Mtg-Peasant

[Primer] Arcane Tide Jan 13, 2016, 3:33 AM
Out_of_the_Blue	Hello fellow Peasant aficionados, here is a primer attempt for the mono-blue combo deck called "Arcane Tide" ;-) Decklist : Combo pieces : 4 High Tide 4 Psychic Puppetry Blue Demonic Tutor : 4 Merchant Scroll Arcane spells : 4 Reach Through Mists 4 Ideas Unbound 4 Peer Through Depths Kill : 1 Petals of Insight 1 Dampen Thought Cantrip cartel : 4 Preordain 4 Ponder 4 Brainstorm Flex slots : 1 Stream of Consciousness 4 Accumulated Knowledge Lands : 17 Island Filthy creatures : 0 How does this pile of cards win ? Your goal is to entirely mill your opponent library in a single turn. You will then win the game the next time your opponent needs to draw a card (usually in their draw step). To achieve this, you need to attain a board state where you can cast Petals of Insight over and over again (because you are going to choose to "put cards on the bottom of your library in any order" with Petals of Insight. Hence it will return to your hand, etc...). Thus you need to cheat on the mana somehow. This is possible by using multiple High Tide (your islands are worth several blue mana) in association with the quite obscure "splice mechanism" which you are going to abuse with Psychic Puppetry targeting and untapping your own islands. The most likely scenario is having cast 2 High Tide this turn & having 3+ Psychic Puppetry in your hand OR having cast 3+ High Tide this turn & having 2 Psychic Puppetry in your hand. At this point, casting Petals of Insight & splicing all your Psychic Puppetry on it will cost less mana than the mana generated with the 2/3 Island used to pay for all this, which are going to be untapped by your 2/3 Psychic Puppetry. Once you have demonstrated to your opponent that you are netting 1+ mana each iteration, announce that you are going to do this over and over again a finite number of time, equal to XN (X being a decent number, e.g. 100) (N being the number of cards in your library) (without rearranging the top 3 cards with Petals of Insight in any iteration). At this point, you have enough mana to cast a sufficient number of times (equals to your opponent library size / 4 + 1) Petals of Insight while splicing Dampen Thought on it, targeting your opponent. Core* Cards listed under the Subcategories "Combo pieces", "Blue Demonic Tutor", "Arcane spells" & "Kill" are set in stone for any creature-less deck revolving around Hide Tide + arcane spells. Actual choices Playing a whooping number of 12 dedicated 1ccm cantrips helps you on multiple angles. First, it allows to go as low as 17 Island, which is relevant given that we try to avoid getting too many lands stuck in our hand while going off. During most games, you will spend your first 3 turns sculpting your hand, and having such a high density of 1ccm cantrips helps you use all the available mana to the best efficiency during those crucial early turns. Playing a single Stream of Consciousness (your only uncommon maindeck) allows to play the minimal number of copies (i.e. 1) of your kill cards (which are pretty useless while setting up, they are the last cards you want to see in almost every situations with this deck). If your copy of Petals of Insight and/or Dampen Thought got discarded, no problem you can still shuffle those back with Stream of Consciousness. Afraid of drawing dead during your combo turn with your last cantrip in hand, let's start by shuffling those Ideas Unbound & Peer Through Depths back in the deck. Oh, added bonus, Stream of Consciousness is an arcane spell, thus it can help generate mana too while going off. The Accumulated Knowledge playset serves two purposes : A) It almost guarantees to never run out of gas once you get going during your combo turn (might been seen as overkill). B) You get this feeling to be pre-boarded against heavy discard or attrition-based decks without a decent clock. Then just cannot beat you chaining multiple Accumulated Knowledge. Goldfishing On the play, you are supposed to mill your opponent library on your 4th turn ~80/85% of the time. You will get ~3-4% turn 3 kills, ~10% turn 5 kill & ~ 4% fizzle. Minimal setup to go off 3 Island (in play) 1 High Tide + 2 Psychic Puppetry \|\| 2 High Tide + 1 Psychic Puppetry At least one 2ccm arcane spell in hand (preferably Ideas Unbound). Why ? : Because this setup allows you to break even on mana when splicing your Psychic Puppetry on 2ccm arcane spells, so you can start drawing more cards and eventually grab more High Tide / Psychic Puppetry to start generating mana with your arcane spells. Going off with only 1 High Tide + 1 Psychic Puppetry is possible, but almost forces you to hit the missing High Tide / Psychic Puppetry with your first draw spell (otherwise you are most likely going to fizzle due to mana constraint). Advices / how to setup You really want to hit your first three land drops. Preordain & Ponder are best suited for this. Cards you don't want to see while setting up in the first 3/4 turns (from the worst to the most okay-ish) : #1 Petals of Insight (if you are using this without the setup to go infinite, you are in trouble. That might still be your only path to victory, but it will include a lucky top 3 & some re-shuffle back into the library with Stream of Consciousness) #2 Dampen Thought (can be used to clear jank sitting on top after a Brainstorm/Ponder) #3 Stream of Consciousness (Can clear Brainstorm/Ponder jank too OR shuffle back some key cards so that you are more likely to draw them again during mid-combo) #4 Accumulated Knowledge (might be more than okay-ish in some MUs) #5 Island number 4 (not super bad to draw your 4th Island on your your 3rd turn, but most of the time you'd rather start you combo turn (plz make it be turn 4) with only 3 Island in play, because you are most likely to hit this 4th island while playing all those cantrips & cards drawing spells) (and 4 island is all you need in a goldfish world, because you cannot untap more than 4 with your spliced Psychic Puppetry). If you have no combo pieces at all in your hand when casting your first Merchant Scroll, it's almost always correct to grab High Tide first, given that if things gets desperate, starting your last turn while facing lethal next turn with a Hide Tide can give you the needed mana boost to cantrip into your last missing piece & go off in the very same turn. Grabbing Psychic Puppetry first can be correct if you need to buy time against some huge attackers by casting an instant arcane spell + splicing Psychic Puppetry on it targeting & tapping an opponent creature during their turn before combat. If you have 3 manas available during your mainphase and really need some digging into your combo pieces, it can be correct to play a sorcery speed Peer Through Depths, because the best card you hit might be a 1ccm sorcery cantrip, which you can cast mainphase with your remaining mana. The best card in the deck is Brainstorm if used correctly. You play 18 cards which can clear the 2 bad cards you put on top with Brainstorm. This is so powerful at any stage of the game : If you spend your turn 3 by going Brainstorm into Merchant Scroll, you are in a very good shape. You are early/mid combo, you have no mana issues but need to hit more card drawing spells, Brainstorm into Peer Through Depths, then Peer Through Depths for some mana boost & clear Brainstorm jank. The list goes on & on. When you successfully go infinite with Petals of Insight, you can tap all your opponent permanents, go to your second mainphase, go infinite again and then mill your opponent deck. It may allow you to play around weird things your opponent is holding. Misc tips Don't get confused with the old Homelands wording on Merchant Scroll, it can only fetch instants, so don't try to grab Ideas Unbound or Petals of Insight with it. There is a weird scenario where you can go infinite with only 1 Psychic Puppetry in hand (why would you do that ? Maybe because your opponent had 3 Castigate exiling 3 Psychic Puppetry from the game, who knows). To achieve this, you need to cast 7 High Tide this turn, which is possible if you shuffle 3+ of them back in your library with Stream of Consciousness. Don't forget that you can cast an instant arcane spell + splice Psychic Puppetry on it during your opponent turn, targeting and tapping some of their permanents to disturb them. With this maindeck configuration, you can still die in your opponent upkeep, even if you milled their entire library, because they might have some burn spells they can cast in their hand. If you are playing against such a deck, bring in 1 Deep Analysis from the sideboard, so that you can target your opponent with it after you successfully milled them & win in your mainphase. Sideboard Coming soon work in progress spell check needs to be done

[Primer] Arcane Tide Jan 13, 2016, 3:33 AM

Hello fellow Peasant aficionados, here is a primer attempt for the mono-blue combo deck called "Arcane Tide" ;-)

Decklist :
Combo pieces :
4 High Tide
4 Psychic Puppetry
Blue Demonic Tutor :
4 Merchant Scroll
Arcane spells :
4 Reach Through Mists
4 Ideas Unbound
4 Peer Through Depths
Kill :
1 Petals of Insight
1 Dampen Thought
Cantrip cartel :
4 Preordain
4 Ponder
4 Brainstorm
Flex slots :
1 Stream of Consciousness
4 Accumulated Knowledge
Lands :
17 Island
Filthy creatures :
0

How does this pile of cards win ?
Your goal is to entirely mill your opponent library in a single turn. You will then win the game the next time your opponent needs to draw a card (usually in their draw step).

To achieve this, you need to attain a board state where you can cast Petals of Insight over and over again (because you are going to choose to "put cards on the bottom of your library in any order" with Petals of Insight. Hence it will return to your hand, etc...).

Thus you need to cheat on the mana somehow. This is possible by using multiple High Tide (your islands are worth several blue mana) in association with the quite obscure "splice mechanism" which you are going to abuse with Psychic Puppetry targeting and untapping your own islands.

The most likely scenario is having cast 2 High Tide this turn & having 3+ Psychic Puppetry in your hand OR having cast 3+ High Tide this turn & having 2 Psychic Puppetry in your hand. At this point, casting Petals of Insight & splicing all your Psychic Puppetry on it will cost less mana than the mana generated with the 2/3 Island used to pay for all this, which are going to be untapped by your 2/3 Psychic Puppetry.

Once you have demonstrated to your opponent that you are netting 1+ mana each iteration, announce that you are going to do this over and over again a finite number of time, equal to X*N (X being a decent number, e.g. 100) (N being the number of cards in your library) (without rearranging the top 3 cards with Petals of Insight in any iteration).
At this point, you have enough mana to cast a sufficient number of times (equals to your opponent library size / 4 + 1) Petals of Insight while splicing Dampen Thought on it, targeting your opponent.

Core
Cards listed under the Subcategories "Combo pieces", "Blue Demonic Tutor", "Arcane spells" & "Kill" are set in stone for any creature-less deck revolving around Hide Tide + arcane spells.

Actual choices
Playing a whooping number of 12 dedicated 1ccm cantrips helps you on multiple angles. First, it allows to go as low as 17 Island, which is relevant given that we try to avoid getting too many lands stuck in our hand while going off. During most games, you will spend your first 3 turns sculpting your hand, and having such a high density of 1ccm cantrips helps you use all the available mana to the best efficiency during those crucial early turns.

Playing a single Stream of Consciousness (your only uncommon maindeck) allows to play the minimal number of copies (i.e. 1) of your kill cards (which are pretty useless while setting up, they are the last cards you want to see in almost every situations with this deck). If your copy of Petals of Insight and/or Dampen Thought got discarded, no problem you can still shuffle those back with Stream of Consciousness. Afraid of drawing dead during your combo turn with your last cantrip in hand, let's start by shuffling those Ideas Unbound & Peer Through Depths back in the deck. Oh, added bonus, Stream of Consciousness is an arcane spell, thus it can help generate mana too while going off.

The Accumulated Knowledge playset serves two purposes : A) It almost guarantees to never run out of gas once you get going during your combo turn (might been seen as overkill). B) You get this feeling to be pre-boarded against heavy discard or attrition-based decks without a decent clock. Then just cannot beat you chaining multiple Accumulated Knowledge.

Goldfishing
On the play, you are supposed to mill your opponent library on your 4th turn ~80/85% of the time. You will get ~3-4% turn 3 kills, ~10% turn 5 kill & ~ 4% fizzle.

Minimal setup to go off
3 Island (in play)
1 High Tide + 2 Psychic Puppetry || 2 High Tide + 1 Psychic Puppetry
At least one 2ccm arcane spell in hand (preferably Ideas Unbound).

Why ? : Because this setup allows you to break even on mana when splicing your Psychic Puppetry on 2ccm arcane spells, so you can start drawing more cards and eventually grab more High Tide / Psychic Puppetry to start generating mana with your arcane spells.

Going off with only 1 High Tide + 1 Psychic Puppetry is possible, but almost forces you to hit the missing High Tide / Psychic Puppetry with your first draw spell (otherwise you are most likely going to fizzle due to mana constraint).

Advices / how to setup
You really want to hit your first three land drops. Preordain & Ponder are best suited for this.

Cards you don't want to see while setting up in the first 3/4 turns (from the worst to the most okay-ish) :
#1 Petals of Insight (if you are using this without the setup to go infinite, you are in trouble. That might still be your only path to victory, but it will include a lucky top 3 & some re-shuffle back into the library with Stream of Consciousness)
#2 Dampen Thought (can be used to clear jank sitting on top after a Brainstorm/Ponder)
#3 Stream of Consciousness (Can clear Brainstorm/Ponder jank too OR shuffle back some key cards so that you are more likely to draw them again during mid-combo)
#4 Accumulated Knowledge (might be more than okay-ish in some MUs)
#5 Island number 4 (not super bad to draw your 4th Island on your your 3rd turn, but most of the time you'd rather start you combo turn (plz make it be turn 4) with only 3 Island in play, because you are most likely to hit this 4th island while playing all those cantrips & cards drawing spells) (and 4 island is all you need in a goldfish world, because you cannot untap more than 4 with your spliced Psychic Puppetry).

If you have no combo pieces at all in your hand when casting your first Merchant Scroll, it's almost always correct to grab High Tide first, given that if things gets desperate, starting your last turn while facing lethal next turn with a Hide Tide can give you the needed mana boost to cantrip into your last missing piece & go off in the very same turn. Grabbing Psychic Puppetry first can be correct if you need to buy time against some huge attackers by casting an instant arcane spell + splicing Psychic Puppetry on it targeting & tapping an opponent creature during their turn before combat.

If you have 3 manas available during your mainphase and really need some digging into your combo pieces, it can be correct to play a sorcery speed Peer Through Depths, because the best card you hit might be a 1ccm sorcery cantrip, which you can cast mainphase with your remaining mana.

The best card in the deck is Brainstorm if used correctly. You play 18 cards which can clear the 2 bad cards you put on top with Brainstorm. This is so powerful at any stage of the game : If you spend your turn 3 by going Brainstorm into Merchant Scroll, you are in a very good shape. You are early/mid combo, you have no mana issues but need to hit more card drawing spells, Brainstorm into Peer Through Depths, then Peer Through Depths for some mana boost & clear Brainstorm jank. The list goes on & on.

When you successfully go infinite with Petals of Insight, you can tap all your opponent permanents, go to your second mainphase, go infinite again and then mill your opponent deck. It may allow you to play around weird things your opponent is holding.

Misc tips
Don't get confused with the old Homelands wording on Merchant Scroll, it can only fetch instants, so don't try to grab Ideas Unbound or Petals of Insight with it.

There is a weird scenario where you can go infinite with only 1 Psychic Puppetry in hand (why would you do that ? Maybe because your opponent had 3 Castigate exiling 3 Psychic Puppetry from the game, who knows). To achieve this, you need to cast 7 High Tide this turn, which is possible if you shuffle 3+ of them back in your library with Stream of Consciousness.

Don't forget that you can cast an instant arcane spell + splice Psychic Puppetry on it during your opponent turn, targeting and tapping some of their permanents to disturb them.

With this maindeck configuration, you can still die in your opponent upkeep, even if you milled their entire library, because they might have some burn spells they can cast in their hand. If you are playing against such a deck, bring in 1 Deep Analysis from the sideboard, so that you can target your opponent with it after you successfully milled them & win in your mainphase.

Sideboard
Coming soon

work in progress

spell check needs to be done

Forums

Metagame Peasant

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B4L4	May 10, 2016, 11:25 AM Card advantage is not supposed to be a huge issue outside of MUs with discard. When you goldfish with the latest decklist, you have 6 cards which gives CA (4 Ideas Unbound & 2 Pieces), but you have many ways to find/draw them. The main issue is to setup 1/2 High Tide & 1/2 P.Puppetry in hand for your turn 4. Petals of Insight is another source of CA but is rarely used that way (& you need to have a remaining Stream of Consciousness to do this or a lot of remaining arcane spells in your deck to kill solely with Dampen Thought splices). And you have a lot of sources of CQ (card quality) : Brainstorm to get rid of 2 useless cards, Oona's Grace to get rid of lands & all you cantrips to setup your draws. Here are some replays of goldfish : https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B452K0_RxXBhT3MyN0toZjZqRjQ&usp=sharing
Korhal	May 11, 2016, 1:16 PM Thanks a lot for the link! I will check it out as soon as possible. I am also looking forward to the article on this deck. Meanwhile I keep testing
B4L4	Nov 9, 2016, 10:04 PM Article : French version : To complement this, i am trying to write a "gameplay guide". If someone is willing to read it (draft level atm), i would appreciate some feedback (what is hard to understand, what is missing, etc...)
B4L4	Nov 9, 2016, 10:05 PM Urls are so broken :-s Article : https://peasantvienna.wordpress.com/circular-logic/deeper-analysis/high-tide-or-the-quintessence-of-adaptation/ French version : http://www.magic-ville.com/fr/gazette/show_article?ref=552

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