Since the powered green list of solidarity look like the new star on the block what do you think using Early Harvest?
Good suggestion but you can't create two green mana reliably enough to cast Early Harvest.Originally Posted by Seraphus
Why is it the new star on the block? It seems utterly without results from what I can tell, and the idea's hardly new. The splashes have never worked well in Solidarity, Wasteland does too much to hurt you.
For my confessions, they burned me with fire/
And found I was for endurance made
I don't really like the deck splashed, you are right 100% right, wasteland kills the deck if we put some non-basic land but the amount of decks at GP colombus using Emrakul was amazing, and probably they use 3 of it...
So Hunting pack looks very decent...
It should not be difficult to combo around Emrakul. The only time you need to worry about Emrakul is if he's in play, in which case Hunting Pack won't do much to help.
For my confessions, they burned me with fire/
And found I was for endurance made
That's not right. I'm not saying it's not a good strategy, but you will only hit ONE Emrakul with a brain freeze (unless there are 2 or 3 in the top 3 in any moment... very unlikely), because when it goes to graveyard, the ability triggers on top of any copy of brain freeze still on the stack, so the graveyard is shuffled back into the library before resolving the next storm copy.
So the idea is wait for the first Emrakul to be revealed, with the trigger on the stack search for the trap removing all the graveyard so there isn't any card to suffle back when the trigger resolves. Keep resolving copies until the second Emrakul is revealed, and then in response to the trigger, stroke for lethal your opponent.
What are your turn 4 win percentages? How consistent is the deck on turn 4?
I think splashing Green should not be considered taboo, nor should it be considered mandatory. By splashing green, you are declaring that Counterbalance is such prominent hazard to the deck in your metagame, you are willing to sacrifice some of your invulnerability to nonbasic hate for the strongest solution possible to a resolved Counterbalance.
I don't think Autumn's Veil is worth a splash color on its own. It may be strong enough to play out of the board if you're splashing green, but there are already so many good blue cards that solve the same problems, we don't need to splash another color for Autumn's Veil. The same goes for Orim's Chant/Silence/Abeyance; it's not worth dipping into White for those cards, either. You should be able to win stack wars with Solidarity, of all decks. If you're losing counter-wars and you need cheap anti-countermagic, play 1-drop counterspells and such in your sideboard.
Actually, I take it one step further. If you're already splashing green for Grip, there is temptation to run Autumn's Veil or something else in Green with a similar job. But splashing Grip isn't as dangerous as splashing Veil in. If you run a Tropic out there to have access to Grip mana, you can Grip your opponent's CB in response to a Wasteland, accept the land trade, and be fine in the long run because you solved the CB permanently. But, if you need that Tropic for the combo turn, in order to win a counter-war, then you can't afford to have it wastelanded. Or you have to find another one, which will probably also get wastelanded in a relatively long game against control. You know the price you pay when you need to answer CB with Grip. You can set up more lands after you play the Grip, so it alleviates the problem you created by putting a Tropical Island on the table. But if you're going off with Autumn's Veil as a counterspell, you're opening yourself up to a serious strategic hole on the combo turn with that Tropical Island. It's still not a terrible idea to run Veil because it's a powerful effect, but you're practically throwing a land away to do it. It's sometimes necessary to do that against Counterbalance because that engine can be so difficult to break through, but I wouldn't want to make that kind of sacrifice against opposing countermagic, with this deck.
For similar reasons, I really don't like Moment's Peace in this deck. Almost all of the aggro or aggro-control decks that I want to fog are also running Wastelands. That doesn't make Moment's Peace the most strategically sound tool, in my experience. Tangle is a little better in this regard because you know you're going to get the full value of it, even if your land gets nuked...but it's still awkward as balls when you draw a second or third Tangle and one of your few Tropics got Wasted.
You could try to fight against Wasteland by playing a basic Forest or 2 and 4 Misty Rainforests, and possibly even Terramorphic Expanse. That's not outlandish, when you think about it...I know the Forest wouldn't help much on the combo turn, but it wouldn't give the deck additional vulnerability to Wasteland. It honestly might be more stable than Tropical Island, which you know is highly-likely to get Wasted away. And putting a couple of Terramorphic Expanses in the deck wouldn't be entirely horrible, if a splash color provides enough for the deck. After all, it's still valuable if played on the combo turn--it finds you a basic Island that can be untapped and used just like any other Island on the table. Thawing Glaciers used to exist in old-school High Tide decks, and that was a comes-into-play tapped system of fetching. Even in today's brutally-fast metagame, it's possible to get away with 1-2 taplands if you're using it to play Krosan Grip without the risk of Wasteland.
Personally, I don't see the ultimate need to play green unless you expect your opponent to resolve Counterbalance and protect it, a majority of the time. I've been doing fine with 2 Cryptic Commands, a sideboard Wipe Away, and a 2/2 split of boarded Spell Pierce/Spell Snare. I prefer to simply keep it off the table in the first place, or take the risk of trying to resolve a 3-4 mana bounce spell, which is a lot less complicated than putting Green into your manabase. But perhaps I'm not testing against experienced enough counterbalance players, or I've been getting lucky, or something. All I know is my own experience and what I've read online, because there are basically no videos to be found of people playing Solidarity vs Counter-Top (because of Solidarity's lack of popularity).
Actually, this is how I would do it:
We assume your opponent has 4 Emrakuls in his library, you have the ability to go through most of your deck when you combo off, and you haven't already used too many Brain Freezes/Remands/Cunning Wishes in this game. You combo off and set up a situation where you have 3-4 Brain Freezes/Remands available. You freeze your opponent for a lot of storm, until a copy reveals Emrakul #1. You respond to that trigger by casting Freeze #2, which goes copy after copy until your opponent reveals Emrakul #2. Then you respond to that with another Freeze until a copy mills Emrakul #3. Then you play a 4th Freeze until you hit Emrakul #4. Finally, you respond to the trigger by Cunning Wish-->Ravenous Trap. Trap removes your opponent's graveyard, and then you let the 4th Emrakul trigger resolve. It shuffles your opponent's graveyard (which is now nothing) into his library. Then your opponent gets milled by the rest of your 4th Brain Freeze, and you Stroke him in response to the next Emrakul trigger. Or, you could Remand/hold onto one more Freeze, let him keep a very small library, and then mini-combo him for lethal in an upcoming turn. That's also very possible if you stacked and drew your deck.
The situation is complicated. You could also use Stroke to simply force lethal draw in response to the last Emrakul trigger, but that's assuming you have enough mana to do so for enough cards, meaning your opponent didn't hit all 4 Emrakuls about 12 cards before the end of his library and you don't have another 16 mana to Wish+Stroke him for 13 in response (for example). But if your opponent hit Emrakul #4 that quickly, your last freeze should have ample storm count to hit him for the rest of his library after you Trap away the Emrakul-infested graveyard. It shouldn't be hard to force even one card draw with Stroke to end the game at that point, in theory.
Going back to setting this all up, we are assuming your opponent had all 4 Emrakuls in the library...usually it's only 2-3. Some lists just run 3 Emrakuls, and usually they're going to draw one by the time you want to combo off. I know that I would wait until they try for a Show and Tell before even wanting to go off, because what's the point if they don't have a threat? Make it easier, let them draw the Emrakul they want to cheat into play; that way you don't need 4 Freezes to get the job done.
On another level, it's probably a good idea to hold onto Wishes, Remands, and Freezes in a match-up involving 4 Emrakuls. Don't pitch them to Force, if possible. Don't Remand stuff just to cycle, if you can help it. Don't throw away Wishes unless you absolutely need to burn one. It might be really tough to do that in game 1, but in Game 2 I could see the situation being a lot easier if you bring in more resources that control against a Show and Tell/Hypergen/Eureka deck, and save your Freezes/Remands/Wishes/Wish targets for crucial moments during the combo turn. For this reason, it might be correct to board in some of the Wish targets so you don't rely on only 3 Wishes to solve the endgame Emrakul puzzle.
In any case, it's not only possible to combo against a deck with 4 Emrakuls and some number of Progenitus in it--I've done it in test games, and I'm practicing the method for upcoming events. I actually like that it's a somewhat new puzzle to be solved with the High Tide deck. Most of us have comboed through a Gaea's Blessing or 2 before, but how about comboing off through 4? That attacks Solidarity's resources on a new axis, which I think is pretty cool. I love mental challenges like that, be they large or small.
Speaking of challenges...on another note, Saito just won the GP with Merfolk, playing 3 Spell Pierce main. It wasn't a fluke either; he was a good player and he proved at a competive level against both Pros and Legacy experts that his deck was strong and solid. We can assume that Merfolk builds like his with maindeck Spell Pierce will be showing up more at all types of events. What should we be doing to respond to this rise of fish decks? I don't think Merfolk is a hopeless match-up on any level; just a challenging one. The question is what path to take to combat the imminent popularity rise of fish decks.
My eyes were jaded
So close to the center, I could not see....
Hrm....Considering the Ug version, I believe that the manabase can be safely cut down to:
9 Island
2 Forest
4 Evolving Wilds
4 Terramorphic Expanse
And that you should be able to switch the two Forest for two Islands. Because you play most of your game on your opponent's endstep (until you're forced to go off,) I don't see that the tappedness would have much of an impact. Is there any way for someone to test this?
No. I'm sorry, but that's just a terrible configuration of a manabase. Think about it before just throwing the idea on the table. If you were to run Terramorphic Expanse in this deck, it would be as Misty Rainforest #5+. You run 4 Mistys, a Forest or 2, and then add 1-3 more fetchlands if you think you need more access to green mana. Seriously, paying 1 life for a fetch is much lower of a downside than putting the land in tapped. The only reason to run some tapped fetchlands is because you literally need more fetchlands of a specific type, and tapped ones are the next best in existence.
My eyes were jaded
So close to the center, I could not see....
Well, this was the actual discussion that I was looking for. As you can see from the GP, Emrakul decks is quite common and a threat needed to consider and they oftenly have 3+ of them.
The process you described looks well on paper however, is it really doable? You need to seriously think about every moove you do and also you need to have thoose BF/remands and wishes in hand for response and on top of that, you need to consider opponents counters. We all agree that it needs to end with a stroke, but is it doable to have a 20+ stroke with all theese things needed to consider? I am just toying with the thoughts here. It is easy to say oh well then I just answer with another BF and a wish for a trap and then I just do... etc.....
And Hunting pack, well how good is it really? As discussed before Meditate and Hunting pack are awfull togheter.
In the Progenitus case you can't answer to the effect since it is an replacement effect (it doesent use the stack). so all you can do there is to wait untill all the BF has resolved and dropping one mill card for each Progenitus untill there are only Progenitus cards left in the library and then go for a stroke.
In the CB case, you guys which run Cryptic Command. How do you cast it? I assume you just cast it by itself at EOT on turn 4 or do you cast it in part of the comboing? But then you will at 100'% face FOW or dazes or whatever they have in counters. What is the reason not just to rely on Wipe Away? Is it about the cantrip or even the tap function? Or is it the reveal of CB in itself since cc3 is more common than cc4? Well Cryptic looks so slow actually...
Like FoW, Cryptic is never the best solution. It is, however, a viable solution to a whole range of problems. Few cards are as flexible as Cryptic. It's one of those cards that I side out in nearly every match, but game 1, when I'm sitting across from an unknown opponent, Cryptic is my Mr Fix-it.
-Silent Requiem
First of all, Progenitus is a peace of cake, as you just Brain Freeze him and then Stroke the remaining Progeniti, along with the usual one card. Nothing fancy here.
Second, when you have to deal with multiple Emrakuls or other graveyard reshufflers, I think that though Solidarity has the resources to do the job, Flash of Insight would make things ridiculously easy here. While I was originally inclined to agree with Vacrix that PtD is simply better than FoI, I have to say that FoI also has its uses. Perhaps keeping a FoI in the wishboard is the way to go.
Third, as far as beating Merfolk goes, it looks to me like Vacrix has mastered it. So, I guess his green splash, combining tangle or moment's peace with autumn's veil is effective against Merfolk's aggro-control.
The nice thing about FoI is that it produces card advantage. While it may be a lot slower than PtD, FoI is a 2-for-1 that gets around counterbalance and countermagic. Even grave hate is pretty weak against it because you're going to get card advantage out of FoI if your opponent actually puts grave hate in his deck to fight you.
I agree that Cryptic is a great game 1 card, but I also like to keep 1-2 of them in for control match-ups, some aggro match-ups, and anything with CB in it. It has gotten slightly worse at bouncing Counterbalance since Jace 2.0 has made waves in CB decks, but that's still only 3 cards (and maybe a Moat) out of an entire library to worry about, and people typically won't float it on top of their library for very long anyways. I tend to take Cryptic out against combo decks and some aggro/aggro-control decks, but only because there are more important cards that I need to sideboard in--never because it's bad. Even in combo match-ups, a Cryptic can save your ass from all sorts of ridiculous scenarios. For example, against an army of Goblin tokens, you can use Cryptic and Turnabouts to chain tap-down effects while you dig for an Echoing Truth. Or you can have 3 lands, cast a Tide, and use Cryptic to hard-counter something important...it's a play that trades 2 of your cards for 1 of theirs and a draw off the top of your library, which maintains card parity, but you're also probably getting card advantage from countering Doomsday off a Rit or something like that.
My eyes were jaded
So close to the center, I could not see....
Since I can't afford Forces or Trops, I will test the following deck that aims to play around that handicap:
20 Island
4 High Tide
4 Reset
3 Turnabout
3 Meditate
2 Brain Freeze
4 Brainstorm
4 Impulse
4 Peer Through Depths
2 Flash of Insight
3 Cunning Wish
3 Spell Pierce
2 Spell Snare
2 Remand
//Sideboard:
1 Brain Freeze
1 Stroke of Genius
1 Meditate
1 Turnabout
1 Three Wishes
3 Wipe Away
1 Echoing Truth
1 Repeal
1 Hurkyl's Recall
4 Merchant Scroll
Any thoughts or suggestions?
Are you liking Spell Pierce? I loathe the card in Solidarity. Its never worked out for me. If people see it in game 1, they just let High Tide resolve in game 2, and can always pay the 2 because they have several untapped Islands. Spell Snare is great against quite a bit, but IDK if its maindeck material. Also, Mindbreak Trap is superior to both. Run a few, maybe even in the MD. You know how much I dislike FoI but if you want it, suit yourself.
Luck is a residue of design.
I'm an aspiring Psychedelic Trance musician. Please feel free to enjoy my sense of life:
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Expect me or die. I play SI.
In my opnion, Spell Pierce is a better card for substitute FOW in this deck .Is good against duress,hymn tourach, chalice void, trinisfera, CB,.......
The only disadvantage is turn of combo in counterwar, but is only use twincast,remand, thats solved.
Would +3 Mindbreak Trap +2 Remand -3 Spell Pierce -2 Spell Snare be good MD? Without Force, I'm having trouble finding good disruption. The problem is compounded by the fact that I'm back home from college and don't have any control decks to test against. Also, with only Brainstorm and High Tide as 1cc spells, the deck doesn't seem to pack anything useful first turn. I know this is where Opt traditionally is, but I don't like its randomness. After using Preordain, Opt seems extraordinarily underpowered.
EDIT:
Now that I think of it, Force of Will serves two functions: pre-combo disruption and start-combo protection. Thus, maybe I should keep Spell Pierce to disrupt everything that can hose this deck, while using Mindbreak Trap to protect the combo in a counterwar.
Last edited by ummon; 08-02-2010 at 07:26 PM. Reason: avoid double post
I wouldn't even waste my time playing Solidarity without Force of Will. I like boarding out 1-2 of them in certain match-ups, and depending on whether I'm on the play or not, but I would never run this deck without 4 in the main. It's too central to the way this deck operates, IMHO. If you can't afford Forces, just proxy them and then gradually trade for them/look for good deals online.
I personally board Spell Pierce and Spell Snare for the same reason I board Hydroblast: to have cheap countermagic that solves important problems which usually resolve before I can combo off. Hydroblast is good because it counters/kills Goblin Lackey on turn 1, buying you a vast amount of tempo via slowing your opponent's goldfish drastically. Spell Snare and Spell Pierce, for me, are there to stop fast starts involving Counterbalance, heavy discard, and combo decks. I'm running a split because Snare can hit some nuisance creatures as well as many problem cards, whereas Pierce can hit Doomsdays and Duresses and Vials, etc.
Mindbreak Trap has my respect to the point where I certainly have one in my sideboard as a wish target, but I am uncertain about going so far as playing multiples. I know how awesome the card is against storm combo decks and Belcher, but I would probably rather add a third Pierce before the second Mindbreak Trap...it would make the board more well-rounded against multiple different archetypes, as opposed to shoring up just one group of combo decks. Or am I incorrect in this assessment?
Plus, how many cards can you really sideboard, anyways? If you board too much out, the deck loses combo tools that give it a reasonable fundamental turn. I want to play control with this deck as long as possible, in many match-ups. But there is a point in time when you have to (and downright should) win the game due to opportune timing and imminent opposing threats.
My eyes were jaded
So close to the center, I could not see....
When I board in Mindbreak Trap I tend to board out 3-4 Force of Will. The matches Trap is useful (heavy control) you also gets a lot of time to build up before combo. The usefulness of the trap in combo mirror is just splash damage.
Regarding green splash. I agree that the mono-u build is overall better. Mono-U with Cryptic Command is what I would play in an unknown meta.
Green splash for grip us useful in a CB heavy meta.
Green splash for tangle is useful in a meta with lots of tribal aggro that also have wasteland.
Green splash for Moments Peace is useful in a meta with lots of Zoo, and not so much tribal aggro, or other decks using wasteland.
I used green splash for K-grip + Moments Peace when my meta had lots of CB and lots of Zoo but did not have tribal or other wasteland decks.
What we need to understand about solidarity in a modern sense is that its a heavy meta dependent deck. It is a tier 3 (or something like that) deck, and in order to win with it we need to exploit current trends in our local meta. The only reason why I would recommend someone to play solidarity is for the learning experience. My personal reason for playing solidarity from time to time is cause I love complex combo decks, its one of the few ways I actually enjoy playing Legacy. Now I have switched to doomsday and try to learn that deck. Its pretty much the same as solidarity with the difference that seems like a valid deck.
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