Solidarity

[serenechaos]

I had this idea while discussing Gifts piles with friends. Value Gifts, though generally inferior to "just win" piles, can sometimes be right on the edge; not a win, but so overwhelming that it might as well be. Piles like Snapcaster, Recall, Time Walk, Gifts.

So I wondered, could High Tide exist with a Gifts engine? Immediately I had an internal struggle. Regular Tide, or Solidarity? I weighed the pros and cons:

Cons of Solidarity:
-Loses Scroll, Walk, YawgWin, Tinker, Twister, Spiral, Candelabra, Demonic, Jar, Jace, VaultKey, etc.
-Forced to play inferior cards, especially for the draw suite

Pros:
-Wins at instant speed

Clearly, regular is the way to go, right? Here's the thing: if you're playing all those supercards, High Tide seems worse than just....winning. Also, moving at instant speed all the time seems very, very strong.

So, I opted for Solidarity. Plus it's Cool Points.

the list itself was extremely mentally taxing, because High Tide demands at least 18 lands, and there aren't a lot of great draw engines when you can only play instants.


4 High Tide
4 Reset
1 Turnabout

3 Cunning Wish
3 Gifts Ungiven
1 Intuition
1 Mystical Tutor

3 Frantic Search
1 Meditate
1 Dig Through Time
1 Brainstorm
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Blue Sun's Zenith

3 Snapcaster Mage
1 Rebuild
3 Mental Misstep
3 Force of Will
3 Mana Drain
1 Misdirection
1 Commandeer
1 Flusterstorm
1 Pact of Negation

1 Misty Rainforest
1 Polluted Delta
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Flooded Strand
14 Island

Sideboard
2 Turnabout
1 Steel Sabotage
1 Ravenous Trap
1 Force of Will
1 Commandeer
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Surgical Extraction
1 Meditate
1 Gush
1 Gifts Ungiven
1 Intuition
1 Rebuild
1 Dig Through Time
1 Brain Freeze

I would like more permission maindeck, and someone might be able to give a better estimate on the optimal number of fetches.

Also, Wipe Away or Echoing Truth might be better sideboard cards in some metas.

Other than that, the counter suite is very robust to get you to turn 4, when you should be able to just gogogo. Commandeering a YawgWin and then comboing out seems particularly brutal.

Gifts and Intuition can get you guaranteed free countermagic and Rebuild maindeck, though the Rebuild pile is easier postboard.

The deck can also go Powerless simply by dropping Recall. It still won't be cheap by a long shot, but if you want to play and can't afford Moxen, go for it. Yes, it's clearly suboptimal without Recall, yes it's a huge differemce despite being "just one card"....but it will still function.

Thoughts? Comments? Criticisms? Cookies?

[WhiteLotus]

I like to play high tide in vintage for time to time, however i usually run Black, because black tutors and tendrils are just miles better than going mono blue and cunning wish into Brain freeze.
 I wonder if this should run remora since all it wants to do is get to turn 3/4 and win, remora pushes the opponent in the mid game while you build up land count as build up your hand to go off. you can also use remora proactively to dissuade your opponent from countering most of your spells. Remora can also make usage of meditate other when going off.
I dont think you need that many lands seeing as your deck is trying to abuse frantic search rather than time spiral (you can easily go off with three lands) and lotus, mox  + petal let you cast the first high tide(s) without taping islands.
Tendrils also means you need way less action to go lethal.

Here is a list I like to play sometimes for inspiration

1 Library of Alexandria
3 Underground Sea
3 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
5 Island
1 Black Lotus
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Hurkyl's Recall
2 Flusterstorm
2 Mana Drain
3 Mental Misstep
4 Force of Will
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm
1 Ponder
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
4 Preordain
4 High Tide
4 Frantic Search
3 Dig Through Time
2 Time Spiral
1 Mind's Desire
1 Tendrils of Agony

SB: 1 Flusterstorm
SB: 3 Hurkyl's Recall
SB: 2 Engineered Explosives
SB: 1 Island
SB: 3 Grafdigger's Cage
SB: 2 Nihil Spellbomb
SB: 1 Toxic Deluge
SB: 1 Echoing Truth
SB: 1 Mental Misstep

[serenechaos]

I had time to play a few games last night after work, all against a couple Gush decks. I took a couple things away from it: First, Flusterstorm is better than Drain in this deck specifically (Drain mana is difficult to use when you want to go off at the last possible moment and need all your Islands up), but Drain is better against nonblue decks, especially MUD. Still, this deck wants to win at instant speed, with things on the stack, so I've dropped Drain entirely for more Flusterstorms.

I played with the 4th Will main and the Pact side, but needing a Force off Wish actually was relevant in one game. I'm thinking that Will can go back and the 4th Snap can come back. I always wanted so many Snaps because the deck's draw suite is so small.

I'm also thinking of swapping the numbers on Reset/Turnabout. Reset has actually been kind of limiting, and 2UU only requires two lands. One or two Reset should be enough with Gifts/Intuition/Wish/Mystical/Snapcaster. That also makes the Wish-->untap line 5 mana instead of seven.

The deck really needs more draw. I never had trouble assembling untap effects, even though I had worrried about it. I always ran out of draw when I bricked. I'm considering 2-4 Visions of Beyond; Gifts, Intuition, and Frantic fill the yard up like nobody's business. If I add those, I'll go up to 6-7 fetches.

Black is very tempting, but it only adds two cards, really: Demonic Consultation and Vampiric. Tendrils is sorcery speed, and using Seas opens me to Wasteland. I really like blanking Wasteland.

I also think a second Hurkyl's and a Chain of Vapor belong in the board, MUD seems pretty scary.

After playing, I'm torn on the land count. I feel like 16 is doable, but missing land drops is terrifying with this deck. You must hit three, and you really want to hit 4.

Also, EOT Intuition Snap, Snap, Recall is pretty great. A fourth Misstep might make an appearance somewhere later.

[WhiteLotus]

I had time to play a few games last night after work, all against a couple Gush decks. I took a couple things away from it: First, Flusterstorm is better than Drain in this deck specifically (Drain mana is difficult to use when you want to go off at the last possible moment and need all your Islands up), but Drain is better against nonblue decks, especially MUD. Still, this deck wants to win at instant speed, with things on the stack, so I've dropped Drain entirely for more Flusterstorms.

I played with the 4th Will main and the Pact side, but needing a Force off Wish actually was relevant in one game. I'm thinking that Will can go back and the 4th Snap can come back. I always wanted so many Snaps because the deck's draw suite is so small.

I'm also thinking of swapping the numbers on Reset/Turnabout. Reset has actually been kind of limiting, and 2UU only requires two lands. One or two Reset should be enough with Gifts/Intuition/Wish/Mystical/Snapcaster. That also makes the Wish-->untap line 5 mana instead of seven.

The deck really needs more draw. I never had trouble assembling untap effects, even though I had worrried about it. I always ran out of draw when I bricked. I'm considering 2-4 Visions of Beyond; Gifts, Intuition, and Frantic fill the yard up like nobody's business. If I add those, I'll go up to 6-7 fetches.

Black is very tempting, but it only adds two cards, really: Demonic Consultation and Vampiric. Tendrils is sorcery speed, and using Seas opens me to Wasteland. I really like blanking Wasteland.

I also think a second Hurkyl's and a Chain of Vapor belong in the board, MUD seems pretty scary.

After playing, I'm torn on the land count. I feel like 16 is doable, but missing land drops is terrifying with this deck. You must hit three, and you really want to hit 4.

Also, EOT Intuition Snap, Snap, Recall is pretty great. A fourth Misstep might make an appearance somewhere later.

Black adds a tremendous amount of consistency to the deck (demonic tutor, vampiric tutor, Yawgmoth's will, imperial seal is also an option and tendrils requires lesser storm count to be lethal). Tendrils being sorcery speed is irrelevant, you shouldn't be trying to go off in your opponent's turn since it cuts you off from a lot of good stuff, and preordain is often vital to avoid fizzling.

I think you are missing the best card in the deck, Mind's desire should absolutely be in your list and a number of time spiral too.
 The idea of mana drain is that you mana drain a spell and then go off on your next turn with the drain mana boost. Also once you've resolved high tide mana drain becomes a lot better. And the fact that you usually don't do much with your mana when you are not going off, aside from setting up with tutors and Preordains means you usually have uu open. Also the threat of mana drain slows your opponent down since they have to play around it which buys you the time you need to get to 3/4 lands and sculpt your hand to go off.

I think Talrand + time walk could also be major players in a High tide deck.

I think the reason your deck needs more draw is that you don't play preordain and ponder or high cmc bombs like mind's desire and time spiral, Dig through time is also pretty busted with Frantic Search. The way the deck should play out is you casting Frantic search, discarding extra land and bridging the gap between Frantic searches with preordains, dig through times and tutors into a bomb like mind's desire/ time spiral. The Frantic search + high tide engine Shares a non trivial amount of similarities with the Gushbond engine.

The deck is pretty fun but It's more of a casualish vintage deck, so it's pretty obvious you will have a super hard time beating a deck like Gush storm especially since it is essentially trying to do the same thing as you only with much better cards that work a lot better on their own than yours do.
As far as shops are concerned you need the full playset of hurkyl's recall post board and something else Steel sabotage is an option but it's not very good on the draw and get shuts off by chalice at 1, Engineered explosives is pretty good and can come in vs other decks, Dismember is one of the few removal spells you have access to that can take out Lodestone.

[serenechaos]

Black adds a tremendous amount of consistency to the deck (demonic tutor, vampiric tutor, Yawgmoth's will, imperial seal is also an option and tendrils requires lesser storm count to be lethal). Tendrils being sorcery speed is irrelevant, you shouldn't be trying to go off in your opponent's turn since it cuts you off from a lot of good stuff, and preordain is often vital to avoid fizzling.

I tried to address this in the OP, but I should clarify a bit. This is not a High Tide thread, it is a Solidarity thread. Losing all of the ridiculous sorceries and artifacts in Vintage is a hard blow, but playing them means that winning with High Tide is unnecessarily convoluted and disruptable. A High Tide deck with sorceries and Mox/Lotus is certainly doable, and might even be semi-competitive. I've even built one before, and used 4 Drains to power Time Spirals on my combo turn. But in this thread, I'm trying to optimize a Solidarity list and learn how to pilot it well. I hope this clears up any misunderstanding.

I will also point out that going off "at instant speed" doesn't necessarily mean going off on your opponent's turn. It means that you take advantage of the biggest thing the deck has going for it (the ability to go off at literally any point in the game), along with a slightly inflated counter suite, and control the game as hard as you can until you absolutely must go off. Generally, this means going off in response to something that will probably win the game that you can't stop, but it can also mean going off when your opponent tries to do something that uses a lot of resources or leaves them less able to respond. Yes, this cuts you out of most of the best stuff in Vintage. But it also gains you something, and part of the purpose here is to determine whether that gain is solid enough to make up for the lack of sorceries.

Mind's Desire is my absolute favorite Storm card, and easily the strongest card available to a Blue Storm deck with a consistently high-end curve. But, it's a sorcery. The deck can't support it without adding Quicken, which, while an interesting notion, seems subpar.

Updated list:

4 High Tide
3 Turnabout
1 Reset

3 Cunning Wish
3 Gifts Ungiven
1 Intuition
1 Mystical Tutor

3 Frantic Search
3 Visions of Beyond
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm
1 Meditate
1 Dig Through Time
1 Blue Sun's Zenith

4 Snapcaster Mage
3 Force of Will
3 Mental Misstep
3 Flusterstorm
1 Mana Drain
1 Misdirection
1 Commandeer
1 Rebuild

2 Scalding Tarn
2 Misty Rainforest
2 Polluted Delta
1 Flooded Strand
9 Island

Sideboard
2 Hurkyl's Recall
2 Mana Drain
1 Force of Will
1 Misdirection
1 Pact of Negation
1 Rebuild
1 Brain Freeze
1 Reset
1 Meditate
1 Gifts Ungiven
1 Intuition
1 Dig Through Time
1 Ravenous Trap

Choices:
-Flusterstorm is still better than Drain in most cases. But Drain is necessary to cover all the permanents that the deck has trouble stopping maindeck. So, a single copy maindeck and a couple to Wish for and side in.
-Visions seems really good here, though I haven;t had time to test it yet. Every game I've played, I've had 20+ in the yard extremely quickly. Upping the fetch count should just make it that much easier while also supporting DTT.
-Reset was sometimes a hindrance. Swapping the numbers means that I can go off much easier at odd times like my mainphase or EOT, opponent's upkeep, etc. This also lowers the Wish-->Untap line from 7 mana to 5.
-Untap effects were never, ever scarce. If anything, I frequently drew 2 or 3 when I just needed a draw spell. Frantic Search is solid as just an untap and nothing else, the looting is a bonus. So, -1 Turnabout.
-Trying 16 lands. Visions should help soothe this a little bit per Xerox Theory, but if I need 17 I'll cut one Visions.
-Upped fetches for several reasons. Helps DTT and Visions, and also lowers dead draws during the combo. I occasionally drew a land or two, and they're literally just blank cards at that point. I might go the full 8/8 split at some point, but probably not. If anything, I'm nervous about only 16 lands and will probably end up back at 7/10.
-The 4th Snaps absolutely had to come back. I simply want all 4 all the time in every game. I wish I could go to 5 or 6, but there's no other comparable effect at instant speed that I can find. Snap could work, if I could find room for it.

[Space_Stormy]

I feel Fastbond has a home in these decks.  Problem that High Tide faces is that it wants lands in play and a combo deck that can't win turn one in vintage I feel has a few problems.  Even the more controlling Gifts decks that can play 10+ turns of control before hitting the Gifts Ungiven that wins it can go broken T1 with a quick 4 mana Key/Vault or Tinker/Time Walk for BSC.  Fastbond allows a T1 win since you can slam down all your Islands and start going broken as soon as possible.

[Wagner]

Even though it's a sorcery, since your deck is pretty much only instants, you could benefit from Merchant Scroll.

Also, Quicken for instant Mind's Desire would be incredibly funny

[Hrishi]

I played a little Solidarity in Legacy and although it's a different beast, I think there are some suggestions I could offer because I did want to port it to Vintage and tried.

Snapcasters were pretty cool. Resets were my favorite card so I'm not sure if you can afford to cut all of them, but maybe Frantic Search makes up the difference. Visions from Beyond is a cool idea, but in my experience it was not mana that was an issue as much as hitting business. Maybe more Meditates would be good in order to minimize the effect of graveyard hate. That would allow you to increase the number of Digs because you can Delve with impunity. Dig and Frantic Search would really work well together and in my experience Dig was absolutely insane.

Just some suggestions, I wish you luck with your deck! It was really fun winning in response to a lethal swing. 

[serracollector]

I also agree that Fastbond would be a great addition. As well as Merchant Scroll. I personally think that Treasure Cruise and Thirst for Knowledge would do better than Visions alongside a second or third Dig.

[serenechaos]

Excellent thoughts all! I really appreciate the input.

Fastbond: This would clearly be a very powerful addition. My previous Vintage High Tide build used both Fastbond and Gush to fuel its combo turns, and it's essentially the equivalent of tossing out a V4 engine and putting in a V10. Unfortunately, this does two things that I'm not really comfortable with: takes me into another color (minor) and takes me out of Solidarity (fairly major). One sorcery speed card might seem fine, if I go off without it I can just discard it to Frantic, right? Well, I can't tutor for it, it doesn't pitch to my counters, it's opening me to Wasteland, and when I don't draw it (since it's a one-of that I can't tutor), it's just a blank card in a deck that wants as few blank draws as possible. If testing shows that Solidarity just doesn't have enough oomph, it'll go in. But for now, I'm very squarely set on sticking to Solidarity until a more optimized list and better piloting skills can give some solid data.

Merchant Scroll: Pretty much the same thing, except that this is the hardest loss to accept by forsaking all sorceries. When I back off on that stance, I will slam this in so hard the rest of the deck will explode (but not really). This is also the only card that truly tempts me to reneg and say "Ok, NO sorceries, at all, period.....except this one". I'll consider it more as I'm testing and maybe even see if it gets in my way while comboing out.

Treasure Cruise: Dig really, really is amazing. I'm strongly considering a second one maindeck. It's great. Cruise, though, is a sorcery, and doesn't allow the same selection. It's one more card, but looking 7 deep for my Turnabout or Meditate (or both!!) is so much better. I also don't think I can reliably support that much delve. Yes, the deck fills the yard up a lot, but even just trying to Dig two or three times, I frequently have to rely on some of my mana production.

I haven't cut all the Resets, just two. It is fantastic most of the time, but holding it in hand while waiting for the right moment feels stifling. Turnabout usually works fine since that's just High Tide+2 islands, which you need bare minimum anyway. Plus Turnabout allows more strategic plays like tapping out your opponent EOT.

Thirst is really good dig, but in a deck with no artifacts it only draws a single card. Well, it can potentially replace 2 bad cards in your hand, and so technically be kind of a Recall. But maintaining a certain hand size is actually kind of important here; High Tide decks usually cannot keep going from a single card in hand unless that card is a D7, or a lethal Brain Freeze/USZ. So, before Thirst, I would probably add more Meditates. But first, I'll see how Visions performs. I have high hopes for it based on how quickly I've hit 20+ in games so far.

I hope I've made sense and explained myself well. I will continue testing when I can and report back with results.