Pauper League: Spring Tide

Week 4 of pauper league at Play The Game Read the Story (For those who don’t know what Pauper is: go here)

My new deck this week was Spring Tide.  Last week I had brought one of many proto versions I had been toying with the past couple months, but this week’s version benefitted from two major revalation.  1) Merchant Scroll is in fact common, and 2) Gigadrowse is nuts.

Spring Tide

Brief Explanation of the deck:  Cast High Tide, Cast Cloud of Faeries off one island to untap both islands.  Tap two islands, cast Snap on Cloud of Faeries to untap both lands netting two mana.  Continue with High Tide/Cloud of Faeries/Snap/Frantic Search to generate mana to fuel your draw spells.

Once you have cast three High Tides in a turn you:  Tap two Islands for eight mana. Cast Mnemonic Wall targeting Snap in the Graveyard. Cast Snap Targeting Mnemonic Wall. Untap the two islands, netting a blue mana.  Repeat an arbitrarily large number of times.  Use your fantastically large amount of mana to cast Capsize (with buyback) to bounce their board, then on the Mnemonic Wall, recasting to get Deep Analysis out of the yard. (or Oona’s Grace, or Merchant Scroll if you don’t have the Capsize in hand.   Recur Deep Analysis to make them draw their entire library and lose.

Sideboard was more of a builders board this week, I had been experimenting with the number of islands (sometimes playing as low as 10 Island).  I’m happy with Sixteen, also I think two Mnemonic Walls is correct, I was always able to draw into it when going off. Disrupt never came up, I didn’t once want to side it in, even against control.

How did it do?

Pretty good, the deck went 5-1 losing only to a hard control deck.

Match 1:

Me – Spring Tide vs. Rich Owens – Izzetpost

No real interaction here, both games I drew Gigadrowse early and went off. Sixth turn game one, 4th turn game 2.

Match 2:

Corry Newton – Spring Tide vs. Rich Owens – Izzetpost

Corry tried the deck for one game against Rich.  He kept a one land hand on the draw of Island, 2x High Tide, Brainstorm, Ideas Unbound, Snap, Frantic Search, Mnemonic Wall(drawn) and was able to get there going off turn 4 and succeeding.

Highlight of the game: Ponder -> Frantic Search, Cloud of Faeries and Merchant Scroll.

Match 3:

Corry – Spring Tide vs. James DuBose – UR BurnControl

Went 2-1.  Went off game one without Gigadrowse lost to a Staggershock on the cloud of Faeries in response to Snap.  Further cementing the need for Gigadrowse.

Match 4:

Me – Spring Tide vs. Ezra Carr – Dimirpost

Game one stuck around as long as I could.  Got the Gigadrowse and went off (successfully) in response to a Ulamog’s Crusher hitting the table.

Game two the same strategy was successful, going off out of necessity (turn before dying to Errant Ephemeron.

Match 5:

Me – Spring Tide vs. Ezra Carr – MUC (Hard Control)

Game one I went off (successfully) at the last possible moment.

Game two (boarded in Gigadrowse for brainstorms) I got the gigadrowse but was behind on lands and couldn’t tap him out.  High tides were countered, got faeried to death.

Game three went off at five life (dead next turn to Ephemeron + Cloud of Faeries)   Fizzled! Wasn’t able to get to enough draw spells, and High Tide gave him enough mana for two counters off the one land I couldn’t tap down. (Had just enough gigadrowse to tap each land once, and he countered one to leave an Island up) Ended up Snapping his Ephemeron, putiing me in top deck mode. (Not a place I want to be in this deck)  Ended up losing to Spire Golems.

At this point, Ezra took over as pilot.

Ezra switched the Brainstorms for Preordains (Which I think I agree with) and replaced the Oona’s Grace with Deep Analysis (Which I don’t)

Match 6:

Ezra – Spring Tide vs. Corry – Mono Green Aggro

Ezra rolled Corry over.  MGA just isn’t fast enough to deal with this deck.

Afterwards Ezra goldfished a few times, successfully going of on turn two once.  All  in all a great week for Spring Tide.The combo often felt like it was but to fizzle, but in almost every case it got there regardless of the odds.  Merchant Scroll makes this deck very consistant, and Mnemonic Wall can recur pretty much anything (oftentimes being the third high tide)

I think the discussion should no longer be on whether or not the deck is viable, but instead on how to beat it.  Burn and Control seem like OK matchups, as stopping the combo from starting can really kill the deck, but gigadrowse is damn near lethal.  I’m looking forward to trying Pestilence against Spring Tide as both my and Aaron’s builds are running heavy discard and I’m running Spinning Darkness that will let me nuke a faerie in response to Snap even after gigadrowse.

Looking forward to next week!