with it, just like with Peek and when i draw Whispers of the Muse in the combo i feel like im having enough mana to pay the buyback cost. If the card doesnt work out for me, im goin back to playing 1 Peek in this spot or a fourth Opt.
Btw sorry for my bad english. =)
Quote:
Originally Posted by flrn
Mana doesn't float from upkeep to draw step anymore since M10.
Source:Quote:
"Mana pools now empty at the end of each step and phase, which means mana can no longer be floated from the upkeep to the draw step, nor from the declare attackers step to the declare blockers step of combat."
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazin...ly/feature/42a
Oh, thanks. Didnt know that yet. :\Quote:
Originally Posted by nrabbit