Getting to 4 copies of Force of Will: Yes, so you will not be afraid of Balustrade Spy/Undercity Informer combo decks anymore. (a.k.a Oops all spells)
Having 2 meditates: Yes. You don't have candlelabras, otherwise you'd play Blue Sun's Zenith MD. Meditate is a cheap and reasonable draw spell: I played three, but I understand they're a bit on the heavy side (one's not happy to draw into them precombo) so two copies looks good to me.
Second intuition in the sideboard: No. Your standard sideboarding G2 should be -1 High Tide, -1 Intuition against every deck. Why? Because people are bringing in extraction effects and graveyard hate against you, and Intuition is risky against that stuff.
On a sidenote, I could spend hours talking about how ineffective graveyard hate is against Spiral Tide. Still, people will side their relics and rips and stuff against you because they're lacking better options. However, you almost never want to have access to intution via Cunning Wish, so i'd rather not have an intuition in my 15.
What your sideboard should look like: You should have 3-4 combo tools, 3-4 counters, 3-4 bounce spells, and fill the rest with utility. Here's a sample of a stereotypical Spiral Tide sideboard.
1 Blue Sun's Zenith (win condition)
1 Brain Freeze (win condition)
1 Turnabout (combo+protection)
2 Swan Song (trying to hit counterbalance)
1 Flusterstorm (best counterwar winner ever)
1 Pact of Negation (best quick answer to force of will)
2 Wipe Away (best bounce spell against counterbalance, you can board in one and let the other in the side for wishing)
1 Hurkyl's Recall (best bounce spell against Trinisphere/Chalice of the Void/Artifact-based hate)
1 Rushing River (very versatile bounce spell)
2 Teferi's Realm (versatile, but expensive permanent disruption)
1 Surgical Extraction (free graveyard hate - generical)
1 Ravenous Trap (free graveyard hate - against mill decks)
One sideboard Turnabout : No bueno you say? Absolutely bueno I answer, so you can have access to that Turnabout via Cunning Wish. You can replace it in your maindeck, with either Cloud of Faeries or Pore over the Pages (which is by the way an excellent card that you should look at).
Running 17 lands: Most lists that placed well were running 18 lands, and so should you. Some players have placed TOP8 with 17: notably, the italian dude Michele Giua finished TOP8 at a big tournament in Milan (200+ people) last year (or two years ago, can't remember). He was running candle-less and 17 lands, 3 maindeck Faeries. But if you want my opinion, you'd better stick to 18 and if ever you want to drop one, absolutely not less than 17 lands+12 cantrips.
Running Sensei's Diving Top: Yes you can, definitely possible. Feline Longmore ran 4 tops for a while. Personally, i'm not a big fan of maindeck Top since it slows the deck even more. It seems absurd, but preordain here is better: you just pay one mana for it, it does its thing, and you're good to go.
You could run 2-3 tops in the sideboard against Jund, Junk and other discard-based decks: that looks better to me.
Running counterbalance: Looks like it's too slow. Feline Longmore tried that for a while, but I think she dropped the idea after one tournament. Let's be honest: Thalia, Canonist, Meddling Mage, Trinisphere and Chalice of the Void can come into play way faster than a counter-top lock. Imagine you side them in, and happily open a hand with counterbalance+top , and they go T1 chalice@1 or Aether Vial: now you're looking at your Counter/Top, wishing those cards were something else. Or you go T1 top, T2 counterbalance, then they go T2 Thalia: now you're left with a blind counterbalance flip that is unlikely to be successful.
Also, Force of Will is harder to meet since you rarely keep it on the top. Also, Countertop doesn't stop Flusterstorm.
Countertop is uneffective against the majority of the cards that will be sideboarded against you, and it wastes 8 slots. You have to make room for it, sacrificing stuff in a tight decklist where everything is essential.
Running counterbalance with candles: Hell no. Deck would be to heavy to manouver around, with a lot of dead draws.
If I were you, i'd stick with this decklist:
12 Islands
6 Fetch
4 High Tide
3 Turnabout
1 Extra Untapper (Cof/Potp)
4 Time Spiral
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Preordain
4 Force of Will
2 Spell Pierce
2 Flusterstorm
4 Merchant Scroll
3 Cunning Wish
2 Meditate
1 Intuition
1 USZ
1 Brain Freeze
1 Turnabout
12x Your choice
The above is full of sound logic / advice. One thing I advocate is thinking of the deck as a combo deck first and a control deck second. Counterbalance and tons of tops doesn't facilitate winning. Play to win, don't play to not lose.
When I run a candleless mono blue deck, what Cave suggested is very close to what I run. I've been trying Pieces of the Puzzle in place of Meditate. You should try it. Pre combo you can tap out turn 3, see five cards and pick the best, and still be on pace for a turn four win. Meditate delays you to turn 5. Post combo it is still great at feeding you what you need and also binning the trash to help the card quality cantrips show you. Downside is you can't scroll for it but I typically don't find myself wanting to scroll for meditate anyways. In my current configuration I have 2 Pieces and 1 Intuition but I've considered trying 2 Pieces and 1 Meditate. I keep a meditate in the board to wish for.
Thank you very much
I recently made an order for some remaining cards I was using proxies for.
I also took the plunge and got 1 candle for now, so I will slowly remove turnabouts and move one to the side.
So giddy, is capsize still a sideboard card or could I mainboard it?
Sideboard at best. Debatable if it needs to be in the 75. In any case, not a maindeck card.Originally Posted by Sidneyious
Agree with The Driver here. Pieces of the Puzzle seems way better than Meditate in this deck. Looking at 5 is huge, and a lot of the time there are only 2 usable cards from a Meditate anyway. Might as well replace it with a card that you can play Turn 3 without a massive drawback.
Re: Eldritch Moon and Emrakul
I hear a few good things from pieces but I'm still unsure of how good it is seeing as it's a sorcery.
I like Pieces of the Puzzle myself coming from a point of view of someone who has played Peer Through Depths in Solidarity for a long time, and I like Pore too. However, I have one problem with cutting Meditates.
You absolutely need a gameplan against decks bringing in Surgical Extraction or Extirpate backed by discard and decks loaded with discard. You still need to be able to generate 15-16 storm against them without Time Spiral at all or without it for a long time - and usually with a much smaller hand size when you decide to combo off. The other solutions - Pieces/Pore/Noxious - aren't blue instants that you can easily find on a limited amount of resources although Noxious can still be found by Wish. We aren't running Snapcaster Mage / Snap tricks and we aren't usually getting free storm by bouncing Candleabras like other storm decks do because there are (usually) better cards to side in against discard.
In addition to that, Meditate helps enable Brainstorm to be the absolutely awesome virtual draw-3 that it is. In order to get the most out of your deck, you need to get most out of Brainstorm. It's true that there are many cards that will give you plenty of value or give you card advantage too, but let's face it - we're stuck with Meditate IMHO, and it's not like Meditate/Brainstorm/shuffle or scry 2 effect won't get you far.
Besides, consider this - what happens when the only way to win is with Blue Sun's Zenith? You can try to run cards that give you infinite mana, but they solve so few of your problems or don't have as much utility as other cards, and we can't play Spiral Tide like Friday the board game and slowly get rid of all of our unneeded cards that have little or no value. I think Meditate is a great way to extend the game and find other Spirals so that you can build your way to the mana you need.
WHAT? No, just no.
Current list
12 island
4 misty rainforest
2 flooded strand
4 high tide
4 merchant scroll
1 Intuition
2 meditate
4 brainstorm
4 ponder
4 preordain
3 turnabout
1 candelabra of tawnos
4 time spiral
3 cunning wish
4 fow
2 Flusterstorm
2 spell pierce
1 surgical extraction
1 Ravenous trap
1 Hurkyl's recall
1 rebuild
1 Echoing truth
1 turnabout
2 Flusterstorm
2 spell pierce
1 brainfreeze
1 USZ
1 meditate
1 wipe away
1 capsize
I have been contemplating replacing ponder with sdt but I don't have the discard menace many do.
Quick question- I have never piloted this deck and just know enough about it to play against it. I have 4 candels (post player) and have been thinking about picking up the pieces just because its pretty cheap at this point. I see a lack of candel(s) in a lot of the current lists, is this for budget reasons or is the card less relative / more risk for the deck now?
Tusk Up
Yes budget reasons.
I'm picking up high tide again... It's a guilty pleasure of mine. Has anyone had any succes with the new cards? Pore over the pages, thing in the ice and pieces of the puzzle all seem playable atleast.
I'll resort to my old mono blue list as a starting point.
SORCERIES (16)
4 Preordain
4 Ponder
4 Merchant Scroll
4 Time Spiral
INSTANTS (23)
4 Brainstorm
4 Flusterstorm
4 High Tide
3 Cunning Wish
1 Intuition
3 Turnabout
4 Force of Will
ARTIFACTS (3)
3 Candelabra of Tawnos
LANDS (18)
3 Flooded Strand
3 Polluted Delta
12 Island
SIDEBOARD (15)
1 Surgical Extraction
2 Teferi’s Realm
1 Meditate
1 Pact of Negation
2 Snap
2 Wipe Away
1 Grafdigger’s Cage
1 Hurkyl’s Recall
1 Blue Sun’s Zenith
1 Brain Freeze
1 Swan Song
1 Turnabout
How has swan song been for you guys? Is the upside of stopping counterbalance worth it? Anything else I overlooked?
I'll be playing it online in preparation for an IRL tournament in a couple of weeks.
A fellow on mtgs has been using pore and titi, not sure on pieces.
Hi blue mages, I'm new to the deck and I have a question: has anyone tried splashing Silence/Chant in this deck? Or how do you win when opponent gets a new hand full of counterspells after Time Spiral? I know we have FoWs and Flusterstorms but is that reliable enough? Silence/Chant does an awesome job in that matter, and can also buy you some time by "timewalking" non-blue opponents.
Likely you're better off not splashing. High tide wants to make it's land drops and be able to build up for a combo turn. If you splash, that means wasteland targets which means less islands in play. If you do splash it's likely better to splash for something that can end the game without the combo turn. Mentor out of the board would likely be the best reason to splash since your opponent will always board out as much removal as they can. That is still likely sketchy.
Hello guys! I have been playing High Tide for about 2 years now, and at GP Prague i won a GPT with it.
List:
8 Island
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Polluted Delta
2 Volcanic Island
4 Brainstorm
3 Cunning Wish
3 Flusterstorm
4 Force of Will
2 Gitaxian Probe
4 High Tide
2 Intuition
1 Meditate
4 Merchant Scroll
1 Past in Flames
4 Ponder
3 Preordain
4 Time Spiral
3 Turnabout
SIDEBOARD
1 Blue Sun's Zenith
1 Brain Freeze
1 Flusterstorm
1 Kozilek's Return
1 Pact of Negation
1 Rebuild
2 Snap
1 Surgical Extraction
4 Thing in the Ice
1 Turnabout
1 Wipe Away
The big thing about my list is that is candelless, red splash for PiF and Kozilek's Return in the board, and 4 Thing in the Ice in the board.
I have played multiple versions of high tide, but this is the version i have had most success with and that i feel is the strongest.
Kozilek's return and TiTi is the newest addition to the deck,and i feel that they both have over preformed. Kozilek's Return helps in so many situation, can wipe board to save time, or kill off multiple hatebears.
Thing in the ice offers up a new win-condition post-board. Many(all) decks board out their removal against high tide, and when you cast this on turn 2, it often gets met with a FoW, and im really happy about that, because the deck only needs two cards to start comboing, trading cards is really profitable for us. If it resolves it often wins games by it self, or play defense and eventually after 2-3 turns bounce the whole board to gain enough time to stitch the combo together. There is very few matchups where i don't want TiTi.
PiF gives you another angle of comboing, with 2 Intuiton in the main its pretty easy to set up a PiF kill. But Pif isn't necessary to combo, so fetching up the volcanic is not always needed, i try to avoid it(Wasteland) until the combo turn, where i get my Volcanic.
Having the Redsplash gives you 2 Wasteland targets, while this can be annoying sometimes i feel the power of PiF+Kozilek's Return is worth it. Before TiTi and Kozilek's Return i played a bolt+pyroblast in the board.
I feel that perfect information is the key for any magic game, so i have put 2 Gitaxian probes in the deck. This is just a preference, i want to see what my opponents are up too.
One card that i want to try out is Pieces of the Puzzle, and im thinking of replacing at least 1 probe with one pieces.
Last edited by zitical; 06-25-2016 at 08:12 PM.
This looks like my MD just -1 meditate, -1 Preordain, +2 pieces. Pieces consistently pulls it weight for me. I also advocate red splash for pif. It's another engine with intuition and can greatly speed up the winning turn.
I haven't tried thing in the ice in the board yet. I've been experimenting with it in DDFT and have been intrigued so far. Some really good results but not enough data points for me to draw a conclusion. Its on my list to try in High Tide.
TiTi really gives you another approch to some matchups. Acts both as a wincon and gives you so much time. Can also get rid of hatebears when you need to.
4x Brainstorm
1x Candelabra of Tawnos
3x Cunning Wish
2x Flooded Strand
2x Flusterstorm
4x Force of Will
4x High Tide
1x Intuition
12x Island
2x Meditate
4x Merchant Scroll
4x Misty Rainforest
4x Ponder
4x Preordain
2x Spell Pierce
4x Time Spiral
3x Turnabout
1x Blue Sun's Zenith
1x Brain Freeze
1x Capsize
1x Echoing Truth
2x Flusterstorm
1x Hurkyl's Recall
1x Meditate
1x Ravenous Trap
1x Rebuild
2x Spell Pierce
1x Surgical Extraction
1x Turnabout
1x Wipe Away
Went 2-1 last night against some rather easy opposition, a couple play mistakes and a distraction.
It was an 8 man and people didn't want to play anymore so we split the top.
All in all it went very well, maybe next time it will go better but I may play something else.
Intuition was useful only once to grab a scroll so I can search for a turnabout.
Intuition is mostly there as a tutor for timespiral.
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