Extended High Tide deck

High Tide is a mono-blue combo deck which came to fame when Kai Budde won Grand Prix Vienna 1999 with it.

High Tide was originally designed to combat and compete against Academy decks (based on Tolarian Academy) of the same time by having less single-purpose artifacts and more countermagic. In principle, High Tide casts the namesake High Tide after using the free spells of Urza's Legacy to produce massive amounts of mana for a game-winning Stroke of Genius on the opponent. High Tide, properly tuned, has been called "the purest and most beautiful control deck ever devised". It was a deck that was all land, innovating the use of control-centered lands like Thawing Glaciers, mana ramping with High Tide, permission for defense, and card drawing. It was so purely focused on Blue cards and the strategy and identity of Blue that it left itself with no other way to win other than using a Blue combo to overdraw the opponent.

The free spells used by the deck were Frantic Search, Palinchron and Time Spiral. All of these cards would also help the deck otherwise, because Frantic Search and Time Spiral were card draw and Palinchron could be played repeatedly once enough mana was in pool. Turnabout was used for the same effect of untapping lands but did not produce an additional effect. Since Islands</c> under one or multiple High Tides produce a multiple of their normal mana production, this process ramps up enormous amounts of mana rather quickly.

In 2008, Mike Flores called it the 3rd best Extended deck of all time.

<d title="High Tide - Kai Budde - Grand Prix Vienna 1999"> Lands 16 Island 4 Thawing Glaciers 3 Volcanic Island

Combo 4 High Tide 3 Frantic Search 4 Time Spiral 3 Turnabout 1 Palinchron 3 Stroke of Genius

Other 2 Arcane Denial 1 Brainstorm 4 Counterspell 4 Force of Will 4 Impulse 3 Merchant Scroll 1 Mystical Tutor

Sideboard 4 Hydroblast 1 Mountain 2 Null Rod 4 Ophidian 4 Pyroblast </d>