[Deck] Solidarity

[Bahamuth]

Alright, good to see someone post here for a change.

I've personally kicked out the remaining Cryptic Command quite some time ago. My meta has seen a very rapid decline of CounterTop and now contains a lot more Merfolks. Hence I've been trying to improve that matchup. Thing is, I'm unsure how. What I did so far was add a 19th land, which has been pretty good so far. I'm also still running 4 Wish 3 Tide, which I've been liking quite a lot as well. I'm also still running a single Hunting Pack sideboard along with 3 Grip, altough I'm unsure if that is the right call anymore.

I'm against cutting Flash of Insight. I've been testing Peer Through Depths as a possible solution to Tempo Thresh (to rather effectively pull Spell Snares and Daze), but I always hated not being able to Freeze myself. I realise now I actually do that quite a lot, and I find it to be pretty important for the functionality of the deck.

I'd try to get at least 4 fetches as soon as possible really. Brainstorm really requires them to be as good as it can be.

[Fons]

is anyone planning playing this at gencon besides me?

[Silent Requiem]

Alright, good to see someone post here for a change.

I've personally kicked out the remaining Cryptic Command quite some time ago. My meta has seen a very rapid decline of CounterTop and now contains a lot more Merfolks. Hence I've been trying to improve that matchup. Thing is, I'm unsure how. What I did so far was add a 19th land, which has been pretty good so far. I'm also still running 4 Wish 3 Tide, which I've been liking quite a lot as well. I'm also still running a single Hunting Pack sideboard along with 3 Grip, altough I'm unsure if that is the right call anymore.

I'm against cutting Flash of Insight. I've been testing Peer Through Depths as a possible solution to Tempo Thresh (to rather effectively pull Spell Snares and Daze), but I always hated not being able to Freeze myself. I realise now I actually do that quite a lot, and I find it to be pretty important for the functionality of the deck.

I'd try to get at least 4 fetches as soon as possible really. Brainstorm really requires them to be as good as it can be.

Some very interesting comments.

I would have thought that running 4 Wish & 3 Tide would have made you slower against aggro control, rather than stronger. I can dig 5 deep with a 2cc Peer (for example) on turn 2 or 3, or even cast & combo on turn 4. Wish, on the other hand, gives me only a one turn window before fast decks force me to combo, and I can't Wish and combo on turn 4. This means that Wish only works in one of the three turns that Impulse/Peer would have worked, albeit it guarentees me the card. Am I missing something?

I also find the huge playstyle differences between Solidarity players very interesting. I have (in my admittedly limited experience) never decked myself with Brain Freeze for a Flash of Insight. Nor have I ever had to Stroke myself the way that other players have. Of course, these are all playstyle choices that often occur because of a tendancy to make certain (seemingly unrelated) decisions further up the chain.

My own foibles include often finding myself getting only half way with Brain Freeze and then having to knock 20ish cards off the other guy's library with a large Stroke. When Freeze has worked for me (as it mostly does) it has often been in conjunction with a Remand. Similarly, I almost always Twincast my Meditates despite the risk of being "two-for-one'd".

Now, I'm not saying that my way is any better than your way, but it (for me) again comes down to speed. I nearly always find myself having to combo at 4 (or sometimes 3) lands. I can effectively use Peer from turn 2, but Flash can't be used until turn 3 (either flash for 1 or flash for 0 on turn 2 followed by flashback on 3). This just feels too clunky, even if the card does offer the potential for abuse. It is similar to Cryptic Command in this way, though I feel far more conflicted about Flash than I ever did about Command.

Of course, in such a synergistic deck, it is very difficult to look at any one change in isolation. If I put the Flashes back in, I would probably want to put the 4th Meditate in the MD, which means I cut a Remand. All these changes change the deck in subtle but important ways. At the end of the day, I shall have to spend more time playtesting the new build to see how it feels.

-Silent Requiem

[Bahamuth]

Some very interesting comments.

I would have thought that running 4 Wish & 3 Tide would have made you slower against aggro control, rather than stronger. I can dig 5 deep with a 2cc Peer (for example) on turn 2 or 3, or even cast & combo on turn 4. Wish, on the other hand, gives me only a one turn window before fast decks force me to combo, and I can't Wish and combo on turn 4. This means that Wish only works in one of the three turns that Impulse/Peer would have worked, albeit it guarentees me the card. Am I missing something?

You're right that casting Wish pre-combo costs alot of time. You should however have this time against aggro-control no matter what. Aggro control can barely win turn 7, which gives you plenty of time to cast wish and sculpt your hand. Wish does this way better than the cantrips we have.

I also find the huge playstyle differences between Solidarity players very interesting. I have (in my admittedly limited experience) never decked myself with Brain Freeze for a Flash of Insight. Nor have I ever had to Stroke myself the way that other players have. Of course, these are all playstyle choices that often occur because of a tendancy to make certain (seemingly unrelated) decisions further up the chain.

Yes, I've noticed too that others play this deck differently from me. It mostly concerns cantrip decisions, which usually determine the rest of the game. I'm always very tempted to take land over buisness in my Impulses, but others prefer to miss landdrops and take the spell. This is my reason for upping the land count. I don't want to find myself cantripping into land all the time, as I do now.

Freezing yourself is a seriously powerfull play this deck has. We don't function the way Tendrills combo does (except for some lists with Burning Wish, which do essentially the same as we do), because we don't play alot of protection at all. Our FoWs go to earlier spells quite alot, and we don't have any protection except for Remand, which delays us a turn, and Twincast which is usually sideboard material. We win by having better hands than the opponent, by making sure we can win even though our opponent counters some spells. For this you need every card in your hand to matter. Brain Freeze won't matter if you don't have Flash, and if you have Flash, it will generally win you the game.

Consider this situation: Your opponent has decided to counter your draw and he FoWed a Meditate and Spell Snared an Impulse. You have a Turnabout and a Wish in your hand. In this case, you can untap and cast wish for Meditate. That would not be a bad play at all. You could also untap and Wish for Brain Freeze, which will, as the storm is probably around 10 already, immediately win you the game. It's quite important to never let the original Freeze resolve in this situation by the way, as you risk (small chance, but it's there) that you mill the other 2 Freezes and are left without a kill. This situation is actually fairly common, and allows you to use Cunning Wish and obviously Brain Freeze itself as an almost instant-win.

My own foibles include often finding myself getting only half way with Brain Freeze and then having to knock 20ish cards off the other guy's library with a large Stroke. When Freeze has worked for me (as it mostly does) it has often been in conjunction with a Remand. Similarly, I almost always Twincast my Meditates despite the risk of being "two-for-one'd".

In the first case, you can also Freeze yourself and win from there on. You can't really hope for huge Stroke's.

I'm very unsure myself if the last case you describe is the right play. The risk you're taking is really pretty big, but besides hoping for no counter at all, there's also a very realistic chance the opponent won't even realise he can counter both spells by just countering the Meditate. I usually only board in Twincast in counter-heavy matchups, so I treat it as protection and won't ever do this.

Now, I'm not saying that my way is any better than your way, but it (for me) again comes down to speed. I nearly always find myself having to combo at 4 (or sometimes 3) lands. I can effectively use Peer from turn 2, but Flash can't be used until turn 3 (either flash for 1 or flash for 0 on turn 2 followed by flashback on 3). This just feels too clunky, even if the card does offer the potential for abuse. It is similar to Cryptic Command in this way, though I feel far more conflicted about Flash than I ever did about Command.

I've had issues with Flash of Insight being slow too. Same goes for Wish. I will generally board out a Wish and a FoI for the Tide sideboard in those cases. I don't find myself having to combo on turn 4 that much. Aggro isn't that big in my meta. If it is in yours, you'll have to tweak your sideboard to slow the opponent down with Hydroblasts or Echoing Truths (or just play ANT for that matter).

Of course, in such a synergistic deck, it is very difficult to look at any one change in isolation. If I put the Flashes back in, I would probably want to put the 4th Meditate in the MD, which means I cut a Remand. All these changes change the deck in subtle but important ways. At the end of the day, I shall have to spend more time playtesting the new build to see how it feels.

You're right. Although I don't understand why you'd really want the 4th Meditate back in if you were running FoI. It's pretty amazing how many options you have in this deck, given it's very small amount of open slot, and how those changes affect the deck so much. You also have the option to run stuff like Think Twice, Chant and the stuff we discussed like Twincast Mb, 4 Remand, Cryptic Command and Peer. Although we can kind of separate the good from the bad options, I think it's also really a matter of personal preference.

[Silent Requiem]

Well, I did several hours of playtesting (without sideboarding) last night and I am pretty happy with the deck list with the Flash of Insight (in place of the Peer Through Depths). I still have not cast Brain Freeze on myself, but some of the decks I was playing against really reminded me why this card is broken (especially against discard ).

On an side(board) note, I did find that Tolarian Winds was useful in the sideboard. Basically, I had run out of draw (though I had plenty of untaps) and I would normally wished for Meditate. In this case, however, I had loads of dead lands in my hand, so I put all my untap on the stack and wished for Tolarian Winds. It turned my dead lands into fresh cards. I'm not sure that it will see frequent play (pretty niche, as you need to have 4+ lands in hand to make it better than meditate), but until I see what the tournament metagame looks like my sideboard has a few open slots.

-Silent Requiem

[ScatmanX]

Tolarian Wind seems nice, but only in sow few moments, I don´t know if it is worth it. Have it been dead in hand sometime? How many do you play?
In Spring Tide I tryed using Flux (gess that with the same purpose), and really liked it, but couldnt afford the space anymore...

[Piceli89]

Hi guys. I decided to turn my attentions so this deck because i feel it has some potential to still do well in Legacy, despites all ha been said about it.
I'm currently playing a quite standard version on Mws, with 2 PtD and 2 FoI, and it's working quite well for me. Just a few questions: Flash of Insight is undisputably a godly card when it gets flashbacked, being an Impulse with an enormous range, but it seems to me that it is absolutely awful when it sticks in your hand. Basically, to make it useful you have to pay at least 3 to draw a card. Or, well, you can wait until you have 8 cards to discard it. Am I missing something or just am not fully understanding its potential?

Oh, and another thing. I played on Mws against a guy called roflcopter, who was playing Solidarity. I was playing Merfolk. In the upkeep of the turn when he would have died, it goes High Tide, and then and the beginning of the draw step he says "i have effects in draw phase. wait". At this point he casts Reset, proceeds fighting through my counters, and BFreezes me. I had to draw the card of the turn and so I lost. My doubt is: was that a legal play? I read this thread a bit and someone said that the Draw Phase, which is the first time Reset can be cast in an oppo's turn, is made just of the act of drawing a card, so there's no "beginning of the draw step". This is proven by the fact, for example, that now with M10 rules LED is no more avaiable in Ant/Tes for the upkeep trick with Mystical tutor getting Ad Nauseam, because, if a "beginning of the draw phase" existed, the player could have broken it in that subphase and procedeed using the mana to cast the AdN on top. Am i right ?

Because the curious fact is that that player wasn't a normal MWS scrub. He said to be David Gearhart himself, and the fact that he mocked me for about half an hour after having lost to him (after he drew 4 resets, btw) somehow confirmed me that he was really him. To see if he was Deep6er himself,i asked him to put that chat in the "Beating your head against a wall on Mws" topic, but he justified saying that he didn't have internet access at home. Exactly as his signature says. Now, i haven't the 100% guarancy that he really was Depp6er or he was a copycat, and if he was a copycat i don't want to toss shit to the real one, but i feel that play wasn't possible, no?

[cjva]

Post M10 your not able to float mana from upkeep to draw, and the first thing that happens in drawstep is drawing the card. He can still play spells in your drawstep, going reset aso but not have that card kill you.

He made a small error that was an illegal play.

[ParkerLewis]

You could also untap and Wish for Brain Freeze, which will, as the storm is probably around 10 already, immediately win you the game. It's quite important to never let the original Freeze resolve in this situation by the way, as you risk (small chance, but it's there) that you mill the other 2 Freezes and are left without a kill. This situation is actually fairly common, and allows you to use Cunning Wish and obviously Brain Freeze itself as an almost instant-win.

Sorry to interrupt (haha !), but could you explain the bolded part ? I totally understand the risk you're referring to, I'm just not sure what not letting the original Freeze resolve will do for you in this case.

Edit : ooooh ! I got it. You want to be able to remand it. I love the huge number of ways this deck's pieces can interact together. I should really build this deck and try to play it one of these days.

[KZhang]

this is also especially important when you're freezing yourself to get your flash of insight into the graveyard.

so let all your storm trigger resolve 1st.

and once the flash is in, you can simply keep the remaining brain freeze on the stack and continue digging for the things you need.

Solidarity is a very fun deck to play with. very synergistic. i remembered playing a mirror once, and at a point in time the board had 11 spells on the stack. it was really quite cool.

[Bahamuth]

I agree that having Flash of Insight in hand can suck. It's mostly only really a problem if you have to race a turn 4/5 kill though, and even if that's the case and you are able to find a good moment to play it, it will help you a lot when trying to win. If you're really unable to play it for 3, playing it for 2 is most likely better than keeping it in your hand, except when you're holding a FoW in some situations.

[Silent Requiem]

As you may be able to tell from some of my earlier posts, I have really wrestled with FoI.

Personally, I keep it, but I also pitch it at the first opportunity (such as searching for 1 or zero if I do not need to dig for lands). In addition to digging, it also protects your graveyard (haunting echos, etc), which is the real reason I decided to keep it.

What I have learned from my playtesting, however, is that your deck needs to fit you and your play decisions. Just because I keep FoI in, it does not mean that anyone else must. The beauty of Solidarity is that even changing a few cards creates a deck that handles very differently.

-Silent Requiem

[Zinch]

Lately I've been bored of digging only to find lands (with opt and impulse), and even sometimes not finding them, so I was thinking in playing more lands.
Has anyone tried a 19 lands version?

[Bahamuth]

Lately I've been bored of digging only to find lands (with opt and impulse), and even sometimes not finding them, so I was thinking in playing more lands.
Has anyone tried a 19 lands version?

I'm playing 19 land right now. I haven't noticed too much of a serious difference.

[Silent Requiem]

I know what you mean about having to hunt for those lands, but for every time I have difficulty, I have a time that I Meditate into 3 lands and a Force of Will.

The list is also very tight. While I could come up with something to cut if I had to, I would want to know that it was going to be a worthwhile exchange. Right now I just don't see that loosing a Flash of Insight or Twincast for an Island would be all that beneficial.

-Silent Requiem

PS. I hope to attend my first legacy tournament this weekend. I'll let you all know how I do.

[cjva]

Played in a local 32 man turnament today. Went 4-1, straight swiss and got myself a 5th place.

Faced a variety of decks, lost against UGr-Thresh, won again MUC, slight, doran and something else i forgot now.

My first reflection is that the post M10 rules didnt do that much of a difference, as long as you keep in mind that you cant wish for thing in RFG. Play a litle tighter and it seams like it will all go fine.

Funny thing, against MUC i did combo out in my own turn. once in responce to a EOT (my EOT) Fact of fiction, second duel with a huge hand built up by a EOT (his turn) meditate. Turnabout ftw and reset is a good card to pitch to fow. =P

[FoolofaTook]

Oh, and another thing. I played on Mws against a guy called roflcopter, who was playing Solidarity.

This is an imposter. Gearhart posted in another thread to confirm this.

[MTG-Fan]

is anyone planning playing this at gencon besides me?

Hey, how did you do @ Gencon with this deck?

[Fons]

Hey, how did you do @ Gencon with this deck?

I played Dragon Stompy and placed 28th

[i-never-smile]

There's going to be a (rare) Legacy event in the Los Angeles area, so I'm dusting off Solidarity and debating over a few options within the list.

I don't know what the metagame will be, but I have a general idea that there will be a little bit of everything--some dredge, some belcher, some ANT, some Merfolk, some thresh, some goblins. So I'm starting off with this list:

12 Island
4 Strand
2 Delta

4 High Tide
4 Brainstorm
3 Opt
1 Peek
1 Disrupt

4 Reset
4 Impulse
3 Remand
1 Peer through Depths
2 Brain Freeze

3 Cunning Wish
3 Meditate
3 Turnabout
4 Force of Will
2 Flash of Insight

Board:
1 Stroke of Genius
1 Brain Freeze
1 Meditate
1 Turnabout
3 Echoing Truth
2 Wipe Away
3 Disrupt
3 Hydroblast

The main thing is I'm trying 1 maindeck Disrupt because it's pretty strong overall, and I like it better than another Peer or a Twincast. Worst comes to worst, it cantrips for 2 on my own spell; at best it counters that crucial daze to win the counter-war against turn 2 CB.

I haven't touched the deck (or Legacy) in about a year, but I still remember how to play it. I read through the thread again, but is there something I should know? Specifically what advice can I get for the Merfolk matchup--which is the only real new deck for me to figure out with this deck.