0 comments
Welcome to the guide to one of the most insidious decks to play in Pauper history — especially if you play on Magic Online (MTGO).
Once preemptively banned, High Tide was legalized in the format in the announcements at the end of March, and it only took a week for players to start enjoying the new card in a “build your own Storm” shell. The problem, however, is that there are no (and cannot be) good Storm spells in Pauper, so the archetype focuses on stringing together multiple spells to generate enough mana to the point where Stream of Thought wins the game.
In this article, we delve into this version of one of the most potential combos in Pauper today, with a guide on how to pilot the deck and how to use your Sideboard in the main matchups of the current Metagame!
The Decklist
By the nature of its mechanics, High Tide is, at its core, a “goldfishing” deck. And on a platform like MTGO, that means executing the best sequences in the shortest time possible to avoid losing on the individual clock — a dilemma that, in other Metagames, was also a problem for other archetypes with repetitive patterns like Tortured Existence.
There are distinct versions of the archetype, but the heart of the list revolves around the interaction between High Tide and Psychic Puppetry with a dozen Arcane cards that can be used to untap lands, and with enough mana, cast Stream of Thought to win games. In essence, this strategy harks back to Pioneer’s Lotus Combo, except it's easier to interact with.
Unlike other guides, it makes little sense to explain High Tide card by card. The list is entirely based on three elements: engine, fetch, and win condition. Each of these has a specific purpose around what we do to win games.
Ad
On the engine side, we have Psychic Puppetry and a package of Arcane cards that draw more cards and can untap lands with a Puppetry in hand. With two High Tide or Puppetry, they generate mana parity, and with more than three, they generate positive mana.
Between cantrips, draw effects, and an efficient tutor with Merchant Scroll, we can dig deep into the deck searching for the pieces we need. The Ponder and Pieces of the Puzzle slots are flexible, and some players have opted for cards with Transmute like Dizzy Spell and Muddle the Mixture, a take that deserves to be tested, but may fail to take advantage of the extra mana from Psychic Puppetry combinations properly.
The sequences to win the game involve Stream of Thought and, preferably, Petals of Insight generating infinite mana. There are other lines we can take to win, but the primary focus involves using these two cards to end the game.
Playing the Deck
Ad
Your primary goal is to cast multiple arcane spells after playing High Tide and generate positive mana with each of them with Psychic Puppetry. The simplest line of victory involves playing six High Tides to generate seven mana with each island we tap. From there, Petals of Insight, which costs 
when we use Psychic Puppetry's Splice into Arcane, can be returned to the hand indefinitely, generating an extra mana each time we cast it, resulting in infinite mana.
Additionally, copies of Puppetry can "stack" on other arcane spells, allowing us to pay to untap two lands, which speeds up the combo considerably and reduces the number of High Tides needed to loop Petals of Insight for three stacked High Tides.
This infinite mana is used with Stream of Thought to win the game, but it is far from being the only function of the card: High Tide digs very deep, and it is common to reach a point where we have 20 or fewer cards in the deck, and where half of them are Islands. At that point, we can use this spell to throw back into the library any number of spells that we consider relevant to end the game.
There are other lines we can do with two copies of Stream of Thought plus the various Arcana cards in the list to win games without closing six High Tides for Petals of Insight. In this case, we use a Stream with two Replicates to pull these spells back into the deck and loop between one Stream and the other to win the game.
It is worth noting that this line, however, is non-deterministic — it does not create a loop that can be announced and forces the player to perform different actions — and is detrimental to players in tabletop tournaments, since it is possible to announce an absurd amount of mana with Petals of Insight and then play Stream of Thought for the number of cards in the opponent's deck. Furthermore, while it is a game-winning line, there is no guarantee that it cannot fail because Ideas Unbound drew three Islands.
On Magic Online, both lines require countless clicks, but the Stream of Thought sequences require more time to think about which card to play each time.
Ad
The first three turns should focus on creating the setup to perform the combo. You need the following pieces to start looping: three Islands, one or two Psychic Puppetry, one or two High Tide, and some amount of Arcane cards to untap lands with Psychic Puppetry while digging deeper.
There are a few variables to consider. The most important is that two High Tide can turn into one High Tide and one Flood of Recollection if you have four Islands in play and enough untap effects: the first Island will be tapped for High Tide, the second for Flood of Recollection, and the third for High Tide while generating extra — the fourth Island will generate , and four mana is enough to start looping with Psychic Puppetry and dig deeper into your deck.
From this point on, our scope of search is limited to finding more Arcane cards and/or Merchant Scroll, High Tide, Psychic Puppetry, and Flood of Recollection to expand the positive mana.
The third High Tide is the most important piece of the combo, since it will enable positive mana with all Arcane cards. If you found a Flood of Recollection or Merchant Scroll, consider using those two mana to pull the High Tide.
Psychic Puppetry plays a fundamental role in this line and the second copy of it should be cast only when we need the extra mana, which is common when looking for the third High Tide without having another arcane card or enough mana to generate positive mana with two Puppetries revealed. Untapping another Island means having the needed to play Merchant Scroll / Flood of Recollection and the High Tide, ensuring that the remaining Island starts generating four mana.
Ad
With four mana per Island, the plan revolves around casting your cantrips with the positive mana to dry out the deck while finding more Arcane cards to continue the cycle and searching for more Merchant Scrolls or the remaining High Tide / Flood of Recollection / Psychic Puppetry to expand the scope of the Islands. Preferences can be given between sequencing Brainstorm and Preordain to dump useless cards to the bottom, but Brainstorm with Peer Through Depths also serves the same purpose.
It's important to remember that at some point, you'll need Stream of Thought to reuse your most important cards. The recommendation is to start looping with Stream when you have around 20 cards in your deck, but there are situations where you need to do this sooner — remember to save some cantrips or even Lorien Revealed to dig into your deck after shuffling the cards back in.
From this point on, the focus becomes playing enough High Tides, or having two Psychic Puppetry, to get to seven mana per Arcane cast and cast Petals of Insight to win the game with Stream of Thought.
Interacting with the Opponent
One of the biggest problems with High Tide is the lack of interaction between the list and the opponent's strategy. While cards like Gigadrowse can be included in the maindeck, inserting cards that don't actively participate in our game plan turns into more bad topdecks when we go for the combo, and the only way to insert them is by reducing our consistency or reducing the number of Islands even further.
In the list above, we chose to completely forget about interaction and focus on performing the combo as quickly and consistently as possible, with little chance of failing to win the game from the fourth turn onwards. In some cases, these four turns can be a lot, but with the format's reduced speed and a not-so-high popularity of Synthesizer Burn since blue Tempo decks are the main contenders in the Metagame today, in addition to easily preying on slower decks, High Tide is in a good position in Pauper.
Ad
On the other hand, it has plenty of problems against these same Tempo strategies. It's almost impossible to beat them without a reactive package around Dispel and Gigadrowse, and as long as they remain at the top, it's difficult to imagine High Tide gaining ground in Tier 1 — the best proposal I've found for these matchups is to make plays that make the opponent consider that this is a Tolarian Terror matchup early in the game and force them to be proactive to rush a fourth turn with less mana available, or hope to survive long enough to resolve some High Tides.
In the general spectrum, this deck is favored against most archetypes with little to no stack interaction. While cards like Duress can disrupt our game plan and decks like Burn and Red Aggro can win in a race, we have enough tools in the Sideboard to handle these matchups without having to compromise too much of our game plan.
Sideboard Guide
Using the Sideboard with High Tide is a challenge. You want enough cards to hold your opponent's game or protect your combo, but without giving up too many slots, as each piece matters to your plan. Ideally, we want four cards in each game and no more than eight between games 2 and 3, and to accommodate this amount, we need to cut some of the less relevant parts of the combo.
A few general guidelines can be considered:
Ad
Faeries
IN
OUT
Blue Terror
IN
Ad
OUT
Synthesizer Burn
IN
OUT
Ad
Rakdos Affinity
IN
OUT
Bogles
IN
Ad
OUT
Tron
IN
OUT
Gruul Ramp
Ad
IN
OUT
Elves
IN
OUT
Ad
Dredge
IN
OUT
Wrapping Up
That's all for today!
Ad
If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment!
Thanks for reading!
Sign in and join the conversation
— Comments0
Be the first to comment