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Look at my post above, I said you can play Spell Snares. And those situations where you need a win and you are 2 mana short for a Stroke occur on such a low amount of your games, that it's absolutely not worth it to play even one. Two is really really weird, because you won't ever wish for them twice, and you don't want to board them in anyway.
You only need the stroke when you have to win right then, generally I find that either I have the win or I don't at that point. Here is my current sideboard...Quote:
Originally Posted by TheGoblinGeneral4
4x Hydroblast (these ARE technically better than BeB because in a pinch you could target your land with it)
2x Brain Freeze
3x Twincast
1x Stroke of Genius
1x Meditate
1x Turnabout
1x Wipe Away
1x Echoing Truth
1x Chain of Vapor
I hadn't been seeing many artifacts in my metagame until last night, so something will be getting cut to put the rebuild back in. I had to argue this with someone last night, but rebuild > hurkyl's recall because too often a staxxx player is going to be able to set chalice at both 1 and 2, and we're not playing artifacts so paying one more is fine.
yeah, thanks... that SB was better than mine, i really did make the SB at the last minute and didnt even have the cards w/ me, but next time i will use a SB similar to that one.
My current SB looks like this:
4x Hydroblast
2x Brain Freeze
1x Rebuild
1x Twincast
1x Misdirection
1x Stroke of Genius
1x Meditate
1x Turnabout
1x Wipe Away
1x Echoing Truth
1x Chain of Vapor
When do you ever need to wish for misdirection? I'd rather just have twincast so that I can board in extras rather than wish for something I'll need to pitch a card to. By the time that its relative I'm generally combo-ing out and should have a remand or force in my hand. Wipe Away is still good too of course, but having 3 bounce spells might be over kill, just my opinion, but something to play around with. The twincasts are actually quite amazing, makes every card in your deck better, and it also helps in any matchup that has blue (not to mention IGGy pop isnt a big fan of it). Truthfully, I don't think the misdirection is necessary at all though.Quote:
Originally Posted by mikejetd0rk
How many twincast do you have in the deck? And how many in the board?
3 bounce spells is definately not overkill. Those 3 all serve a different purpose. Chain of Vapor is the cheap one. Truth is used at chalice at 1 and EtW tokens. Wipe Away is used to fight ttrough counters trying to bounce a Meddling Mage.
Hi, solidarity-players out there.
At the beginning of september there will be the German Legacy-Championships and I'm currently considering Solidarity. I do know that it sure isn't the most clever metagame-choice one could make, but I'm still willing to try it as I always valued having a cool deck over winning tournaments. However I need some help by you guys.
My current list looks like this:
12 Island
4 Flooded Strand
2 Polluted Delta
4 High Tide
4 Brainstorm
2 Peek
2 Opt
4 Reset
4 Impulse
4 Remand
2 Brain Freeze
2 Flash of Insight
1 Twincast
3 Meditate
3 Cunning Wish
3 Turnabout
4 Force of Will
SB:
1 Stroke of Genius
1 Meditate
1 Brain Freeze
1 Turnabout
1 Echoing Truth
1 Rebuild
2 Wipe Away (I board them against Meddling Mage and Counterbalance and the ocasional Rule of Law/Arcane Lab)
3 Twincast
4 Hydroblast
I'm expecting a meta of much Goblins/Affinity/Randomness where I should be at least slightly favored and the rest will probably be quite some aggro-control and fast storm-combo (TES/Belcher) with some Landstills here and there.
Now my primary question is, is there anything in addition to Wipe Away that works against Counterbalance? I have tried Spell Snare, but didn't like them very much because they simply aren't relevant anymore when the Counterbalance has reached play. I do like those boarded Wipe Away very much, because the decks packing Counterbalance usually only have 4 Force of Will as counters which means setting up an EOT Wipe Away + next turn Combo in response to the replayed Counterbalance is quite possible. What is more annoying is them starting to get multiple problematic permanents into play (I'm talking primarily of Meddling Mages + Counterbalances here) when a single Wipe Away isn't enough anymore. Did anybody try cutting maybe a Twincast and a Hydroblast from the board to be able to fit additional Echoing Truth/ other Bounce in? That would also improve chances against ETW as we'd have additional ways to get those tokens away.
Surprisingly enough I found Tarmogoyf not that big of a problem as he usually is 2/3 only ocassionally growing to 3/4 and rarely any bigger, so most of the time he's doing at most slightly more than a Werebear.
The second question is: Is Think Twice worth being in the deck over Opt (and maybe Twincast)? I have already thought about it for some time, but against decks with Counterbalance / Treshhold it only seems to slow down your setup for the combo-turn. On the other hand, it might help restore the hand after Forcing a Mage or Counterbalance.
@Lukas Preuss: In some forum (might even have been here) I've seen you write abut a list with Quirion Dryads + Krosan Grips side, would you mind showing me the list and a few thoughts about it?
Thanks for all answers in advance.
Van
To start with, in mono blue, no. Or at least not that we've found. The two best answers you have to Meddling Mage and Counterbalance are, in order, Wipe Away, and Spell Snare. Snare's intrigue is further added when you factor in that it stops Chalice and is also incredibly neat against any storm combo deck packing Burning Wish or Infernal Tutor.Quote:
Originally Posted by Van Phanel
The green splash with Quirion Dryad was originally my idea. It started by using Bound//Determined (Which, if resolved, lets you ignore Chalice or Counterbalance), then evolved into using Dryad as an alternate kill, and always packed a single Krosan Grip in the board. Grip is certainly a fantastic answer to single Counterbalances, single Chalices, and so forth. It just doesn't really offer any additional solutions to the number one culprit: Meddling Mage. But if you're interested, my green board looks like this:
4 Hydroblast
3 Quirion Dryad
2 Bound//Determined
1 Krosan Grip
1 Wipe Away
1 Echoing Truth
1 Meditate
1 Stroke of Genius
1 Turnabout
My take on Think Twice, in a nutshell, is this: If you're in a meta where Think Twice would be better in Solidarity than Opt or Peek, you shouldn't be playing Solidarity. It might be better against things like Threshold, and with intense effort you might get most Thresholdy-style matches as good as 50%, but you'll weaken all your other matches in the process.
Every deck has a matchup they just don't want to see, ever. Solidarity's is any deck packing multiple Meddling Mages and Counterbalances. Much like Goblins against fast Storm Combo, my take has always been to just suck up the random loss and focus on strengthening your other matchups. If my Solidarity hits some Counterbalance/Mage/Force aggro-control deck, sucks to be me. The bright side is a lot of those decks hate to see the other decks you listed.
The other splash available to you is White. White gives you access to Orim's Chant, Swords to Plowshares, and if you fear multiple Counterbalances, Tempest of Light. STP hits Mage, and Chant is solid for drawing counters.
Hope all that helps.
Abeyance might be better than Chant for two reasons.
1) It replaces itself. Always a plus. The fact that it costs one more is hardly relevant in that match I think. The only down side is it can't hold of a horde of EtW tokens for a turn.
2) It stops Top. This means they are stuck with the card on top when this resolves for the turn.
That's an interesting idea. It does indeed get the benefit of self-replacement, which Solidarity loves.Quote:
Originally Posted by noobslayer
The other downside is that Chant has a much higher chance of stopping a very fast combo (IE, you might have to do it before you get 2 lands on the board.)
How does the green splash work out for you? I suppose the Dryads come in vs. Thresh when the board their creature removal out. Do you still keep them in after the second game?
I have a local tournament soon too, and my board is going to look like this:
3 Spell Snare
2 Twincast
2 Brain Freeze
1 Urza's Rage
1 Sudden Shock
1 Meditate
1 Turnabout
1 Stroke of Genius
1 Rebuild
1 Echoing Truth
1 Chain of Vapor
First of all, I don't expect any Goblins. I think there were 2 Goblin player last time, out of about 50 players. Second of all, I do expect a lot of Deadguy stuff and other aggro control. I know I probably shouldn't be playing this deck with a meta like that, but I love Solidarity and I really don't have anything else good to run.
What do you think about the Red Splash these days? worth it?
My first thought when seeing Tempest of Light was the question if there isn't something for 4 mana which does the same thing as more and more counterbalance-decks have started running cards in their 3-slot. Turns out there is: [card]Patrician's Scorn[/card]
In my mind's eye I'm seeing a lethal attack looking my way, where I Swords their Meddling Mage naming High Tide, then play Patrician's Scorn for free killing their Counterbalance then combo them out. I am aware that you'll rarely be able to use it that way as the Counterbalance might prevent the StoP from resolving, but it sure is a fun thought.
How would my list look then?
Probably 2 Tundra for 2 Island (is a seventh fetchie necessary?)
and then how about the sideboard?
3 Abeyance/ Orim's Chant (in the slots of the Twincasts)
1 Tempest/ Scorn (in the slot of a Wipe Away)
3/4 Swords (in which slots?)
From here it looks like the white-splash would just clog up the sideboard with not very much real improvement, but that's just a first look. As I wrote the rest of my post I reconsidered the white-splash and the Chants seem to also improve the matchup against Belcher/TES(/Iggy-Pop) by much
It would be great if there was a single card (a split-card maybe) that would be able to either deal with a counter during the combo or deal with an annoying permanent. Pyroblasts come to mind here, they only suffer from the fact that their converted manacost is perfectly within Counterbalance-Range. At first thought, I might value them over Spell Snares because of their possibility to deal with an already resolved Mage and - if very lucky - Counterbalance.
Then another question:
Is boarding Spell Snares against Affinity reasonable? They counter every card that is able to kill you on its own (Ravager, Atog, Fling, Plating) thus giving you more time, but they suffer very much from affinity's use of Vial.
Perhaps Pyroblast really is a good idea. It counters Counterbalance, Meddling Mage and other counters, It destroys Meddling Mage and Counterbalance and it only costs a single mana...
To me this sounds like a much better option than running 3-4 StP and something that destroys enchantments in your board...
I've got a couple of comments on some of these things....Quote:
Originally Posted by Tacosnape
For starters, think twice is very good in this deck. It should be in the Peek slot though, not the Opt slot. Opt actually gives you some choice over what your drawing. The purpose of Peek was to let you get an edge on the opponent by knowing what they're holding. Think Twice allows you to be able to power through some of the hate and develop an actual advantage rather than a knowledge advantage. Whether it takes the twincast spot for you I think is open to debate. For me I still maindeck the one twincast. There are decks other than threshold that this card is helpful for (anything packing ritual-duress-hymn comes to mind). If you want more information on this go back through this post quite a ways and you'll see Gearhart's explanations for the changes. So far I've been pleased with the card.
Additionally, I've not run spellsnare, or any other hard counter (other than hydroblast) in my sideboard and it hasnt been an issue. I realize that this hits a lot of stuff that comes down on turn one, but thats why we put bounce in the deck. We already run force of will too.
I don't see a lot of counterbalance in my metagame because we have a lot of aggro generally and its a little too slow to setup against that. Not to mention goblins just drops the turn 1 lackey/vial and that counterbalance is pretty useless. So I've not seen much of it in my area to speak on or the other way on it.
As far as splashing another color, I think your weakening the deck and/or the manabase by doing so. The green splash is certainly an interesting idea, but it weakens your ability to combo off, and only 3 dryad's are coming in. Not to mention thats assuming that they arent going to be able to block it or remove it, which they probably will (especially game 3). The white cards suggested are good, but I don't know that they're what this deck needs by anymeans. Swords is not better than chain of vapor, still costs 1 and can be countered. Orim's chant and abeyance are at least instants, but they just play the waiting game really, you should be ok without them. The red splash that Gearhart suggests back a ways in this thread is reasonable, and he explains the purpose of the splash.
Hi,
This is my first post here, but I've been reading this forum for a while.
I'm from Brazil and I'm thinking about playing Solidarity in a champ at my local store, so I'd like to know your opinion. The metagame here is a mess, but I'll most certainly face IGGy Pop, Landstill and Fish, and probably some random "cheap" decks like MonoGreen stompy and MonoRed Burn.
Also, I'd like to ask you how Solidarity goes against non-white threshold. I'm just curious, as I see many discussion on how to deal with Meddling Mage, but didn't find discussion about UGr Threshold here.
Thanks in advance, and sorry my poor english.
I would say that you would be able to play Solidarity with some success. I've not matched up against IGGy pop, but bring in twincasts and you generate infinite mana when they try to win and you go ahead and stroke them for 61.Quote:
Originally Posted by lebarion
Landstill is usually packign a number of counters, but for the most part its a deck designed for aggro, some smart playing can with you this matchup.
Fish very much depends on what version of fish it is. UW(b) fish is packing counters, duress, and meddling mage, so that could be a rough, but not unwinable match.
Non-White Thres is a lot easier for you, just play around the counters. The rest of the stuff should be fine once you learn how to play the deck properly
You could probably go so far as to say that Blue aggro control without Mage is favorable and Blue aggro control with Mage is unfavorable. Mage is the single biggest enemy of Solidarity.
UGR Threshold loves Counterbalance, though, and Counterbalance is a pain in the ass.
Landstill is basically your easiest MU. Any control-deck usually is unable to really put up a relevant clock and you can just go off at your leisure. Basically though, anything but fast aggro-decks with sufficient numbers of relevant disruption (Duresses, Meddling Mages, Counterbalances, Chalice of the Voids, etc.) you can win against. UWb Fish is pretty much the worst thing to play against since Duress+Meddling Mage+counters is hard times, but the good news is that their clock is worse than Threshold's or Faerie Stompy's so you can use your lifetotal as a bit more effective buffer buying you enough time to win.
Agreed! Adds clock and shuts down something. Bad news. Counterbalance is just about as bad as mage too, but you can always get lucky. B/W Deadguy style decks can be rough too depending on their draw. I recently found that belcher is not too good either. No force in the opening hand and your probably going down.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tacosnape