High Tide Legacy
Eliecer Brathwaite
Since the last time I wrote an article about High Tide, much has changed in the format. I'm not going to talk about how awfully low the tides were during the Expressive Iteration/White Plume Adventurer-era. After the bans things got a bit better for High Tide, but the blue matchups still felt rough. With the printing of Orcish Bowmasters I thought it was all over, but phew here we are.
So how does a card like Mind's Desire solve any of High Tide's problems and what new strategic/tactical advantages does it bring to the table? Let's go over them one by one but first a quick aside on Lrien Revealed.
The absolute biggest weakness of High Tide is its speed. A combo deck going for it turn 4 is not exactly where you want to be in 2023, which means that you must put a lot more energy into playing the reactive game, dodging more bullets, as opposed to the faster combo decks out there which can win before disruption from the opponent becomes relevant.
Mind's Desire won't speed up the process, but it will increase the chance that you'll have a pay-off spell ready by turn 4, so you are more free to prioritize your precious mana on other things along the way. High Tide was already consistent to begin with, but now it's even better. The overall power level of the deck has gone up quite a bit too with the inclusion of Mind's Desire, and you can brute force a win in certain situations.
There are several cards that would help us get there a turn earlier (or even by turn 2 in some rare scenarios!): Cloud of Faeries, Snap, Sapphire Medallion, Candelabra of Tawnos, etc. They all provide a boost in speed after we have resolved High Tide. My issue has always been getting to that point in the first place, and this still holds true. In some matchups you just want to go fast and care very little about the opponent.
All of that said, I think some kind of untap effect to bridge the gap between resolving the Spirals/Desires is warranted. I have been very happy with Turnabout for this, especially with Mind's Desire in the picture, as it gives me the most mana straight up from a flip. If you hit a Candelabra of Tawnos with no mana floating, it actually does nothing on its own. Compared to the other cards on the list, Turnabout can provide some utility outside of the combo. It is slightly worse than the other options when you fight through exactly countermagic, as committing 4 mana is a lot more compared to Candelabra of Tawnos for instance, where you only spend 1 and if it is countered maybe you can try again with another untap effect. But Turnabout can:
Instead of going faster, we can slow the game down. Let's explore this a bit more, if we sculpt an ideal hand of the bare minimum 1 High Tide, 1 Time Spiral with 4 Islands in play, then the rest of our resources should ideally be spent on non combo game pieces. We just want to make sure that our stuff resolves and that there is no disruption that stops us. So, in a scenario where we are under little pressure, and we are also not that worried about the top decks of our opponent, chances are we better just play a land and pass the turn, with a Force of Will at the ready. So, in one sense having another land drop makes up for lacking the acceleration a card like Cloud of Faeries would provide. Slowing the opponent down rather than speeding up ourselves but doing so with more solid mana.
In theory not much has changed with the unbanning of Mind's Desire, a Wish-board is still sweet, but sadly the mana cost is too steep for this kind of flexibility in 2023. It's not like the opposing deck is just sitting around for three turns doing nothing (that's us!). Compare Cunning Wish to recently printed Beseech the Mirror and the efficiency difference is obvious.
So, without Cunning Wish we cut the 3 mana-middle-man and speed things up, but how do we solve the issue with opposing permanents? How do we feel safe on the stack? How do we even win? I'll break it down piece by piece below. I just want to add that I was already on the fence about cutting Cunning Wish, and Mind's Desire certainly made it easier.
Mystic Sanctuary trick: If our goal is to combo off by turn 5 we can cast High Tide in our upkeep, and then we have the option to activate a fetch land and search for Mystic Sanctuary and put it back on top before our draw step. This would give us more mana to work with but can also be a way for us to beat a counterspell.
Mind's Desire also changes the play patterns post-Spiral by a lot, you no longer need to start by casting Merchant Scroll for a Pact of Negation (just to be safe) if your hand contains a Mind's Desire.
I was skeptical at first, Jace seemed fragile and having Desire into Desire seemed a bit much, but after one league I was convinced. Desire into Desire, every blue mage's wet (!?) dream - not just a dream, after all. Jace was even better than expected and once I went off it was trivial to get to a point where I had all of my library exiled with Mind's Desire.
Not having to rely on Cunning Wish frees up mana in-game, but it also frees up slots. Moving Dress Down and Echoing Truth from the sideboard to the main deck opens some additional sideboard space. Although the deck no longer has access to Cunning Wish, we still have some silver-bullets left that can be sided in and found with Merchant Scroll in post board games. For now, those cards are Snap and another bounce spell either Hurkyll's Recall or Wipe Away, in addition to more counterspells in Pact of Negation / Force of Negation.
As mentioned the counter-war is now often about resolving High Tide and therefore a classic anti-blue sideboard card like Defense Grid becomes much better than before. Whereas previously the opponent could just let High Tide resolve and lessen the impact of its taxing effect (High Tide is symmetrical) and still have mana to cast two counterspells. Now instead they are more likely to start fighting before they have this extra mana available. Defense Grid is very good versus tempo decks, because they are built in such a way that they don't want to spend resources (cards) on making more land drops than necessary.
These days I even chose to side in Defense Grid vs. control a lot of the time, which is a huge deal. Defense Grid used to be a huge liability and often a death sentence, because it's symmetrical this meant that you could never counterspell an opposing Narset, Parter of Veils or Teferi, Time Raveler. Both are still big problems for the deck, but because of Mind's Desire at least we now have a plan to beat them once in play - which we did not have previously (the Sapphire Storm list being the one exception with Spellseeker - Snap lines, see my previous article on that).
Control is still very hard, because of how they attack us from multiple angles and our answers sometimes line up poorly. For example, Pact of Negation is a fantastic card to fight countermagic on our own turn, but it's awful trying to stop planeswalkers from resolving. This made sideboarding vs. control very, very tricky. Your best cards would sometimes also be your worst. I ended up not siding in any additional Pact of Negation, and instead relying on Force of Negation to fight over their hate pieces. It was not pretty and with an endless stream of must-counter threats I ran out of gas fast.
Deafening Silence and Lavinia, Azorius Renegade both come down early and are even more difficult to beat, as the answers to them while in play rarely resolve (because of how they both shut us down from fighting back on the stack). I tried Otawara, Soaring City and it was OK. A plus for Otawara is that it's unique in being uncounterable, and you can get rid of a Teferi on their turn, even with something like Defense Grid in play!). Sadly, we can't tutor for it and it does nothing once flipped off of Mind's Desire. Wipe Away is not perfect, but it's probably the best option. The matchups where we need Wipe Away (and when we are also afraid of counterspells) are often very slow, so it's not unreasonable to lean on finding a one-of in time.
Split Second is powerful, and it can be found off of both Merchant scroll and my pet-card Search for Azcanta. In theory this card does everything I want - it gives me selection, mana and cards, at a low risk investment of only 2 mana. Once flipped it becomes magnificent and I can not understate how good it is to be able to pass the turn with a free Impulse up at all times. Sometimes the opponent casts a thing which you need to answer, and then (hopefully) you can find it in the top 4. But if they don't you are free to dig for something else at the end of turn, never lowering your guard and not diluting your hand.
The color Black got a huge resurgence because of recent powerful printings, which means that discard spells are back in the format, and Azcanta, the Sunken Ruin lines up well against them. Discarding cards even speeds up the process for it to flip and once it does, you no longer roll over to discard spell+bomb, as you can activate the Impulse effect with the payoff spell on the stack, protected from discard. It also lets us build resources in the face of Orcish Bowmasters without taking damage.
Search for Azcanta is on the more fair side of things by 2023 standards, but its effect covers a lot of holes for the deck (especially after cutting Predict) and once you start going off it becomes ridiculous. (Turnabout turning into both mana AND a free Impulse!) - See for yourself here! Game 3 is particularly insane.
Teferi's Realm and Dress Down are very similar in that they not only answer one thing, but all of them at once. Free countermagic is how we gain tempo on the stack and these cards are the secret to how a slow turn 4 deck can regain tempo and beat creature/prison-decks in a format as fast as Legacy. It doesn't really matter which hate-pieces your opponent puts into play, they are all textless or phased out when we are ready to combo (Dress Down usually cast at the opponent's end step, to free up mana on the combo turn).
There are a lot of sideboard options out there, but unless the meta changes drastically (like any new set release). I am focusing on balancing my current sideboard by tweaking the numbers for the expected meta game, rather than adding more options.
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