[Deck] Solidarity (Reset High Tide)

[Benie Bederios]

Hi,

I did some field research. I searched Germagic.de for all Solidarity lists of this and last year and compared them.

These are the results of the Maindeck

xxxxxxxxx 2 Brainfreeze
xxxxxxxxx 4 Brainstorm
xxxxxxxxx 2 Cunning Wish
xxx xxx x 3rd Cunning Wish
       x  1 Echoing Truth
xxxxxxxxx 1 Flash of Insight
x xxxxxxx 2nd Flash of Insight
xxxxxxxxx 6 fetchlands
    x     7th fetchland
xxxxxxxxx 4 Force of Will
xxxxxxxxx 4 Impulse
xxxxxxxxx 3 Meditate
 x xx  x  4th Meditate
xxxxxxxxx 4 High Tide
xxxxxxxxx 2 Opt
 xxx  x   3rd Opt
 x x  x   4th Opt
  x x  xx 2 Peek
xxxxxxxxx 4 Remand
xxxxxxxxx 4 Reset
xxxxxxxxx 10 Island
 xxxxxxxx 11th Island
 xx xxxxx 12th Island
x         2 Volcanic Island
x         3 Think Twice
xxxxxxxxx 3 Turnabout
 x x xx x 1 Twincast
     x    3rd Twincast

With this result the Skeleton looks like this

2 Brainfreeze
4 Brainstorm
2 Cunning Wish
1 Flash of Insight
6 Fetchlands
4 Force of Will
4 Impulse
3 Meditate
4 High Tide
2 Opt
4 Remand
4 Reset
11 Island( Volcanic Island counted as Island)
3 Turnabout

These are already 54 cards, giving us only 6 to play with. Some are obvious aditions. Here are the possibilities from common to rare.

12th Island		8
2nd Flash of Insight	8
3rd Cunning Wish		6
1 Twincast		5
2 Peek			4
4th Meditate		4
3rd Opt			4
4th Opt			3
1 Echoing Truth		1
7th Fetchland		1
3 Think Twice		1
3rd Twincast		1

Anyway If you want to build the 'average' deck with these numbers you will get.

2 Brainfreeze
4 Brainstorm
3 Cunning Wish
2 Flash of Insight
4 Force of Will
4 Impulse
3/4 Meditate
4 High Tide
2/3 Opt
0/2 Peek
4 Remand
4 Reset
3 Turnabout
1 Twincast

12 Island
3 Flooded Strand
3 Polluted Delta

If you use the same strategy for the SB this would mean.

 xxxxxxxx 1 Brainfreeze
 xxx    x 2nd Brainfreeze
x xx   x  1 Chain of Vapor
 xx x  xx 2 Disrupt
 x  x  x  3rd Disrupt
 x  x     4th Disrupt
xxxxxxx x 1 Echoing Truth
       x  1 Gaea's Blessing
    x   x 1 Hurkyl's Recall
x x  xx x 1 Meditate
       x  1 Misdirection
  x       1 Mystical Tutor
xxxx xx   1 Rebuild
   x  x   4 Spellsnare
x         1 Starstorm
       xx 1 Stifle
xxxxxxxxx 1 Stroke of Genius
x         1 Sudden Shock
xxxxxxxxx 1 Turnabout
x     x   3 Twincast
x         1 Urza's Rage
        x 1 Visions Skeins
  x xxx x 1 Wipe Away
     x    4th Wipe Away
 x  xxxx  1 Words of Wisdom

Of course some cards are Metagame choices. But the skeleton of the SB would be

1 Stroke of Genius
1 Turnabout

The rest from common to rare.

1 Brainfreeze		8
1 Rebuild			6
2 Disrupt			5
1 Meditate		5
1 Words of Wisdom		5
1 Wipe Away		5
2nd Brainfreeze		4
1 Chain of Vapor		3
3rd Disrupt		3
4th Disrupt		2
4 Spellsnare		2
1 Hurkyl's Recall		2
1 Stifle			2
3 Twincast		2
1 Gaea's Blessing		1
1 Misdirection		1
1 Mystical Tutor		1
1 Starstorm		1
1 Sudden Shock		1
1 Urza's Rage		1
1 Visions Skeins		1
4th Wipe Away		1

So an 'average' Sideboard would look like this

1 Stroke of Genius
1 Turnabout
2 Brainfreeze
1 Rebuild
3/4 Disrupt
0/1 Meditate( depends on the MD)
1 Words of Wisdom
1 Wipe Away
1 Chain of Vapor
0/4 Spellsnare
0/1 Hurky's Recall
0/1 Srifle
0/3 Twincast

So in short. There are already 54 cards in the MD that are needed.
Of the six left, two of them are lands, so you actually have 4 cards left. 1 Twincast and the 3rd Cunning Wishes are the most solid choices and the rest is a combination of drawspells.

In the SB there are only 2 cards auto-include, but Brainfreeze and Rebuild are pretty solid too( each deck that doesn't play Rebuild, played Hurkyl's Recall.

Is this a good conclusion or did I used to few sources?

Why do some people play 4 MD Meditates instead of the 3/1 split MD SB?

[Taurelin]

Interesting resarch. It seems that you invested a lot of time and work doing that!

The - as you call it - skeleton and the average deck look indeed rather fixed. If you want to play Solidarity, there's not much space for individual experiments. The only questions you can ask yourself are

- whether you splash red (notice that only one player did, and notice that no other splash color appears!)
- whether you prefer Peek or Opt
- whether you play 3 or 4 Meditate and/or Twincast main

These are answered according top personal preferences or the expected metagame.



What I find more interesting are some strange observations regarding the Sideboard.

- Why does nobody play Hydroblasts? Are Goblins really non-existent anymore? And what about other red hate that Burn, Dragon Stompy or even NQG/r bring along?

- Why do so many people play Disrupt?

- Why do people still choose cards which are generally considered superfluous (Words of Wisdom), bad (Mystical Tutor) or terrible (Visions Skeins)?

What is also obvious is that a variety of Bounce is needed for different situations. Rebuild, Echoing Truth (missing in the list with numbers) and Wipe Away seem to be the strongest, since they get rid of Chalices, Trinispheres respectively Counterbalance, MM and the like.



Another question is why there are no results regarding Spell Snare in the main deck. Does this mean that such a choice to fight Chalic@1, Counterbalance and so on has not been considered by tournament players, or has it been tried but not proven succesful so there are no Top8 results with this?

[Bahamuth]

Interesting resarch. It seems that you invested a lot of time and work doing that!

The - as you call it - skeleton and the average deck look indeed rather fixed. If you want to play Solidarity, there's not much space for individual experiments. The only questions you can ask yourself are

- whether you splash red (notice that only one player did, and notice that no other splash color appears!)
- whether you prefer Peek or Opt
- whether you play 3 or 4 Meditate and/or Twincast main

These are answered according top personal preferences or the expected metagame.



What I find more interesting are some strange observations regarding the Sideboard.

- Why does nobody play Hydroblasts? Are Goblins really non-existent anymore? And what about other red hate that Burn, Dragon Stompy or even NQG/r bring along?

- Why do so many people play Disrupt?

- Why do people still choose cards which are generally considered superfluous (Words of Wisdom), bad (Mystical Tutor) or terrible (Visions Skeins)?

What is also obvious is that a variety of Bounce is needed for different situations. Rebuild, Echoing Truth (missing in the list with numbers) and Wipe Away seem to be the strongest, since they get rid of Chalices, Trinispheres respectively Counterbalance, MM and the like.



Another question is why there are no results regarding Spell Snare in the main deck. Does this mean that such a choice to fight Chalic@1, Counterbalance and so on has not been considered by tournament players, or has it been tried but not proven succesful so there are no Top8 results with this?

I don't find, at least in European meta, Hydroblast to be unnecessary. Goblins is seriously on the decline and Burn is also practically unexistent. I don't think boarding in Hydroblast vs. Dragon Stompy or Red Thresh is a good idea.

I'm not sure on Disrupt. I don't like it either. I suppose it's good vs. Pikula-ish decks, which are played a lot around here. I've been playing Spell Snare for quite some time already, which in my opinion is more versatile and can be boarded in vs. more decks.

I don't know either why people still bring cards like Words of Wisdom or Vision Skeins. I do think the Mystical Tutor is the board isn't as bad as it seems. I can really help to give your hand the possiblility to fight through counters or find (another) High Tide.

You're right about the bounce spells. I've been playing both Rebuild and Wipe Away as a wish-target for quite some time, and right now I'm actually playing 3 Echoing Truth in the sideboard. It's my solution to Dragon Stompy. Obviously it comes in vs. decks like TES and Belcher too, where it can randomly steal games, but it's also very good vs. Ichorid, where a well-placed Echoing Truth can buy you numberous turns.

I played 2 Spell Snare in my mainboard when I got into the top 8 of the Belgian champs, but that list doesn't seem to be on there. Playing Spell Snares in the mainboard is probably going to force you to cut at least 2 Opts/Peeks from your mainboard. This is the reason I decided to cut them out again. Opts feel necessary to me, since mana screw will happen a lot more often if you're not playing them.

[Chippo]

@Bahamuth

Your list on the Belgian Champs was the following:

Main Deck
Brain Freeze 2
Brainstorm 4
Cunning Wish 3
Flash of Insight 2
Force of Will 4
High Tide 4
Impulse 4
Meditate 3
Opt 3
Remand 4
Reset 4
Spell Snare 2
Turnabout 3

Flooded Strand 3
Island 12
Polluted Delta 3

Sideboard
Brain Freeze 1
Echoing Truth 1
Hydroblast 3
Meditate 1
Rebuild 1
Spell Snare 2
Stroke of Genius 1
Turnabout 1
Twincast 2
Wipe Away 2

Glad to help you out

[FredMaster]

I've seen a list on my local tournament once, which ran a red splash for second win option:
A Twincasted Urza's Rage ^^

I think he was kind of sucessful, well as sucessful, as Solidarity can be in these times
What do you think about the idea?

[Team-Hero]

I've seen a list on my local tournament once, which ran a red splash for second win option:
A Twincasted Urza's Rage ^^

I think he was kind of sucessful, well as sucessful, as Solidarity can be in these times
What do you think about the idea?

I like it. Don't see what you can cut for it, but I like it.

[Taurelin]

That idea is already a year old, you can find it in this thread, post 1097.
http://mtgthesource.com/forums/showt...?t=617&page=55

There you can also see what to cut and what a complete red SB looks like.

[Benie Bederios]

As you can see, on of the decks I found did this too.

It's probably the best splash atm, but Meddling Mage( the main reason to play the splash) isn't such a house anymore.

I do have one question: Why is Twincast played as three-off in some sideboards? In wich matchups do you board them in and for what purpose.

At the moment this is my list. It's pretty basic and I'm going to test some mayor changes.

3 Flooded Strand
12 Island
3 Polluted Delta

2 Brain Freeze
4 Brainstorm
3 Cunning Wish
2 Flash of Insight
4 Force of Will
4 High Tide
4 Impulse
3 Meditate
3 Opt
1 Peek
4 Remand
4 Reset
1 Twincast
3 Turnabout

Sideboard
2 Brainfreeze
3 Echoing Truth
1 Meditate
1 Psionic Blast
1 Rebuild
4 Spell Snare
1 Stroke of Genius
1 Turnabout
1 Wipe Away

Nothing special in the MD. I to often found Peek a dead draw, so I decided to play the 3/1 split.

In the SB I play three Echoing Truth and 4 Spellsnare for boarding in. I'm not very impressed by the Psionic Blast and the second Brainfreeze( I rarely board it in) but had some space left. I definatly going to try out Taco's build too. I like it when someone tries something completely difference.

BB

[arsenalpow]

I always considered peek to be subpar, imo 4x Opt is the only way to play the deck. It needs to be able to dig as deep as possible.

[GreenOne]

In the SB I play three Echoing Truth and 4 Spellsnare for boarding in. I'm not very impressed by the Psionic Blast and the second Brainfreeze( I rarely board it in) but had some space left.

I'd play Wipe Away istead of the 2nd brainfreeze all day cause it helps greatly vs counterbalance, and CB is one of the major problems nowadays.

Twincast was played as sort of counterspell in the threshold matchup before counterbalance grew strong. It was great at speeding up the combo, it wasn't a dead draw midcomb (like spell snare is) and it allowed great tech to go infinite vs Ill-Gotten Gains. It was generally good when there were lot of things on the stack, thing that tend to happen quite often with this deck.

[noobslayer]

I've seen a list on my local tournament once, which ran a red splash for second win option:
A Twincasted Urza's Rage ^^

I think he was kind of sucessful, well as sucessful, as Solidarity can be in these times
What do you think about the idea?

Gearhart did this like, over a year ago.

I have to ask the question though, as much as I love this deck, why still play it? There are better decks, combo decks in particular, that fill the niche in the metagame better.

[FredMaster]

I have to ask the question though, as much as I love this deck, why still play it? There are better decks, combo decks in particular, that fill the niche in the metagame better.

Pssst: Don't say it in here.... it's.... too dangerous.

[Bahamuth]

Gearhart did this like, over a year ago.

I have to ask the question though, as much as I love this deck, why still play it? There are better decks, combo decks in particular, that fill the niche in the metagame better.

I tend to disagree. The faster combo that's been around is probably better right now, but I think there are several matchups where Solidarity will perform better than those decks. Examples are obviously Landstill and I think Dragon Stompy too (not sure here).

[ImAChampion]

I play the deck still because it was the first deck I played when getting into Legacy. I have sense put together several other Legacy decks...but I just can't bring myself to ripping this one up.

[noobslayer]

I'm not going to lie. I used to play this decka lot, just scroll back through the forum and check. Put simply, your forces and fetchlands are better spent in oh say, threshold.

[Benie Bederios]

It really depends on the meta. Sure if all decks you encounter are Thresh, Breakfast and Ichorid, you better of with another (combo) deck. But in a less developed meta, with lots of aggro, stax and dedicated control, this is the best deck to play.

This deck still races most aggro decks and has by far the best tools to deal with control.
The deck is also almost imuun for the most played manadisruption( Moon and Wasteland) and is for except maybe Breakfast the most consitent. The advantage of this deck over Breakfast is, that it's alot harder to hate out, and doesn't have alot splash hate.

You don't hear me asking how to help my Ichorid or Counterbalance Thresh matchup. Those to are almost autolosses, so if my meta was drenched with them, I would probably play Armageddon Stax or something two beat the hell out of both of them.

I just want top optimize the list for my meta and that is possible.

So yeah, it might not be as powerfull as it used to be, but it's still a decent tier 2 deck.

BB

[GreenOne]

You don't hear me asking how to help my Ichorid or Counterbalance Thresh matchup. Those to are almost autolosses

I almost never tested the Ichorid matchup (non-existant here), but CB thresh is far from unwinnable if you side in a decent amount of Wipe Aways and Spell Snares.

[Bahamuth]

I almost never tested the Ichorid matchup (non-existant here), but CB thresh is far from unwinnable if you side in a decent amount of Wipe Aways and Spell Snares.

Agreed. Also, I did test the Ichorid matchup and it's really not all that bad. You have to get a bit lucky, but if you manage to FoW their discard-outlet, they will usually be really slow. The deck is very inconsistent, and especially with Echoing Truth's in the sideboard, it's really not that hard to be faster.

[Benie Bederios]

I sais almost an autoloss.

Don't be silly. Thresh is no where near 50/50, I think it's about 30/70( which I find an autoloss) and even if you board in Spell Snares and Wipe Away's, your still in for a though matchup. They have 8 spells to force a Counterbalance through and Tarmagoyf is a very decent clock. There cantrip engine is almost just as good as yours. Even if you play absolutly perfect, they still could force through a Counterbalance. Your only out will be Wipe Away then, but try to find him when your Brainstorms and Impulse are countered.

Ichorid is winnable against a bad pilot. They have until turn 3 to Therapy you for your High Tides or Echoing Truth's. This matchup is also near 65/35 in there advantage at least.

Be honest, if you would play in a meta where those two decks where running rampart, would you play Solidarity?

BB

[Bahamuth]

Be honest, if you would play in a meta where those two decks where running rampart, would you play Solidarity?

Yup, I would. I see it as a challenge to beat any Threshold player. Ichorid is kind of lame tough...