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) appearing around the same time by having fewer 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".[1] 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.[2]
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 engines and Palinchron could be played repeatedly once enough mana was in the pool. Turnabout was used for the same effect of untapping one's lands but did not produce an additional effect. Since Islands 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.[3]
Other (19)
4 Impulse
References[ | ]
- ↑ Mike Flores (February 07, 2008). "Top 10 Extended Decks of All Time". magicthegathering.com. Wizards of the Coast.
- ↑ Mike Flores (February 07, 2008). "Top 10 Extended Decks of All Time". magicthegathering.com. Wizards of the Coast.
- ↑ Mike Flores (February 07, 2008). "Top 10 Extended Decks of All Time". magicthegathering.com. Wizards of the Coast.