While I'll concede that this new kid on the block, Spiral Tide, is absurdly good (I play it and I'm pretty confident I can win against everything in Legacy right now), people should just learn which are the deck's weaknesses. The real problem, as with any other combo deck that pops up, is that people prefer to focus on beating the other archetypes and usually ignore combo because, well, "you'll meet 1 combo each 9 rounds", "it folds to Cannonist or double discard" or BS like that.

There's no doubt on it being better than ANT and TES, since Time Spiral is so broken that it can be considered a 85%-success Ad Nauseam that doesn't care about lives and doesn't decrease its effectiveness. Spiral Tide is built to be a mid-game combo deck that packs redundancy and consistency at a great level. You can't expect to fold it with a single piece of hate if you don't follow with anything else. This is valid for any other combo deck, barring Belcher.

What I've found out, especially for those SCG lists that are really slower than the Cloud of Faeries versions, is that they tend to have a bit of difficulty against fast aggro (Cat Sligh-Wild Nacatl/Lynx+ Burn), because they're built to be consistent and they sacrifice a bit of speed.
Being forced to go off on turn 3 is really risky because it weakens the effectiveness of Candelabra, especially on a lone High Tide, and they must rely on finding a Time Spiral in time before being killed. Now, Time Spiral on 3 lands is pretty likely to fizzle, too, if they don't manage to find a second HT, and chaining multiples Meditate is really risky considering that you're spending half of your mana and you cut yourself out of Turnabout (3 on 6, 3 remaining).

Also, look at those lists. They are crafted on playing in a disruption metagame, black (Dark Horizons) or blue. They run 3 Meditates which are great against those decks but pretty weak against aggro. They only play 4 Force of Wll as protection.
Putting a fast clock with moderate disruption suite really hurt this deck. This deck aims to cantrip to find the right cards withing the first 2-3 turns, and giving it short time means it does not manage to gather all the resources (protection) to go off through some Mindbreak Trap or REB/Silence. My thought is that you don't need more than 4 sb slots to properly fight Tide combo if you're already fast enough maindeck or run any other form of disruption. Fast clock is one of them.
Hell, even Spell Pierce on High Tide means you'll have to have 2 to 4 mana more to go on, and often leads to not being able to succeed.


You people should stop complaining about Spiral Tide being so broken that it survives multiple discard, because every good players should know that you cripple combo with reactive disruption, while proactive can easily be fought with a good use of cantrips or replenishing hands with Meditate. Luck happens, but that's what you get when playing combo: random wins pulled out off bad situations.
The fact that this deck needs to protect 2 cards to go off, also, makes the "strip your hand" quite utopistic. Sure, there are times when Hymn to Tourach will take out your Tide and Spiral, but usually those decks can be easily defeated in the end if they don't follow with a good clock, just by recovering and chaining cantrips. That's why saying that Pox would take down Spiral Tide is a mistake, because it means thinking that you can beat combo with a worse, sorcery-speed version of Landstill.