[Primer/Deck] High Tide

[Lejay]

You should apply to SCG coverage jobs. :)

[clavio]

Great guide feline!
---

So I finally splurged for Candles, and I'm going to play the deck in a small tournament tomorrow. The thing is, I only have 1 BSZ. Should it be in my maindeck or sideboard?

Also I was just wondering what the thinking is behind the 12 Island/6 Fetch configuration. Are there any real negatives to running more fetches/less Islands? Thanks!

[Cave]

I have a question for all of you, in which order are you playing your cantrips post Spiral? I guess it depends on the rest of your hand but let's say you open this:

- Brainstorm, Ponder, Preordain + 4 lands/counters.
- Brainstorm, Brainstorm, Preordain + 4 lands/counters.
- Brainstorm, Brainstorm, Ponder + 4 lands/counters.
- Brainstorm, Ponder, Ponder + 4 lands/counters.

I did not put Top in the list yet

The "which cantrip first" question is really complex. You need to take in account a lot of factors. Right now i can't really answer in-depth (it is saturday evening, I had party and i'm just checking e-mails and forums before going to bed), but assuming mana is not an issue, I will give an answer based on the specific traits & behaviour of the three spells while comboing.

1. Brainstorm
Making card quality: Best of the three cantrips.
Reason: it does not only look at three, but it really draws you three cards. Therefore, you are putting back on the top of your deck the worst two cards out of your hand of seven, and not the worst two out of the first X top cards.
Digging for a specific spell: Worst of the three cantrips.
Reason: if you don't find the card you are looking for, you will have two horrible cards on the top of your deck, therefore wasting your next cantrip or forcing you to use a tutor to get rid of those.
What's good about Brainstorm: It can be saved and used to respond enemy (counter)spells.

2. Ponder:
Making card quality: Worst of the three cantrips.
Reason: If you find a card you absolutely need in the first three cards, but the other two are useless, you are forced to keep those two bad cards on the top of the deck.
Digging for a specific spell: Best of the three cantrips.
Reason: It digs four.
What's good about Ponder: Lorwyn artwork is very cool plus it really finds you what you need.

3. Preordain:
Making card quality: Average
Reason: Doesn't provide you more than one new card, but it fixes the top of your deck.
Digging for a specific spell: Average
Reason: You can put two on the bottom and draw a blind card, which is worse than ponder but better than a brainstorm which doesn't find the right card.
What's good about Preordain: It interacts so well with the other two cantrip spells.

By those statements I can get two rules of thumb.

General rule of thumb for me: you want to play first the cantrip that does best what you are trying to achieve. Examples:
Good post-spiral hand + Brainstorm + Preordain? I would Brainstorm to improve my hand's card quality further, and then preordain the worst two cards away.
Bad post-spiral hand + Brainstorm + Preordain? I would generally look for another spiral, therefore i'd preordain, and then brainstorm, because it digs deeper.

Second rule of thumb: You have to be desperate to chain two brainstorms. NEVER chain two brainstorms in a row. The second brainstorm only digs one card more. Brainstorm is best followed by any other cantrip or reshuffle effect.

Therefore:
In every one of the four situations you listed, i'm definitely digging for one specific card (and that card would be a spiral, to get a better hand to restart with) I would play the following sequences:
Assuming I have plenty of counterspells (lets say, 2 to 3 + the cantrip spells + the rest is lands):

1. Brainstorm+Ponder+Preordain: Ponder, then Preordain, then Brainstorm.
2. Brainstorm+Preordain+Brainstorm: Brainstorm, then Preordain, then Brainstorm.
3. Brainstorm+Ponder+Brainstorm: Brainstorm, then Ponder, then Brainstorm.
4. Ponder+Brainstorm+Ponder: Ponder, then Ponder, then Brainstorm.

Of course there are exceptions to this, but since is very late...well, see ya tomorrow.


@Clavio: Playing 6 fetches and 12 islands is not a rule set in stone. Take in account that fetchlands are very good pre-combo, because playing polluted&co makes your deck thinner and prevents you from drawing too many lands while setting up your hand for the big win. While comboing, drawing into fetches is often as bad as drawing islands. Everybody would probably be playing 12 fetchlands and 6 island if there were no cards like Stifle or Trickbind. Anyway, 6 has been proved to be a good compromise between being able to reshuffle your deck plus lowering chances of drawing lands, and keeping your manabase solid by preventing your opponent to harass your lands. If you think differently, feel free to try other setups; in my mind, any number between 4 and 8 is almost equally efficient (also remember that sometimes that very one life points can be an issue, especially against fast decks)

[Seraph2k]

What can we do against Dredge? The matchup feels very bad and my two SB cages and a echoing truth seems not enough... Or just hope not to face the deck during the next GP?

[entreri_fans]

dredge is difficult. flusterstorm is golden here along with force of will.

if we counter their first discard spell(study, breakthrough), we are likely to slow them down.

but sometimes it is still hard to interact with them(Putrid Imp discarding). This creature defeated me several times>_<~

the good news is that due to extremely poweful gravehate(thank you deathrite shaman & rest in peace), dredge is an uncommon deck now.

[esthoril]

So I finally splurged for Candles, and I'm going to play the deck in a small tournament tomorrow. The thing is, I only have 1 BSZ. Should it be in my maindeck or sideboard?

Also I was just wondering what the thinking is behind the 12 Island/6 Fetch configuration. Are there any real negatives to running more fetches/less Islands? Thanks!

Bit late but sideboard!! Some people play 1 main, 1 side, some people play 0 main, 1 side. Nobody plays 1 main 0 side :)
6 fetch + merchant scroll + ponder is plenty shuffle effects. You don't want to damage yourself too much and having too much fetches also makes it harder to hide stuff from discard when they have wasteland. They waste you and you either lose a land or shuffle away the cards you hid from their discard for ex. 12/6 seems like a good split.

[feline]

Confirmed on the dredge match up, that's just a bad one, being able to Cabal Therapy an opponents hand apart that fast is just dumb, especially when they can do it before you even get to the point of being able to wish for something like Surgical Extraction because you're not even on your turn 3 yet. Best is to just slow them down enough to combo out before they get their setup going, the match up is just one of the worst out of the more known Legacy strategies.

On a side note, next weekend is the standard/standard Sat/Sunday, gonna be interesting to see the turnout for both days and compare.

[BlackFlameAshura]

On a side note, next weekend is the standard/standard Sat/Sunday, gonna be interesting to see the turnout for both days and compare.

I'm still thoroughly ticked off that they decided not to do Legacy for Orlando. I'd have driven up there and played all day and all night, especially since I typically have Sundays off.

EDIT: Well I'll still probably try going up there anyways. My family's looking to go to Disney on Sunday and, go figure, the tournament is being held at one of the park hotels. Might go see if they're gonna do any Legacy side events.

[feline]

Dam, I didn't know you were one of the people that got burned for legacy on that, I apologize I can't imagine how frustrating that would be to happen.

[Dessyreqt]

Unfortunately it seems they burned the whole south in that regard. I'm in the DFW area and Kansas City was the last major Legacy event in any reasonable driving range for the foreseeable future.

[BlackFlameAshura]

Dam, I didn't know you were one of the people that got burned for legacy on that, I apologize I can't imagine how frustrating that would be to happen.

Yeah Orlando's only like 1.5/2 hours away so it's not too far of a drive. I'm sure there will be side events too. My one local store does sponsor some people for events so if I can bum a standard deck I might play since it'd be for free anyways. Still annoying as hell though :/

[esthoril]

Epic Spiral Tide weekend for me :) Played 2 Strasbourg GPTs.

First a small one (22 players) on saturday. I played sneak show myself because I already planned on playing spiral tide on sunday in a larger one and wanted to play some shorter rounds on saturday. Very last minute a good friend of mine decided to play the GPT as well and borrowed my spiral tide deck.

He went 4-1 with it in the swiss (never having played the deck before), his only loss not really being a loss but a scoop when he got paired against me (since he already had 3 byes). He then, just like me lost his quarterfinal. Needless to say, I was very happy about our day and him doing so well with my spiral tide list.

And of course it gave me some extra motivation for today as I wanted to do better than him I played more or less the exact same list today in a bigger GPT (76 players). I went 5-1, ID in round7, crushed my opponent in the quarters and then lost a rather stupid match and especially game 3 in the semi-finals against D&T... Yeah I know. Seriouly losing against D&T (to comfort you all, I didn't lose because D&T is a real threat against us. It still is similar to a bye, but more on that tomorrow ).

In any case, out of the 10 round of swiss that were actually played with my list this weekend between me and my friend as pilot, 9 of them were won and most of them were far from close. Just got home now and exhausted, but I will write a detailed round by round report tomorrow as I already made some notes during the trainride home.

And after this past weekend, I'm now 100% sure I will play our beloved islands at GP Strasbourg.

[BlackFlameAshura]

My store couldn't fire a tournament because of SCG Orlando so I didn't get to play High Tide like I was hoping to this week. We got 7 of 8 people and it just died off. Gives me an extra week to prepare and practice it, I suppose.

Speaking of SCG Orlando, apparently SCG said on Twitter the reason they went the double standard route was because Legacy had record lows here in Florida. Funny enough, the day two with Standard showed a tremendous drop off. There were less than 200 people on day two, that's ridiculous.

[TiMeWaLk]

@ esthoril

It's always nice to read that High Tide players did well! I can't wait to read your report (I am curious about your side board actually, did you kept Remoras?).

Congratz. I'm sure you can do the same on the GP

[feline]

Got an open in a few weeks, but after that there's nothing for like 4 months on the entire west coast, and the Utah one will be double standard in August, not optimal for High Tide lol, gonna be a bland summer.

As far as local Legacy scenes go, they're still going here, but one of the 2 places I was playing type 1.5 at regularly has stopped doing so, so now it's just once a week, & even that place averages like 8-12, a year ago it was closer to 20, but either way, I just don't want to see it shrink on the local level anymore.

[esthoril]

!! Warning !! this might become a rather long post :)

The list my friend played on saturday had 1 candelabra, 1 cloud of faeries as he didn't have his own candelabra with him (which I usually borrow as my 2nd as I also only have 1 myself). Apart from that he played what I always play.

4 brainstorm 4 preordain 3 ponder
4 merchant scroll 3 cunning wish 1 intuition 2 meditate
4 force 3 flusterstorm 1 pact
4 high tide
3 turnabout 2 candelabra
4 time spiral
18 land (6 fetch 12 island)

After the tournament I asked him what his thoughts were and if he would change anything. He confirmed my thought about the one pact of negation so I decided to try something else in that slot on sunday. I went with a slightly fancy one-off snapcaster mage

Saturday

First, one epic win from my friend on saturday.

R4 against MUD
given the current meta, I decided to cut hurkyl's recall (rebuild) from sideboard, as I don't count MUD as a real threat and with maverick using mother of runes to protect canonist also gone, I don't really see the need to keep playing it.
But of course, it makes your matchup against MUD a bit tougher. This game however might show that it still is quite good as my friend never played spiral tide before and managed to win through a lot of hate.

MUD has in play: chalic @1, chalice @2, lodestone golem, active kuldotha forgemaster.
My friend goes EOT wipe away on the chalice @1, in his turn high tide, turnabout, time spiral.
Only bounce left in sideboard is echoing truth so wishing for bounce is not an option and neither is merchant scroll to find the wipe away as chalice @2 is still on table. Another spiral and lots of cantrips later, he does find his wipe away again and bounces the chalice @2. He then scrolls for snap to get rid of the forgemaster (mana wasn't an issue anymore so lodestone golem didn't matter). Opponent gets witchbane orb in response to the snap. My friend cantrips till he has wish + intuition in hand. Uses intuition for 2 scroll + wish. He gets scroll and uses it to find the last cunning wish, which finds echoing truth. Bounce the orb, use wish to find zenith and lets his opponent draw his entire deck.

So the list played only 1 candelabra (and a faerie) and no hurkyls in side, only to let his opponent draw his entire deck through chalice @1, chalice @2 and without ever bothering about the lodestone golem. I really enjoyed watching this (even though it did delay the entire tournament for quite some time :)).

Sunday

So on sunday I played spiral tide myself, without the maindeck pact, with the one snapcaster.

My sideboard was
2 mystic remora
2 spell pierce
2 pact of negation (as I didn't play one main, to go to a 1+1 configuration postside against heavy blue)
1 wipe away
1 echoing truth
1 snap
1 surgical extraction
1 turnabout
1 intuition
1 brain freeze
1 blue sun's zenith
1 gigadrowse (just to test it out, sometimes boarded it, never used it)

Onto the tournament!

R1: Nic Fit (or maybe it was Jund)
I sit down and before I can even take my deckbox, my opponent goes "mèrde, c'est contre le high tide!" (shit, it's against high tide in french). I'm like lolwut? Haven't played this deck at this location in like 6 months. I almost feel famous
G1: I win the roll, he goes turn 1 cabal therapy naming brainstorm. I don't have one but I do have lots of other goodies, namely high tide, turnabout, time spiral, cunning wish and some lands. I draw another turnabout. He plays dryad arbor and passes the turn. Yeey! I draw intuition and thanks to it I can now go off with 3 lands, while having played 2 high tides before the first spiral, making it a lot easier to not brick when comboing on 3 lands.
G2: He plays T1 forest top, T2 taiga shaman. He seems unable to find a black mana source or even a fetchland with his top, so I play only basic islands, keeping all the fetchland in my hand. In my 4th turn I can go high tide, turnabout, wipe away your taiga, time spiral. With him now also cut off from red mana, it's trivial to finish the game.

2-0

R2: Combo Elves
me and my big mouth saying combo elves is a rather good matchup.. I still think it is, but after this match, I decided I need to test some more against it for sure.. even though I might not have played it optimally in retrospect.
G1: he wins the roll and has a rather nut hand. T3 he wins through force + flusterstorm He starts with glimpse, I force as he already had heritage druid + cradle in play and could easily pay a flusterstorm for 2. He then just drops 5 elves and regal force.. If he has natural order, zenith or chord of calling, I win the game. He had the oneoff regal force actually in hand. I lose. Such is life.
G2: T1 llanowar elves from him, T2 play another elf, therapy, flashback therapy. I play brainstorm in response to the first therapy and put back high tide and time spiral below, while still having force, turnabout, 3rd land and another time spiral and some blue cards in hand. So if he doesn't name force of will now, I can combo out on my next turn, forcing his flashbacked therapy. Which I now think is a capital mistake on my part. I base my game plan on a suboptimal play from my opponent. He names force of course, flashback takes my spiral and he combo's out in his 3rd turn.
I should have put force back, with time spiral below. He names force which is the optimal play, doesn't hit, then has the choice to take spiral OR high tide.. In my turn I draw force to stop an attempt on his part and the turn after draw a time spiral. Would have been much much better.

0-2 which I deserved given how I played.

R3: TES
this guy judged the smaller GPT the day before and we talked a lot as he knew 'that guy delaying the tournament with spiral tide' was playing with my borrowed deck :)
G1: he plays some probes and then sculps a very nice hand to beat my force + flusterstorm. He starts with ritual, which I let resolve. Then silence, which I force. Then he drops LED, LED, petal, empty the warrens for 14 tokens.. I have flusterstorm, but he can easily pay for it with his LEDs. Nice done. I can survive a swing though and scroll for tide to combo in my next turn. He rips burning wish from the top and kills my hand with his sideboard cabal therapy.
G2: in go 2 remora, 2 spell pierce. I have T2 remora with flusterstorm open. Which gives me plenty of time to win.
G3: can't remember any details here, as I played TES two more times in later rounds.

2-1

R4: TES
G1: I play something similar to monoUcontrol this game :) Cantrip into flusterstorm, scroll for force, repeat. After some time I have 6 islands in play and my hand is 2x flusterstorm, 2x force, turnabout, time spiral. I don't want to try go off with turnabout, spiral on 6 lands without a high tide because IF I don't make it, my opponent has a good chance to finish me off. He is still stuck at 2 lands and quite sure he cant beat my hand of counters anyway.
Next turn however he decides to finally go for it. Silence, I force, pitch turnabout. Ritual, I flusterstorm (I think), he pays by playing another ritual, plays some artifact mana, plays his last card ad nauseam with exactly 5 mana. I flusterstorm again for plenty. I finally find a high tide with a cantrip and combo out.
G2: I board in my snap + the 4 above, cause I want an extra out against xantid swarm. He probes me turn one and doesn't go for the swarm plan as he sees the snap in my opening hand Some turns later he only has 1 gemstone mine as white source and I can combo out easily after force on his silence.

2-0

R5: Death & Taxes.
G1: Very very typical D&T game. He plays T2 Thalia, I combo out T5 with upkeep high tide using the land he ports and without ever worrying about the Thalia.
G2: he eats my 4th island with mangara of condor but makes the critical mistake of ticking his vial to 3 instead of leaving it on 2. I now don't have to worry 'bout midcombo vial into canonist. In my upkeep he ports 2 of my 3 lands. I use one to play high tide. Tap the remaining 2 to float 4 blue mana. Let the port abilities resolve(!), turnabout my 3 lands, end my upkeep. Pretty happy how I played here. Play 4th land and combo out. After spiral I turnabout him, hoping he didn't draw a flickerwisp to make life a bit easier, but he did and eats my 4th land again :) I have enough business though to finish him off regardless.

2-0

R6: Merfolk
G1: He plays T1 mutavault, T2 standstill. Sure bro. No pressure. I do the typical island go for a couple turns than have an easy win while still at some 10 life.
G2: he plays T1 island, no vial, no cursecatcher, T2 he goes draw go without playing a land... Only thing that pops in my mind is that he must have a hand filled with counters. I make landdrops for a few turns while he's still stuck on 1 land. I go for it with 4 islands and flusterstorm + pact backup. High tide, he forces, I pact, he dazes leaving U floating. I CAN pay for the daze but IF he has another counter, I will die to my own pact next upkeep so I decide to flusterstorm for 5, putting 2 copies on his daze, 2 copies on his force, 1 copy on my own pact. My opponent however has a flusterstorm of his own. Like most people though, he is clueless on how to use that card correctly (3 copies on my high tide, 3 copies on my flusterstormcopy that targets my pact and I was dead to my pact for sure). He just counters my high tide with it. All my stuff goes to the bin and I pass the turn. He replays his land, I make some more landdrops. I try to go for it again but get hit by spell pierce. Few turns later, I have 8 lands(!) + candelabra in play and turnabout + spiral in hand. I decide to try yet again.. Spiral gives me plenty of goodies and with 8 islands and candelabra already in play, he soon can draw his entire deck.

2-0

R7: ID

Top 8: TES
Yay!
G1: He probes and isn't happy with what he sees :) I flusterstorm his T2 infernal tutor, as I'm sure he will grab a second protection spell. His T2 infernal resolves though and he grabs a second lotus petal. I'm now thinking he either already has 2 protection spells in hand ór he just dies to my countermagic. It turns out to be the latter
G2: T1 cantrip into remora, T2 remora with flusterstorm backup. Lots of people are excited to see this vintage staple being played in legacy I pay for it 'till turn 5. He tries to go for it, I flusterstorm both his burning wishes and combo out in my turn.

2-0

Turns out TES has a hard time beating 2 spell pierce, 3 flusterstorm, 4 force, 2 remora, 4 merchant scroll etc

Top 4: Death & Taxes.
It's already past 9 in the evening and I still have two 1 hour trainrides home.. So making it to the finales probably means I wont have a connection to my second train anymore and won't be able to get home. Kinda worried about this on top of 2 already long days makes me play just a bit too sloppy on a crucial play that probably cost me the match
G1: mull to 6, keep a decent hand, but onelander.. I have 2 cantrips and all combopieces and don't want to go to 5.. He starts, I draw, cantrip T1 but don't find a 2nd land. He plays T2 thalia and I don't get to cast another spell for the rest of the game.
G2: he mulls to 4 so again not much of a game.
G3: I have a very decent hand, but this time I'm stuck at 2 lands, despite playing 3 cantrips (of which only 1 brainstorm).. He EOT1 tutors for canonist, plays T2 thalia, T3 canonist. He then swings with both but can flash in my one-off snapcaster and kill his canonist by blocking it!!! I'm sure he didn't see that one coming. I manage to get to 4 land, but Thalia is still in play. The turn before he swings for lethal (a serra avenger joined Thalia), I merchant scroll.. my options are turnabout and snap. Here it all takes it's toll and I don't think long enough, taking the turnabout which gives me a sure kill IF I draw a land. I don't next turn and die.
Snap would have given me much better chances, even though not a very obvious line of play imho.
Tap 2 lands for high tide, tap land #3 for 2nd high tide, tap land #4 for 3 to play snap for 3 bouncing his avenger (couldn't bounce Thalia as he had karakas open). Untap 2 land, tap 1 for 3, play ponder for 2, leaving 1 floating and IF my ponder finds a land, I can play a 5th land, tap the remaining two for exact 7 mana and play my spiral...
Kinda strange and disappointing end of an otherwise fantastic weekend.

Finals would have been against RUG. Not easy but most certainly also not a lost cause.

So really had a blast this weekend enjoying spiral tide a lot on both days. I'm now convinced about at least 59 cards of the list and most of my sideboard and really looking forward to GP Strasbourg in 2 weeks. Thanks for reading!

[Mackan]

Well played and well written! Congrats:)

[TiMeWaLk]

Very nice report! Congratz!

What are those 59 cards you are sure about? Of course, I am mainly curious about those:

- 1 Snapcaster
- 2 Remoras (very strong against Storm, but I don't know against other match-ups)
- 1 Gigadrowse

I would feel very unfortable to cut Hurkyl (and to a lower degree Ravenous Trap)

[feline]

Doing some testing against some newer stuff, starting with TinFins, I'll update more if I run into anything unexpected from TinFins (Reanimator, Griselbrand combo type deck) haven't had as much time for testing as doing other stuff with primers, but I felt like doing some rounds this evening on something.

[feline]

Update, Apr-3rd-2013
Number of Players : 137 - Trapani Giulio - Tarmogeddon 7 - March-24th-2013
http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/dec...0&iddeck=76436
Creatures [2]
1 Cloud of Faeries
1 Snapcaster Mage
Instants [23]
1 Brain Freeze
1 Snap
3 Cunning Wish
3 Meditate
3 Turnabout
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
4 High Tide
Sorceries [16]
4 Merchant Scroll
4 Ponder
4 Preordain
4 Time Spiral
Artifacts [3]
3 Candelabra of Tawnos
Lands [16]
3 Polluted Delta
4 Flooded Strand
9 Island
Sideboard [15]
1 Echoing Truth
1 Snap
1 Pact of Negation
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Brain Freeze
1 Meditate
1 Intuition
1 Wipe Away
1 Blue Sun's Zenith
1 Ravenous Trap
1 Mindbreak Trap
1 Turnabout
Not sure why this wasn't on there the other day, but either way, whatever the delay was, it's why this is being posted here on April 3rd when the date of the event was March 24th. In either case, it's on here now. ^.^

~16 lands.
~Maindeck Cloud of Faeries & Snapcaster mage, & Candels.
~Maindeck Brain Freeze, no maindeck Blue Sun's Zenith.
~No Flusterstorms.
~4 total meditates.