[Deck] Solidarity (Reset High Tide)

[GAUDARD]

Your board is 4 land. You have turnabout, hightide, meditate, twincast in hand. You have to go off. So you high tide, then turnabout floating 2, now you have 8 mana potential, do you meditate hoping hoping to hit draw + turnabout or reset in 4 cards, or twincast meditate hoping to draw resets + draw in 8 cards?

err, 3 land

The point is to see how someone else would play it. The situation came up and my brother and I were trying to figure out 'the right play'.


No, I didn't realize you would respond once the flash hits the yard. I realize you can respond to things on the stack. like twincast meditate, twincast resolves... draw another twincast, twincast the meditate still on the stack...

It is plays like this that *I* need to be told or learn. Don't worry about insulting my intelligence, I'd rather have that than potentially miss out on something.

[Ewokslayer]

Your board is 4 land. You have turnabout, hightide, meditate, twincast in hand. You have to go off. So you high tide, then turnabout floating 2, now you have 8 mana potential, do you meditate hoping hoping to hit draw + turnabout or reset in 4 cards, or twincast meditate hoping to draw resets + draw in 8 cards?

err, 3 land

The point is to see how someone else would play it. The situation came up and my brother and I were trying to figure out 'the right play'.

Your math is still off. With only three lands you can't float anything going into the first Turnabout. That leaves you with a maximum of only 6 mana after it resolves. You can't afford to Twincast anything at that point. So obviously you Meditate and hope for a Reset.

The question is more interesting if you replace the Turnabout with Reset. Do you Twincast the Reset or the Meditate? If you copy the Reset you will have 3 mana floating 3 untapped lands and four cards about to be drawn. If you copy the Meditate you have 1 mana floating 1 land untapped and eight cards about to be drawn.
This actually came up in a goldfish and I went with the copy of the Reset as I was mana light but the 4 cards were like land and FOW. If I had gone the other way it would have worked out (the next four cards were I believe High Tide, Reset, Meditate, and something that didn't suck). Though I think that might have just been a statistical outlier. In the first situation there is a large number of configurations that the 4 cards can be for the combo to continue. In the second situation one of the eight cards needs to be either Reset or an Opt/Brainstorm to find the Reset.

[GAUDARD]

We wrote down the situation at home... unfortunatly I'm at school

there was 8 mana to work with and those cards... I'll post it when I get home.

I'll try to record some situations tonight to discuss.

[ExpectLess]

@Ewokslayer
Ok, your situation ultimately boils down to this: Is it better to have 8 cards in hand and 3 potential mana floating, or 4 cards in hand and 9 potential mana floating? Because you need Reset in the 8 card situation, let's find the probability of one those 8 cards being one of the 3 Resets left in the deck of roughly 50 cards.

100% - (47!/(47-8)!)/(50!/(50-8)!)x100% = 41.4% that one of the 8 cards drawn will be a Reset

I kind of forgot combinations, but I'm pretty sure this method works with permutations. Anyway, let's look at what happens if we Twincast the Reset and only get 4 cards. The probability that we'll get one of the 7 untap effects left in the deck is 46.4%. But with 9 mana floating, we also can draw into cantrips for untap effects. Opt + Impulse + Brainstorm + Flash of Insight + Meditate (with one used) = 17 cards, and lets say you used 2 cantrips during turns 1-2, so about 15 left in the deck. It's relatively probable that you'll draw into at least one cantrip, 77.3%. Statistically, your hand will probably be something like a land, a cantrip/draw, and 2 other cards.

So, is it worth a ~60% chance to fizzle to have 7 cards, 1 mana floating and 3 untapped lands over 4 cards, 3 mana floating, and 3 untapped lands? I'd say no, on the merits that the probability of a successful combo with only 4 cards is less than 60% lower than with 7. The thing that sucks about the Twincast Meditate situation is that, unless you drew into a High Tide, 3 lands is not enough to only have 2 Resets left in your deck. It would be difficult to succeed either way, but I think the better play is to Twincast the Reset.

With 4 lands, however, it's a different story... You'd end up with a 73.0% chance to draw either Reset or Turnabout in 8 cards. Then it turns into is it worth a ~25% to fizzle to have 7 cards, 1-3 mana floating, and 4 untapped lands over 4 cards, 7 mana floating, and 4 untapped lands? Yes, on the merit that the probability of a successful combo with only 4 cards is more than 25% lower than with 7, so it's worth the risk. In the case of 4 (or more) lands, the better play is to Twincast the Meditate.

So what's the point of all this? Generally, the threshold of when you should be Twincasting Meditate over an untap spell is with 4 or more lands and at least enough to cast a Turnabout after. If you have 4+ lands and will have 4+ potential mana left after doing so, Twincast Meditate. If you have less, Twincast the untap spell.

[Ewokslayer]

That is pretty much the conclusion that I came to. It was just unfortunate that the single goldfish in which it came up that analysis didn't yield the better results.
However, I don't think that it would be valuable to force goldfishing the situation the additional times necessary for the stastics to bear out the conclusion we both reached as it is both an unlikely situation and the act of forcing the hand to be only High Tide, Meditate, Reset, Twincast, and three lands in play artifically would affect the results.

[LinkXwing]

How often (in tournaments) do people end up twincasting a High Tide? Is it done primarily against counters with the opponents counterspell on the stack (or something like that)? Is it only done on the second or third High Tide cast when going off? Is it done at all? Are there always better targets for Twincast?

[Slay]

Usually one High Tide wins the game. I can count the number of times I've wanted to Twincast a High Tide(that is, without a counter on the stack) on one hand. I'd be much more concerned about not drawing the cards I need. I've Twincasted Brainstorms far more often than High Tides.
-Slay

[GAUDARD]

Once again someone much better at math than I would have to figure that out.

Most of the time I would twincast an untap before I would twincast a high tide. In fact I think you would almost always generate more mana that way...


Could anyone who has played the deck a lot give any pointers? Like the flash of insight thing?

[FRM]

@jrp:
the reason i wrote here is to seek help in make room for the remand :D
the fact is that i'm usually extremely severe on my mana curve, and short of twincast i don't see any cc2 spell to replace... twincast on its side has the advantage it can be a counter in a counter war, just like remand, but can and will be as well a search, a cantrip, an untap...whatever! and i don't feel like replace opt, cause i do want still 8 cc1 cantrip, since i want to hurry set up the 4th land...

@Deep6er:
the remand was intended to be added to FoW, to protect a little more the deck. The draw a card benefit is what made me think to give it a try, since i'd use mana leak or counterspell if i wanted only protection. I could never cut impulse: instead, before the "new" twincast tech, i used to play BOTH impulse and peer through depths :)
I focused on the improvements the remand could make in a goblin matchup, 'cause goblins is widely played and is as fast as a F1 car, but the same benefits (even more, i presume) can be obtained in other matchup.
As for the "champagne" win, (remanding your original brain freeze), i made some math, which i hope is correct: average deck after 2 turns (assuming we draw first) has 51 cards; X= spells to do to mill the whole deck;
51=(3*X - 3)+3*(2+X) where the -3 is for countering my own freeze, and the 2+X is : X prevously played spell, 2 = remand+ the replayed freeze.
That makes the win possible on the back of "just" 8 spells, while not interfering with traditional ways of win (i.e. giant stroking etc.). Now, that, and the fact that i drafted a horrible deck in ravnica T8 at prerelease due to loss of concentration made me realize that this could be a easier way to win without losing precious energies :D but, i repeat, this could be a win more condition, and i could screw the decklist, if my replace goes wrong. So i came here to ask advice :)

[GAUDARD]

It seems like you would be wasting time when you could otherwise just cantrip and draw a few more cards to either get the second Brain Freeze or a storm count high enough for 1.

Ok, I've been testing with board recently. I've been boarding out 4 FOW and 3 Twincast leaving 1 blast in the board to wish for.

That hasn't seemed very well, most of the time they're like play a threat either sirioco or pillar and have blast back up. I've been trying to leave the FOW in and it hasn't seemed that bad. Isn't the free counterspell just as good as the 1cc counterspell?


Situation question.

Board position is 2 land, and their eot, your hand is brainstorm, opt, impulse, high tide, meditate, island. What do you do? I'm needing to find reset/turnabout so impulse is 4 cards, opt is 2 plus brainstorm is 5 total cards... so what is the play? Do you need to consider their board position? If so, it's goblins it looks like they've got 2 turns before they can kill you.

Double posts merged. - Zilla

[dsg123456789]

Situation question.

Board position is 2 land, and their eot, your hand is brainstorm, opt, impulse, high tide, meditate, island. What do you do? I'm needing to find reset/turnabout so impulse is 4 cards, opt is 2 plus brainstorm is 5 total cards... so what is the play? Do you need to consider their board position? If so, it's goblins it looks like they've got 2 turns before they can kill you.

Assuming this is a preboard situation, I would impulse and hope to hit a fetchland, and then you could Brainstorm/fetch/opt the next turn, and go off when they are about to go lethal. Also, if you do it that way, you can be almost guarenteed to just draw one more land, so that it is unnessecary to have land in hand when you go off.

Even if that is postboard, I'd impulse at the end of this turn, and see up to 5 cards deep next turn in case I needed to dig for a counterspell.

Finally, if you still have two turns, I wouldn't be panicing in trying to set up every piece that I need to go off, but rather I would just make sure I had a strong hand with cantrips when I started to go off (assuming 4 lands in play at that point) because you can almost always dig for what you need.

[Deep6er]

And now we discover why we shouldn't discuss situations. The problem here is that this isn't real. Supposition can only take you so far when you do it with Solidarity. However, just for the record, the correct play is to impulse unless it's post board. Since you never clarified if they have mana open then the situation becomes much more dangerous. You also did not state who was on the play and if they're killing you in two turns, what exactly will be doing it. The problem with discussing situational strategy is that if you find yourself in that situation, you will revert to what was generally decided as the "good play" instead of analyzing the situation and finding what is the ACTUAL "good play." Now, don't get me wrong, I don't particularly mind you bringing up situations, however, the real problem is that people who don't play the deck to it's fullest potential are going to regard these answers as the only possible solution to the situation. My recommendation is to stop discussing situations and focus on knowledge of the deck in its entirety. This includes the cards that hate the deck effectively. Learn how to play around Sirocco (involves a lot of time and thinking). Learn how to effectively neutralize Rule of Law/Arcane Laboratory. Knowing the appropriate responses to the hate cards is how you do well with this deck.

[GAUDARD]

GPT Philly, in Indianapolis, IN 21 players

I went 3-0-2 in the swiss.

The build I played:

4 High Tide
4 Reset
3 Turnabout
4 Opt
4 Brainstorm
4 Impulse
4 Meditate
3 Cunning Wish
2 Flash of Insight
4 Twincast
2 Brain Freeze
4 Force of Will
12 Island
3 Polluted Delta
3 Flooded Strand

Sideboard

4 Blue Elemental Blast
3 Hydroblast
1 Echoing Truth
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Rebuild
1 Evacuation
1 Turnabout
1 Brain Freeze
1 Stroke of Genius
1 Words of Wisdom


Round 1 Sensei, Sensei
He respects me as a player and knows the type of decks I like to play so he suspects I'd play this which he says is a horrible matchup.

Game 1
I force 2 tops in the first few turns. Play some land and draw a few cards. He trys to go off around turn 7 or so and I let him then he trys to brain freeze me, so I try to reset, he wishes for Gilded Light so I reset again, flash of insight for a brain freeze, put a cunning wish on top (in the middle of my deck) and brain freeze him then let his brain freeze go down to my cunning wish then I brainstorm it into my hand and wish for words of wisdom.

Game 2
He trys to go off turn to, but has to tutor for the brain freeze and I brain freeze him in responce.
After the game I was thinking about it and should have stopped him on top # ~17 and brain freezed then he'd have lost right then... Oh well what happens when I don't test against a deck.
Round 2 R/W Slide like /Scepter-Raise the Alarm / contraption...

Game 1
He gives me plenty of time to draw cards and play land, I win with out problem.

Game 2
He boards in ~8 cards and I board
+ 4 Blue Blast
+ 2 Hydroblast
- 4 Force of Will
- 2 Twincast

Once again he lets me play lands and draw cards. He does try to Scullscorch me which I blast. I go off with out problem.

Round 3

I get paired against one of the guys I drove up with since we are both 2-0 and 3-1-1 or 3-0-2 makes I tell him we can ID and just win one of the next 2 rounds. He is playing goblins.

We play to burn time and I get slathered with sideboard hate, and mulligains. I knew he'd be able to play agianst me correctly with the board, good choice to draw.

Round 4 Goblins

Game 1
He starts off quick with Lacky, puts some guys into play on turn 4 he is swinging for the win. I have 3 land and some good cards in hand and procede to go off. I did have to stroke myself for like 10 and draw a turnabout, but once I did that easy comboing.

Game 2
Once again he starts off quick with lacky and putting guys into play but no pile driver this time so on turn 5 he is swinging for the win, which makes my comboing a lot easier.

Round 5
Paired with another guy I drove up with and he is 3-1 and I'm 3-0-1 so we ID He is playing goblins too.

I was the 1st seed going into the top 8. Top 8 looks like this

Top 8

Game 1
I combo off around turn 5 he trys to force my high tide by paying its mana cost... I twincast my high tide, which he forces, I force his force and win with out problem from there.

Game 2
He plays a turn 2 Mage on High Tide, then plays a turn 3 Arcane Lab... how annoying. Several turns later I haven't found a cunning wish and lose to man lands.

Game 3
He plays a turn 2 Mage on High Tide, then plays a turn 3 Arcane Lab...how lucky. I try to combo off in responce but can't so I brain freeze twice and I'm about 10 cards short.

I figure I can keep him busy for 10 turns... but he draws forces like a master so he can attack and counter...

During games 2 and 3 I see him pitching Blue Blasts to Forces, after a standstill is cracked end of his turn he is discarding disenchants, and disks... WTF? What could he have boarded out, 4 wrath, 4 akroma's vengancE??! Dont' know. Was very frustrated with this since he clearly hadn't played much and was still able to win. I can't think of any other way these games could have played out.

I lost 2 games on the day, they just happened to be the most important. It seemd that the entire top 8 was intending on going to Philly which I find REALLY hard to believe since it's like 10+ hours from Indy... but whatever.

The game was running salvager combo and he comboed out on turn 1 a few times on the day. My brother playing Aluren changed last minute from playing solidarity since he hasn't played it very much, and has a lot more experience playing Aluren, good choice on his part.

I think I want to cut 1 more blast from the board for something I can board in against 'the hate' that everyone seems to have for this deck. If I can't beat an inexperienced player playing a control deck, oxy moron?, then how can I beat a good player playing a control deck? I expected someone to be playing some type of stax/time vault deck so thats why I added the rebuild which will probably also come out before the next tournament.

Turns out landstill was running inteferance so his buddy playing the game could have the byes...

Ended up like this.

Me landstill
Landstill ------------ landstill
aluren --------------
Goblins (friend)------
Aluren (brother) the game
-----------------
The Game The game
Goblins------------- the game
A.Stompy ----------
Angel Stompy ----------
Goblins (friend)

[GAUDARD]

... Learn how to play around Sirocco (involves a lot of time and thinking). Learn how to effectively neutralize Rule of Law/Arcane Laboratory. Knowing the appropriate responses to the hate cards is how you do well with this deck.

Any pointers you could give here?

I've found that with Sirocco never to tap out, that seems to be their favorite time to play it. But in testing I tested against the super hate board which was 4 Blast, 4 Sirocco.. I boarded in 7 blasts and well he'd Sirocco me and blast my blast... Maybe Forces should be left in?

Please stop double-posting. - Zilla
Arcane Lab... the only thing I can think of is hope to wish for bounce, and bounce it before I'd go off.

[Pyrokinesis]

The problem with playing Cunning Wish for bounce is that once Lab/Law is down they can simply wait for you to play said bounce spell and then counter it. To fight that, you board in a random bounce spell or two to dig for so that you can try on their turn, then yours... and if that doesn't work it isn't as though you would win otherwise.
Why this is better than simply wishing for two bounce spells is that it costs one less Wish and the second bounce spell could catch them off guard since they never actually saw it.

The decklist seems to be just about fixed, except for the following points, nearly all of which concern the sideboard:

Meditate: One in the wishboard or no?
Twincast: One in the sideboard or no?
-These are usually questions of which of the two is in the sideboard, or if any are in it at all.
How many Brain Freezes maindeck?
Brain Freeze in the wishboard or no?
Blast variants: Seven or eight in the sideboard?

I believe that a Brain Freeze in the board is unnecessary.

Discuss.

["Jeska"]

I find myself wishing for Stroke of Genius alot just for draw. I`m wondering if this is normal or just me?? I have goldfished the deck quite abit and played several games and there have been times where I wish I could wish for a Meditate or some kind of draw in the sideboard. So I guess I`m just bringing up the same question as the post above me, but I`m hopping Deep6er could jump in and answer.

Is Meditate needed in the sideboard?? Go like 3-1 (maindeck-sideboard)

Or maybe an extra Flash of Insight in the board??

[bunny]

When I play this deck (my pet deck is actually goblins, I only use it because noone else wants to play it), I usually find myself wishing for twincast, for the sole reason that meditate+twincast= gg. It gives you 8 cards to play with, and you don't even have to let the original meditate resolve. I usually kill my opponent with the meditate still on the stack.

Is Meditate needed in the sideboard?? Go like 3-1 (maindeck-sideboard)

If you have 8 mana (wish, meditate, reset), you're already winning. And meditate is just a better topdeck than any other card mid-combo.

[ExpectLess]

@Jeska
I definitely like using Stroke as a draw mechanism if the situation is right. If I see I have an unproportional amount of untap effects compared to draw, I'll focus on Wishing for a Stroke. Similarly, if I see I have an unproportional amount of draw, I'll look to Wish for a Turnabout. Honestly, I think those two cover the vast majority of situations with respect to looking for either draw or untap effects in the sideboard.

@Meditate in sideboard
Despite the fact that Wishing for Meditate can be helpful, it's not useful enough that it outweights another one maindeck. You wouldn't even think of running a High Tide in the sideboard to be wished for, and Meditate isn't much different. It's not redundant enough in the deck to take one out for a toolbox (being our *only* literal card advantage).

@Twincast in sideboard
This is the sideboard slot I'm most conflicted about. Although in the maindeck it proves to be very functional, I feel like if you would ever need to Wish for one, you should already be winning (if you were missing draw or an untap you'd go for the Turnabout/Stroke). It's nice to Wish for a Twincast for a Meditate, but that's about it. Regardless, I'm still running one in the sideboard for lack of a better card to replace it with.

@Brainfreeze numbers maindeck and sideboard
I wouldn't go less than 3 Brainfreeze main deck. "Anti-fizzling tech" is great in addition to how much you want to see them in certain matchups (it's so nice to just Brainfreeze after a counter war against Landstill). The only time you don't want to see them is pre-combo against a fast clock. Even considering that, however, running 2 is so much more risky if an opponent has counters/stifles/gaea's blessings than appropriating one more maindeck slot to it.

As of now, I still run one Brainfreeze in the sideboard. If you're only left with a decent amount of mana and a Cunning Wish, grabbing a Brainfreeze for "anti-fizzle tech" and stacking your deck is very nice. There's really no other single get-out-of-jail-free card you can Wish for if your hand is thin.

@BEB in sideboard
If you have 8 spots to spare, you definitely should use them. Red cards can be such a problem for this deck (Goblins suck ala Lackey/Piledriver, Burn sucks ala Pyrostatic Pillar/Sirocco, Flamevault is definitely going to suck) and virtually every red deck runs at least 4 REB. Having 8 BEB against 4 REB is an undeniable advantage.

Right now my board looks like:
4 BEB
4 Hydroblast
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Echoing Truth
1 Twincast
1 Turnabout
1 Stroke of Genius
1 Words of Wisdom
1 Brainfreeze

I finally took out Evacuation after deciding that, in almost every case I used it, picking Chain of Vapor/Echoing Truth or a combo piece to finalize my hand was just as good.

[Lukas Preuss]

I have a question:

What is the best plan in the mirror match? Do you try to go off as soon as possible? Or do you wait until they go off to respond to one of their important spells?

I guess, it's nice to go off during their turn, but it doesn't really matter that much, because you can still use your Turnabouts and twincast their Resets to untap your lands...


How would you play the mirror?

[Deep6er]

@Lukas Preuss: Solidarity Mirror usually comes down to who has the most experience. The easiest thing to liken it to is a Mexican Standoff. The first guy to blink is the dead one, unless, the guy who blinks can support the blinkage. See? Kind of confusing. (If you don't know what a Mexican Standoff is.....for shame) By the way, the Solidarity mirror match will frequently take 1 1/2 to 3 hours.

@"Jeska": Why are you wishing for Stroke? I wish for Stroke maybe once out of twenty five games. I think you might be getting a little too flashy. Believe it or not, I've come to the conclusion that having a Meditate in the 'board is not necessarily the best plan game one. It's best to push all of your advantages game one (Dead cards + Access to your sideboard) and ride that to the strong first game win so that you can follow the traditional Solidarity plan of win game one, lose game two to their hate, then win game three when you figure out how to play around their hate.

@Pyrokinesis: Don't put 'Freeze in the board. It's a wasted slot. The wishboard needs to have as much flexibility as possible and 'Freeze doesn't do anything until many things have already happened. I like the safety of 8 blasts, however, Ewokslayer was testing 6 and came out to the same 60-40 percentage that I had with 8 blasts. Although, there were times where he was lucky to find the blast. So, it's kind of a balancing factor.

@Gaudard: Playing around Sirocco revolves around two things. Intelligent use of draw spells and bluffing. Reading your opponent is important but some people are incapable of doing it. When they telecast Sirocco/Blast then you have to bluff Blast or the hand that loses to resolved Sirocco/Blast (When you have the blast in hand). Obviously, different things are applicable to different people and what works for someone will not work for everyone. Oh, also good job on the top 8.

@FRM: I don't think that warrants enough of an inclusion into an already tight decklist. If you can find a way to make it work all the better for you, however, I think that one of the issues with remand is that it's not actually strong enough when you're digging for lands. Mainly because it's better to impulse looking for lands instead of buying the "theoretical" two turns that remand would give you and hoping for the third land.