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Turn of the Tide

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As Legacy tips increasingly towards midrangey Leovold, Emissary of Trest decks, tempo-oriented Delver of Secrets decks, and fast Blood Moon/Chalice of the Void decks, the combo decks of the format need to adapt to beat these strategies. Anything that can't race Delver, Daze, and Force of Will while also being resilient to Blood Moon and Chalice of the Void is probably not a great choice. There's always the option of just racing these strategies with something like Show and Tell, but slower combo decks may struggle to beat this spread of disruption. Today, we look at a deck that might have a shot:


High Tide
One of the biggest strengths of the High Tide deck in this format is that it has such a high count of basic Islands. This means that you will be resilient to both Blood Moon and Wasteland as you sculpt your hand to beat whatever other disruption your opponent may have. The other advantage of High Tide combo decks is that, the longer the game goes, the more likely they are to be able to combo off through any amount of disruption.

The engine of the deck is fairly straightforward. High Tide lets your islands tap for additional mana. Turnabout lets you untap your lands to generate even more mana. Then you can burn your cantrips digging for Time Spiral. Time Spiral recycles all of your cantrips, High Tides, and Turnabouts while untapping most of your lands and letting you draw seven to continue chaining cantrips and High Tides.

The reason this deck is so resilient is two-fold. First, the whole engine is just mana and cantrips. All you're trying to do is generate mana and draw cards until you have enough Merchant Scrolls, Cunning Wishes, and other counterspells to guarantee that you can beat any amount of disruption your opponent might have. Then you can Cunning Wish for either Brain Freeze or Blue Sun's Zenith to kill your opponent. Secondly, Cunning Wish gives you access to all manner of interaction, even in Game 1. It doesn't matter if your opponent has one Chalice of the Void or hatebear, because eventually you can Cunning Wish into a bounce spell and kill them on your own turn.

One of the problems with the High Tide deck is that, barring multiple copies of the namesake card, you will struggle to combo off before the fourth turn of the game. That's the point at which you can cast High Tide plus Time Spiral or High Tide plus Turnabout and some additional disruption. Consequently, as the format shifts away from combo and towards these decks that are leaning on disruption, this High Tide deck becomes more well-positioned in the format.


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