OBLIGATORY DISCLAIMER:

Value Vintage is an extremely open and diverse format with a huge card pool and an ever-evolving metagame. This Primer is not meant to be the be-all end-all on High Tide for Value Vintage. It’s very possible that shortly after I publish this someone has discovered some hot new tech or something important got reprinted into a commander deck. If and when that happens I will be adding addendums to the end of this primer. Of equal importance, I am a lover of this deck through and through. It has a special place in my heart. But I am not the only person you should listen to. Check out primers and decklists for other formats, and other decklists for this archetype in the Value Vintage discord. There’s a whole world of Tide out there. Go experience it all. You won’t regret it.

A Word of Caution

One day, many moons ago, I woke up and decided I wanted to start thinking about Value Vintage High Tide. And since then I haven’t been able to stop.

This is a warning. If you are a lover of combo decks, more specifically storm decks and you enjoy your peace of mind, turn away now. If you like listening to your loved ones speak without thinking about minmaxxing bounce spell choices and Mind’s Desire probability, run. And run fast.

Still here? Good. You’re stronger than me.

First, some context.

Back in the silver age of the format (circa 2019), my friend and I discovered that many of the pieces to Legacy High Tide were cheaper than we thought. So we got to brewing. We ended up with a decklist that was far from optimized, and never performed particularly well. Sure, it killed people. But it would not be the first deck I’d think to bring to a large event. But good lord if it wasn’t a fun building exercise. I had played UR storm in Modern a decent amount, but Tide plays nothing like pretty much any other storm deck in the game. I fell in love immediately.

I started delving into the deck in legacy, proxying it up for local events (since I was still a poor teenager) and I loved it. I can’t say that I was winning much with it, but I was having more fun playing magic than I had in quite a while. When Value Vintage and Magic as a whole hit a wall in 2020 I stopped thinking about the game for a while almost entirely, but Tide never left the back of my head.

Flash forward to 2022 and Value Vintage is back in full swing! Many of the important pieces to High Tide had steadily climbed in price since the good ol’ days, making the deck borderline unplayable. But luckily Mark Rosewater heard my cries, and delivered upon to me Dominaria Remastered. High Tide was back on the menu. Rusty and I got to work on the deck, and he took it to a top 8 finish at our first large modern day event. He moved on to finding success with different decks, but I kept diving deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole. And haven’t stopped since.

A brief list of places I have made important decisions regarding deckbuilding:

Seeing my favorite band live for the first time
On the phone with my rental company
Thanksgiving dinner
Christmas dinner
A first date
A funeral

This is your final warning.

Here’s the decklist discussed. If you’re reading this in the future (After September 2026), here is the decklist I am currently playing.

This is the second High Tide primer I’ve written. It’s somewhat similar to the first one, but both this deck and the Value Vintage metagame changed significantly in the years since that first primer was published. I decided this article was long overdue for an overhaul. If you want to read that first primer check it out here.

I’ll pray for you.

What the Hell Even is High Tide?

High Tide is a mono-blue storm combo deck first arising to popularity thanks to the legendary Kai Budde, who brought it to victory in the Extended format at Grand Prix Vienna in 1999. One of the most powerful Extended decks of all time, it operated much like today’s versions. The main game plan is to cast the titular High Tide, then string together multiple powerful untap spells courtesy of Urza’s Block to generate insane amounts of mana and cast a lethal Stroke of Genius on your opponent. While Value Vintage does not get access to staples of the Legacy deck such as Time Spiral or Force of Will we do get to play a variety of other powerful cards.

If you are a lover of storm decks there are few better options available to you in Value Vintage than High Tide. It is the ultimate combo deck. You must be aware of every single choice you make from the first spell you cast until the absolute last. There are dozens of options for High Tide. What will follow is a hopefully coherent breakdown of my personal 75 cards. But I must make it clear to you dear reader that I am but a mere mortal man. I am confident in my decklist and have performed well with it. I know why each card is there in the quantity it is and as you’ll see I’m ready to defend them all. However, if what you take away from this primer is that you know a better way to build and play High Tide please take that inspiration and run with it! I’m constantly thinking about changing things up with old tech, new tech, underpowered tech, and everything in between. And if you do, please let me know. If I haven’t made it clear already I love this deck and love talking about it. Without further ado, let’s get after it.

Decklist Breakdown

Before we can get into the strategy of High Tide we need to understand where every card comes from, its place in the deck, and how it functions with everything else. More than most storm decks, Tide is a machine that only works when every piece compliments the others.

The Headliners

4 High Tide

0-1 Cunning Wish

1 Mind’s Desire

1 Commit//Memory

1-2 Expansion//Explosion

Most of these are self explanatory but they’re still worth getting into. High Tide is the titular card and your main engine. It is worth to note for the uninitiated, yes your High Tides do stack, they are symmetrical (watch out for counterspells), and Islands you play after resolving them will tap for additional mana. The additional mana you make off of High Tide will also NOT be affected by the first line of text of Damping Sphere. (The second line is still rough though).

Mind’s Desire is one of the most powerful Storm spells ever printed. The most common line of play to begin your storm turn will be something like High Tide, three or four untappers, some Cantrips, a tutor, and a Mind’s Desire for 7-9. More often than not this is more than enough to launch you to the stratosphere. When combined with one of the several ways to “rebuy” it, Mind’s Desire will often allow you to cast upwards of your entire deck for free. Making winning as easy as basic arithmetic. Important to note, make sure that when resolving your Mind’s Desire in a tournament setting you make it clear to your opponent that your original copy will be last and always, always stop yourself before you resolve that last one to see if there is either a way to rebuy it, or a way to dig for a rebuy spell at instant speed. Placing that mental stop on yourself will pay off in the long run, and can be the difference between sputtering out and winning the game.

It is worth keeping a broad idea of probability in mind as to the number of “dead” Mind’s Desire flips you have available. For this, we can refer to the teachings of Patrick Chapin’s Next Level Magic.

“An important formula to help you calculate the probability of drawing a particular card is:

100% – (N/X)

Here, N = the number of cards that are not your “out,” and X is the total number of cards in your deck that are left. For instance, if you have 15 black mana and 53 cards left (seven are in your hand), then you are looking at 100 percent – (38/53) = 28 percent. If you have multiple draws, you actually multiply the odds of missing each time together, then subtract that total from 100.

Why calculate the odds of not hitting and then subtract from 100? That is because it is actually the best way to calculate the odds if you have multiple draws. Many people think that if you have a 20 percent chance to “get there” and three draws, that you have a 60 percent shot of doing it. This is actually not true, though. In reality, you have only a 49 percent chance if your deck had 50 cards in when you calculated the odds.

100% – [(40/50) x (39/49) x (38/48)] = 49%

I know this math is not for everyone, but it is included because you are going to want to be able to calculate your odds of drawing what you need in order to become a perfect player. Even if math is not your favorite subject, I strongly encourage you to learn this one formula as it is vital for high-level Magic play.

Remember, it is okay to round off to make math easier in your head! For instance, you could just round all of those fractions above to 4/5. It won’t be exact, but it will be close enough for the most part. Keep in mind that if your library has very few cards left, each card that you draw that misses greatly increases your odds of hitting the next time. For instance, if you had a one in five shot of hitting and three draws, but your library was only five cards, then the equation would look like this:

100% – [(4/5) x (3/4) x (2/3)] = 60%”

While Chapin discusses these formulas in the context of drawing a particular card at a certain point in the game, the same information can be used to decide whether storming off is worth the risk or not. Despite what Mr. Chapin might say, it is very much not integral that you get particularly efficient at these calculations to be able to pilot this deck effectively. But while goldfishing at home (something we’ll talk about later) getting into the habit of slowing down and asking yourself these questions as it relates to Mind’s Desire makes it much easier for you to make these kinds of decisions in actual matches. I don’t expect you to be able to run these numbers in a high-stakes game of magic right away. Hell, I’m not particularly good at it. But like anything, practice makes permanent. If you routinely do your Mind’s Desire math at home, and do it right, it’ll make figuring out your probability of whiffing in an actual game much easier.

Commit//Memory is a strange card that I have grown to love over the years. It performs triple duty in being interaction, a Timetwister, and a way to rebuy your Mind’s Desire. It deals with everything. A pesky sideboard piece like Damping Sphere, maindeck graveyard hate like Soul-Guide Lantern, or anything else you can imagine. The very worst case scenario is being fodder to a Frantic Search or putting into a Gift’s Ungiven pile (if and when that card is playable again) to make your opponent squirm. There’s not many draw-7s available in Value Vintage (at least ones that don’t end the turn) so getting access to even a suboptimal one is a game changer. Drawing seven fresh cards with just one High Tide active can often be enough to end the game on its own. However, do be wary of giving your control opponent seven fresh cards if they have mana available. If possible, tread lightly for your first couple spells after wheeling and try to gauge the likelihood of interaction.

One of the biggest hurdles for Cunning Wish is figuring out when it’s correct to board in your wish targets. It would be dishonest of me to tell you that I have learned the secrets of these intricacies. It’s a very complicated dynamic. But most of the time it’s a “you know it when you see it” type of thing. For example, Boarding in your Ravenous Traps vs Dredge is almost always going to be better than wishing for them because you may not even find yourself getting to three mana to begin with. A similar conclusion can be made with cards like Wipe Away or Echoing Truth. If you are mostly certain your opponent will be boarding in some number of problematic permanents, you’re almost always better off dealing with those cards as quickly as you possibly can before they either kill you or develop so many resources you’ll never get the chance to go off. Be smart, don’t overboard, think it over.

Finding the right time to cast your Wish is just as important as choosing the right card from your sideboard. More often than not you’ll find yourself wishing in one of four situations. Your opponent’s end step, mid storm turn for value, as the second to last spell of the game, or to win a war on the stack. These are far and away the most commonly correct times to be casting your wish, but it’s a card that you must keep in mind every single time you gain priority. Think of your wish as a wildcard. You get to choose for it to be anything you want from a list of up to fifteen different cards. More often than not one of those cards is going to have a lot more impact than you might think. From the recent SOS Mystical Archives, Brain Freeze is now available as a win condition in the form of a Wish target or even Main deck. But we’ll talk about that a little later.
I tend to lean away from overloading my sideboard with wish targets. Most of the cards you want to be wishing for are going to end up in your sideboard anyways. Bounce spells, Gigadrowse, etc. Having a few one-ofs like Brain Freeze or Stroke of Genius is perfectly fine to have around, but once you start hitting four or five wish-specific cards you begin to risk a suboptimal sideboard for marginal benefit.

The last thing worth discussing with Cunning Wish is also my favorite part. The shenanigans. Most importantly, boarding out High Tide. Cards like Surgical Extraction, Extirpate, Necromentia, Lost Legacy, The Stone Brain, and Test of Talents are sideboard staples that run rampant through the top tables. The vast majority of the time your opponent will be using these cards to try to deny you access to your High Tides. The easiest way to combat this issue is to hide a copy of High Tide in your sideboard to Wish for and keep protected from these kinds of interaction.

Expansion//Explosion used to be a copy of Lutri for the same copy effect. He went infinite with Bond of Insight and Snap, but with Snap stocks going up due to formats like Premodern and cEDH, it is far less reasonable to spend the money. It is important to note here that outside of the game-ending potential, Expansion is an extremely powerful value piece. Copying a substantial Turnabout, Solve the Equation, Glamdring, or any number of other options allows him to be a very flexible and very important piece to the puzzle.

The Crew

3 Hidden Strings

4 Frantic Search

3 Turnabout

1 Merchant Scroll/Solve the Equation

Previously I was playing Cloud of Faeries over other two mana untappers like Hidden Strings. Cloud of Faeries does not get countered by Spell Pierce, and can cycle itself away when it is stuck in your hand. While Hidden Strings does have this problem, it offers up a host of upsides. Against control decks like Blue Post, you have the ability of tapping down some of your opponent’s colored mana before attempting a win, similar to some use cases for Turnabout. More importantly, Hidden Strings is able to be picked up by cards like Bond of Insight, Divergent Equation, and Glamdring which opens up far more lines and favorable breakpoints than Cloud of Faeries did.

Frantic search is a fucked up Magic card. It’s banned in Legacy and Pauper for good reasons. A card’s floor being a free, instant speed, Faithless Looting is not okay. Frantic being able to not only net you upwards of sixteen mana when you cast it, but also digging deeper into your deck and getting cards like Commit//Memory into your bin is an invaluable resource. Before you cast your Frantic Search however, analyze your hand and your position in the turn. Do you just need the mana? What two cards are the most disposable from your current position? What cards do you want to see and which would be the worst case scenario? What draws make discarding awkward? Are you better off casting something else first? Frantic Search’s stocks skyrocket the more cards you have in your hand, so it is often correct to get your regular draw spells out of the way first and give yourself more information to work with.

Turnabout is a necessary evil. I don’t love it and it often feels clunky, but dear God is it a powerful piece of cardboard. Where the other untap pieces have a variety of use cases and alternate lines of play, Turnabout is kind of a one trick pony. But it does that trick very, very well. If you’re manually making 53+ mana for a lethal Stroke of Genius it’s a key piece to that puzzle. What flexibility Turnabout does offer, it offers defensively. It’s easy to miss that Turnabout can target your opponent. Meaning you can cast it and tap down their lands or creatures, turning off interaction or combat respectively. It is crucial knowledge that Turnabout functions like Cabal Therapy. You declare who you are targeting when you cast the spell, but not what type of permanent you are tapping or untapping. Meaning if you are facing a creature deck that plays counterspells or hand attack, casting your Turnabout at the beginning of combat step will force your opponent to figure out what you are trying to accomplish with this spell. If they allow it to resolve, thinking you are trying to save yourself some damage you can catch them with their pants down and tap down their mana without them being able to do anything about it. Even if they want to float mana, they have to do so before you decide to tap their lands. If you can help it, don’t give them any inclination to your intentions. Count the damage on board out loud if you have to. But make sure whatever you’re planning on doing they assume the opposite.

There are only really two options for tutors in Value Vintage due to the price point of most tutor cards. Merchant Scroll and Solve the Equation are both powerful cards that are a pretty significant money investment, so you’re usually stuck just playing one. At the time of writing, I am playing Merchant Scroll due to its lower mana cost but traditionally Solve the Equation has been my tutor of choice due primarily to its ability to find Bond of Insight and Mind’s Desire. It is mostly personal preference, but I recommend playing one.

The Supporting Cast

4 Preordain

4 Impulse

2 Sleight of Hand
2 Glamdring, Foe-Hammer

1 Divergent Equation

1 Dig Through Time

1 Treasure Cruise
1 Gitaxian Probe/Mathemagics/Whatever

Preordain and I are good friends. We’ve been together for years and we’ll always have each other’s backs. It’s one of the most insane cantrips ever printed and even with its relatively recent Modern unbanning, it’s still here to stay. What’s there to say about Preordain that hasn’t already been said ad nauseam? It’s far and away our best cantrip option, even at its price point. To round out the cantrip suite two Sleight of Hands operate as pseudo-Preordains. If the budget allows, these could easily be a copy or two of Ponder. Ponder loses a lot of percentage points without fetchlands, but there’s enough deck manipulation around that one or two copies is usually pretty powerful.

Impulse falls in the Turnabout camp of a necessary evil. Is it the most efficient cantrip of all time? Far from it. Does it do exactly what it needs to do and does it relatively well? Absolutely. Being able to find a land or just an additional untapper to get your engine going is an important resource and Impulse is the best at doing it.

Dig Through Time and Treasure Cruise are some of the few restricted cards we get access to in High Tide. Dig being instant speed is a huge deal. Allowing you to cast it on your opponent’s turn to sculpt a game winning hand is one thing, but also being able to cast it mid-Mind’s Desire to find a rebuy is insane. Please take some time to consider your Digs as well. When evaluating which cards to take, understand what it is you actually need to win the game, and which cards either accomplish that task or find the cards necessary to do so. It sounds obvious but taking an extra few seconds to figure out how the rest of your turn will play out depending on which cards you decide on can be the deciding factor in your match. In terms of important breakpoints, if you curve out by playing cantrip -> Impulse -> -> Frantic Search, this will give you exactly enough mana to cast Dig Through Time on turn three. (3 Islands + 5 cards in Graveyard).

A newcomer from Secrets of Strixhaven, Divergent Equation has quickly become one of my new favorite cards. Previously this slot was taken by a couple copies of Flood of Recollection, which always felt reasonably powerful. Equation’s baseline is a three mana, instant speed Flood of Recollection which is already above rate. Past that, it quickly begins to feel closer to Yawgmoth’s Will than it does Regrowth. If you’re able to pick up an untapper alongside any number of other spells it is functionally free. Each spell you’re able to pick up, the closer you get to closing out the game. The only downside is that flipping it off of a Mind’s Desire can be awkward. Remanding your Equation back to your hand to get access to it after a Desire can sometimes be even more powerful than rebuying your Desire.

Glamdring, Foe-Hammer is an even newer card than Divergent Equation and equally, if not more impactful. The adventure side of this card, Gleam of Death, is what we really care about here. This level of card velocity is unprecedented for High Tide in this format. Averaging 3-6 cards for only four mana is an absurd rate. Leaving the dead lands in your graveyard for future delve spells is just the cherry on top. Previously, I had played Trade Secrets in this slot as a way to go card positive for as little mana as possible. As much as it pains me to say, Glamdring is far and away the better option now. The Equipment side of Glamdring almost never matters, but it is important to keep in mind for two reasons. The first and most important being it allows you to cast Gleam of Death again. By casting Glamdring and bouncing it back to your hand with Echoing Truth or any similar spell, you gain access to six fresh cards right away. In a more niche scenario, Necromentia is a very common sideboard card that is engineered in a lab to make you have a bad time. On very rare occasions you will end up tideless with only a 2/2 zombie to show for it. Your opponent almost certainly will not be expecting you to equip that 2/2 with a Glamdring and storm off manually, but you most certainly can.

The last slot is pretty flexible. The odds are good you’ll have some number of dollars to throw around. Gitaxian Probe is a powerful spell that everyone knows is powerful. It’s hard to not love it. Mathemagics is my other go-to option at the moment. Its ability to kill your opponent for a measly 14 mana cannot be understated. It also has one of the best rates for an X draw spell for value.

The Script

2 Remand
2 Spell Snare

2 Bond of Insight
1 Echoing Truth (Or any other bounce spell)

Remand is arguably one of the most powerful counterspells ever printed. The biggest weakness of countermagic is having to trade one-for-one with your opponent every time. Remand makes up for this by being card neutral, with the downside of your opponent getting to do their thing next turn. But we all know how to use counterspells offensively. Using Remand defensively is where it gets interesting. For example, you’re in game two against a blue deck and they cast a Test of Talents targeting your High Tide. This cannot stand! Often your best line is to cast your remand on your own High Tide, let their Test fizzle, then just cast it again either now or on a later turn. Saving your spells from opposing interaction is an often overlooked aspect of Remand that should always be on your mind. And of course, Remand is a fabulous rebuy for your Mind’s Desire. You get to draw a card! You basically got the last copy of Desire anyway!

Spell Snare is some more new hotness available to Value Vintage. Thanks to its reprint in Lorwyn Eclipsed this former Modern all-star is now all ours to play with! While I don’t think it belongs in every deck, it certainly has a place here. Both in pre and postboard games it hits just about every card you care about in the format. Pieces from faster combo decks like Malevolent Rumble and Cephalid Illusionist, just about every counterspell, Eidolon of the Great Revel and similar red cards, maindeckable Post pieces like Disruptor Flute, Hymn to Tourach, Smallpox, and so many more cards. It’s definitely a card that can come out in some matchups, but it has far more versatility than it might seem at first glance.

I never thought that all I wanted in life was two Flood of Recollections stapled together. Returning certain combinations of cards such as Frantic Search+Impulse or Turnabout+Stroke of Genius or really anything else can be the last bit of velocity you need to win the game. Much like Turnabout, it is good to know that you don’t decide what you return until resolution. So your opponent can’t really stop you with targeted graveyard hate unless there’s something obvious that you’ll be getting back. Even then, they are still a slave to the top four cards of your library.

Echoing Truth is a placeholder for any removal spell you feel like playing main. Since cutting Snaps I have found myself really missing the versatility that card offered. Echoing Truth could be a Perilous Voyage, Unauthorized Exit, Boomerang Basics or whatever else you feel like playing. Or you could cut it entirely and play something more proactive in that slot. The world is your oyster.

The Stage

18 Island

Islands are very powerful! They cast your spells! I’ve considered and tested some number of Mystic Sanctuaries but overall I’ve been pretty underwhelmed by it. I like it a lot more in formats like Legacy where you get access to the line of casting High Tide on your upkeep, then if it gets countered, fetching for Sanctuary and putting Tide back on top. That deck also aims to win the game around turn four, rather than turn three like we do. As is, it has always felt unpredictable and clunky. As a general rule, I avoid lands that cannot cast Preordain on turn one. The first couple turns of the game are vital for setting up your combo that anything slowing you down can have devastating consequences. So it is best to avoid doing those things to yourself.

Winning the Game

Now that you (hopefully) understand the functions of these sacred 60 cards it’s time to put them to good use. There’s a handful of ways to achieve the ultimate goal in magic of forcing your opponent to watch you move cardboard around for one to three minutes while life drains from their eyes.

Stroke of Genius

The end state for each of your storm turns is one of a handful of situations. A Bond of Insight loop, a lethal Stroke of Genius, or a lethal Brain Freeze. Being able to hide your kill card in the wishboard means you get an extra slot maindeck for nonsense! (Really just another cantrip).

Bond Loop

Prerequisites: Expansion//Explosion, Bond of Insight, Frantic Search/Turnabout, at least one High Tide active.

Process: Cast Bond of Insight and hold priority. Cast Expansion targeting Bond of Insight. Resolve the copy of Bond. You and your opponent both mill four and you will return Expansion and Frantic Search or Turnabout. Cast Frantic Search/Turnabout. Repeat this process until your opponent has no cards left in their library. Either pass the turn or cast a Stroke of Genius targeting your opponent to force them to draw.

End State: Infinite Mana, Infinite Storm, all of your lands untapped, every instant and sorcery from your deck in your hand, and both players milled out.

Note: Because Bond of Insight makes each player mill it allows you to kill your opponent through effects like Blossoming Calm and Solitary Confinement,

Brain Freeze

Thanks to the wonderful Mystical Archives, one of the strongest win conditions in Magic is now available! If you have the budget, playing one main might be worth it. But at the very least, keeping one in your sideboard as a Wish target is incredibly powerful. At most you will need a storm of 18 to fully mill your opponent. Alternatively, if you feel like saving some time, you can do the same trick you’ve been doing with your Mind’s Desire and Remand Brain Freeze back into your hand. Achieving this makes you only need an initial storm count of 8.

Mathemagics

I mentioned it briefly when we were discussing the main deck options, Mathemagics is a powerful new spell that can end games very quickly. At the time of writing it has been rising in price a bit so I have opted to play some other options instead of it. That being said, if you can fit one copy it will often make your win lines far more compact and efficient. I haven’t had the time since the card’s release to figure out if it is actually necessary, or more of a training wheels card. Having a powerful X draw spell in the main is nice for a variety of reasons, but I am unsure if it is worth its larger price.

Winning without High Tide

Prerequisites: Expansion//Explosion, Bond of Insight, Turnabout, at least seven Islands in play.

Process: Cast Turnabout targeting yourself, floating three mana. Cast Bond of Insight and hold priority. Cast Expansion targeting Bond of Insight. Resolve the copy of Bond. You and your opponent both mill four and you will return Expansion and Turnabout. Cast Turnabout. Repeat this process until your opponent has no cards left in their library. Either pass the turn or cast a Stroke of Genius targeting your opponent to force them to draw.

End State: Infinite Mana, Infinite Storm, all of your lands untapped, every instant and sorcery from your deck in your hand, and both players milled out.

Note: It was mentioned earlier when discussing Glamdring, but in very rare cases you may end up with a creature by some means or another. If this happens you can equip that creature with Glamdring and proceed to win with the bond loop in a similar manner. I won’t go over the breakpoints involved there, as it is different depending on the size of your creature. But I trust you to be able to math it out if it comes down to that.

How Quickly Can I Win?

Without any interaction whatsoever from your opponent, the average turn for a successful pop-off is usually turns three or four, and as early as turn two. When we discuss mulligans I will give some examples of insane hands that can win the game super early but against most decks shooting for around turns three to five is where you want to be. Due to the nature of High Tide, it is advantageous to begin your storm turn as late in the game as reasonably possible and with as many Islands in play as possible. Not only does this make spells like Turnabout more efficient, but it also gives you a greater ability to play through your opponent’s interactive spells.

Of course, when evaluating the right time to go for it, you must consider a whole host of factors. Potential instant speed interaction, the odds of you actually finding the pieces you need, how much mana you can make initially, etc. The later you can storm off the better, but if you’re under a particularly high amount of pressure or you are worried about your opponent’s ability to find relevant disruption do not be afraid to go off early.

Goldfishing

If there’s one piece of advice that I can give for getting used to every single aspect of this deck from the numbers and sequencing to the general physical dexterity involved in a storm deck, it’s to goldfish! Goldfish all the time. Not only is it helpful but it’s fun! I keep my deckbox within arm’s length of my living room table at all times so whenever I get the itch I can get right into some fake games. You’ll find yourself getting much more comfortable extremely quickly. It’ll make remembering the numbers below and the other weird aspects of the deck second nature. Talk through each of your game actions out loud like you would against an opponent. Get used to describing what’s happening when you present the Bond of Insight loop. The more you practice these smaller things the more confident you’ll become in your play.

Here is some basic High Tide math to remember to make your turn easier. The “mana after x spell” category is assuming you are tapping exactly the number of Islands the spell untaps. It is also only showing the amount you will have floating after resolving the spell, not taking into account the newly untapped Islands and assuming all of your Islands were untapped before you cast the spell.

High Tides Active	Mana from individual Islands	Mana after Frantic Search	Mana after Hidden Strings	Mana after Turnabout (y=Number of islands you control)
1	2	3	2	(y*2) – 4
2	3	6	4	(y*3) – 4
3	4	9	6	(y*4) – 4
4	5	12	8	(y*5) – 4

Once you get used to casting all of these spells during the various points in your turn the math will become much easier to do than you might think it is. It is very, very important though that you are sure your opponent 100% understands where every drop of mana is coming from. If they ask any question about the process, answer as clearly as possible. If you mess up, it’s your fault. Your opponent should be able to call you out on that. In addition to your mana, make sure that you are very clearly keeping track of storm and how many High Tides you have resolved. The last thing you want is to accidentally cheat because you weren’t clearly representing important things.

When goldfishing in your free time, there is a lot to be gained from mindlessly shuffling up sevens and seeing where they go. But there is even more to be gained if you start putting yourself in arbitrary bad positions you’ll likely find yourself in. For example, your opponent casts a turn one Inquisition of Kozilek into a turn two Hymn to Tourach while you’re on the draw. How well are you able to recover from this common start? What could you have sequenced differently to make it easier? Getting used to these situations is arguably the single most important skill to have when playing High Tide. Surgical Extraction your Tides. Play around triple counterspell. Any and all difficult situations you might find yourself in are worth goldfishing if only to make the decision making process easier at a later time.

Similarly, it can be tempting to goldfish your games quickly as you get more comfortable with the deck. But no matter how many games you’ve played and no matter how much of an expert you become, there is no reason you should not be taking things slowly and considering each and every one of your game actions with the same level of care you would in a proper match. Figuring how to properly sequence untappers on a game by game basis, what cards to discard to Frantic Search when, and even things as small as when to not pick up that Mind’s Desire off of a Bond of Insight and instead get back something else. As discussed in the section on Mind’s Desire, it is always good to take it slow and do some basic calculations on the likelihood of whiffing at each point in your turn. Specifically after you come across more dead cards from Frantic Searching or otherwise and your odds shift.

Sideboard

Philosophy

As will become apparent once we start delving into the individual matchup analysis of the sideboard there’s really only two big things that are absolutely necessary to prepare for. Our worst matchups are decks that race us, and decks that disrupt us.

Decks that race us are self explanatory. If we lose the game on turn one, we can’t win the game on turn three. Being prepared for the bigger fish is vital to surviving in the Value Vintage metagame. The latter however, requires some elaboration.

You shouldn’t be too terribly scared of interaction. You can play through and around counterspells. You also shouldn’t be too terribly scared of pressure. You can generally race most board-centric decks. When those two worlds meet is when things start getting complicated. White-based creature decks with cards like Thalia and Elite Spellbinder provide relevant disruption stapled to cards that quickly drain your life total. Similarly, control decks such as Nulldrifter are able to hold up interaction with the threat of a massive creature coming in to finish the job. These types of decks make up a pretty noticeable amount of the metagame, so it’s important to be prepared.

While concocting a sideboard plan for a given matchup is it good to be mindful of not over-boarding and diluting your deck to the point where actually winning the game becomes an issue. I tend to stray away from siding in any more than five cards in a given matchup for this reason.

Deciding what to board out in a given matchup is an important and difficult decision. Like most combo decks, if we board out the wrong thing it can spell doom for our actual attempt to win the game. For this reason, it’s often best to “trim” whatever is possible. Often the only cards that are actually being boarded in are bounce spells and counterspells, you’ll see this and similar sideboarding heuristics repeated throughout this guide.

Breakdown

4 Leyline of the Void

2 Flash Flood/Blue Elemental Blast

A Note: This is simply the sideboard that I am playing in paper at the time of writing. My sideboard, much like my maindeck, is constantly in flux. Even more than some other decks, your sideboard is incredibly flexible. You will very likely disagree with one or more of these selections. You are correct to do so. If you are going into a blind metagame, this fifteen is a good place to start. Otherwise, tailor your board to your specific metagame.

We are going to discuss each of these cards from the top down, beginning with Leyline of the Void. While being uncastable, Leyline is a necessary evil if you are walking into a metagame with decks such as Hogaak Pox and Cephalid Breakfast Combo. Both of these decks present substantial threats in being full of interaction and being able to win the game exceedingly quickly. Leyline is not lights out against these decks, but it will often buy enough time to get the job done.

Flash Flood is the poor man’s Blue Elemental Blast. The important part of this card is that it says “destroy target Eidolon of the Great Revel, Magebane Lizard, or Marauding Mako” This is obviously a very metagame dependent card. Blue Blast itself is fairly cheap these days, but if you’re not able to afford it, Flash Flood is a perfectly solid budget option. I’ve been very impressed by it.

Gigadrowse is a card that your opponent will very rarely be prepared for, and is the single best option to shut down interaction from control decks. Similar to Flusterstorm, it is functionally uncounterable. While Turnabout is also a great option to try to tap down your control opponent, Gigadrowse should be the first card you wish for or board in for those matchups.

We covered Spell Snare a bit during the maindeck breakdown, and much of that holds true in the sideboard philosophy. Outside of the game one threats like Smallpox or Hymn, the vast majority of sideboard hate your opponents have available are two mana. The Stone Brain, Damping Sphere, Magebane Lizard, etc. Snare is often a “better safe than sorry” sideboard. Depending on your metagame, this slot could also be additional copies of Remand.

Brain Freeze is self explanatory and has already been discussed at length. As you’ll see in the matchup breakdowns below, it is occasionally correct to board in your Brain Freeze as opposed to wishing for it. While this often only comes up in matchups like the mirror, it is worth keeping in mind.

Perilous Voyage is, at the moment, my go-to sideboard bounce spell. While other options like Echoing Truth or Wipe away have their own upsides, Voyage has been a favorite of mine for the same reasons as Spell Snare. Just about every permanent you’ll be bouncing will cost two or less, so the scry will more often than not be online. The worst case scenario for this card is bouncing an attacker to fade some damage and fixing your next couple draws. It also offers more flexibility mid storm turn than some other options for this reason.

Stroke of Genius isn’t only an extremely powerful draw spell, it’s also a win condition. Creating enough mana to Stroke your opponent for 50+ is a surprisingly easy task once you know what you’re doing. Don’t be afraid to fire it off early though. If you have an excess of mana during a storm turn, grabbing it early to draw a new fistfull of cards can offer just enough velocity to clear through a rough spot.

I discussed Turnabout at length earlier. Stashing an extra copy in the board for matchups where you want to be Turnabouting your opponent or winning at instant speed allows you to make those huge strategy changes and keep your opponent on their toes. Again, I won’t talk too much about the card here since if you’ve already forgotten how to use it you can just scroll back up.

Guide

I will obviously not be able to delve into every single deck you might run into in a given event. As stated previously, Value Vintage is a rich, diverse format with dozens of powerful archetypes popping up every week. I will instead discuss the most relevant and/or most interesting matchups that you’re likely to see. Much like every other sideboard guide ever written, this is not gospel. If your opponent’s list seems to be exceedingly different from the example lists I have below, use your best judgment.

In some matchups I will list “-1 Sleight of Hand” This is advice for when you are on the play. On the draw I would prefer to board out one Impulse. Casting Impulse on your opponent’s turn three is leagues worse than on their turn two.

Aggro

Affinity

Vibes: Favored

The Plan:
+3 Perilous Voyage / -1 Sleight of Hand, -1 Remand, -1 Cunning Wish

“What do I do?”
Perilous Voyage is primarily coming in to bounce opposing Damping Spheres as that is one of the most common sideboard cards out of Affinity alongside counterspells of various flavors. It may be tempting to bring in additional copies of Spell Snare instead or in addition. In the Affinity matchup specifically I avoid this as if your opponent lands an early Damping Sphere it hinders their early turns significantly more than it hinders yours, allowing you ample time to dig for a bounce spell or whatever else you need. Keep cards like Spell Pierce and Metallic Rebuke in mind while you’re playing the matchup postboard. If you believe your opponent to be primarily on stack interaction as opposed to permanent hate, Gigadrowse and Turnabout are great options to board in.

Burn

Vibes: Neutral-Unfavored

The Plan:
+2 Spell Snare, +2 Flash Flood / -1 Sleight of Hand, -1 Expansion//Explosion, -1 Cunning Wish, -1 Commit//Memory

“What do I do?”

Burn is a strange matchup. On paper their immediate lack of meaningful interaction makes it seem favored, but the interaction they do have is so impactful that it changes the dynamic entirely. When combined with a fast clock, cards like Eidolon of the Great Revel, Magebane Lizard, Curse of Shaken Faith, and Damping Sphere present much more of a headache than they would otherwise. At time of writing Eidolon and Magebane Lizard are both on the downswing due to price (yipee!) but they are very much still worth keeping in mind when preparing your sideboard plan. Spell Snare hits all of these problematic cards as well as stray Flame Rifts and whatnot. Flash Flood is self-explainatory. Again, if you can afford Blue Blasts run those. They are leagues better than Floods.

Elves

Vibes: Favored

The Plan:

+1 Brain Freeze, +1 Perilous Voyage / -2 Spell Snare

“What do I do?”

Elves has the potential to be a very fast deck, but not super consistently. Much like tide, they need a density of resources in order to really get off the ground. The biggest thing to be looking out for postboard is Tsunami. While not all Elves players are on it, it is one of the only cards available to mono green for the High Tide matchup. If you are packing sideboard Remands, go ahead and bring those in as well. Brain Freeze comes into the main in this matchup in order to have some insurance against your opponent’s combo turns. Once they start going off they will be casting many elves and drawing cards for each one. With Glimpse of Nature being very notably not an optional draw, you can pretty easily goozle them with a well timed Brain Freeze before they are able to kill you. Note that if this is your plan, it is someone’s responsibility to track storm. Likely yours if your opponent is not already. This may give away your plan, but it also may be a solid way to bluff. Either way, this information must be tracked publicly.

Vibes: Favored

The Plan:
+4 Leyline of the Void +1 Gigadrowse / -2 Spell Snare, -1 Echoing Truth, -1 Commit//Memory, -1 Expansion//Explosion

“What do I do?”

Unlike Hogaak, Phoenix is basically required to remove Leyline of the Void to really establish much of a chance of winning at all. Playing 3/2s on curve is just begging to be killed the following turn. Even without Leyline, their clock is relatively slow to the point that you should have plenty of time to formulate some kind of gameplan.

RDW

Vibes: Favored

The Plan:
+2 Flash Flood / -1 Commit//Memory, -1 Sleight of Hand

“What do I do?”

RDW is another deck that isn’t around as much as it used to be, but it is still something that you should expect to see on occasion. What RDW has in resiliency it lacks in interaction. Normally these decks aren’t packing things like Eidolon or Magebane Lizard but don’t be surprised if they do show up occasionally. In general if you are able to either win early or buy a turn or two with a Flash Flood or Remand you’ll be fine.

RW Energy

Vibes: Favored

The Plan:

Vibes: Favored

The Plan:

+1 Gigadrowse, +1 Turnabout / -1 Sleight of Hand, -1 Expansion//Explosion

“What do I do?”

As long as you don’t let your opponent’s Creativity resolve you’re golden. Remand in particular is great at this. Their combo takes significantly longer than yours to set up, so as long as you’re able to keep them under your thumb it’ll all go smoothly. Play smart though, don’t do anything you don’t absolutely have to. This is also a matchup where it is often right to aggressively Expansion your opponent’s spells such as Deduce, Stock Up, or Prismari Command. Getting as much advantage as possible out of your cards is pivotal in these kinds o f matchups.

Dredge

Vibes: Favored

The Plan:
+4 Leyline of the Void / -2 Spell Snare, -1 Gitaxian Probe, -1 Echoing Truth

“What do I do?”

Dredge ain’t quite what it used to be. Long gone are the days of this deck killing you on turns two or three. While these early wins are still possible, they are far less consistent than they used to be. Leyline is obviously a house against Dredge, as it has been since the deck’s inception. You are generally faster and better at interacting than your opponent is. This matchup will feel very die-roll dependent. Because of this, do not aggressively mulligan for a Leyline if you don’t have to. Keep a serviceable turn 3-4 winning hand over a mediocre 4-5 card hand with a Leyline in it.

Fluctuator

Vibes: Favored

The Plan:

+2 Spell Snare / -1 Expansion//Explosion, -1 Sleight of Hand

“What do I do?”

Fluctuator is a deck that can kill you very quickly, or do absolutely stone nothing for six turns. So long as you are able to keep the titular Fluctuator off of the board, chances are you are in a great position. Spell Snare hits nearly every meaningful card in their deck, including their only interactive spell of Miscalculation. Expect to drop a game due to the deck’s nut draw potential, but also expect to come away with a match win most of the time. Simply out-lucky your opponent.

The Mirror

Vibes: Favored (Because you read this primer)

The Plan:

+1 Brain Freeze, +1 Gigadrowse, +1 Turnabout, +1 Stroke of Genius / -2 Spell Snare, -1 Cunning Wish, -1 Bond of Insight

“What do I do?”

The Tide mirror is some of my favorite Magic that the game has to offer. As was noted in the decklist breakdown, High Tide is indeed symmetrical. This means that you and your opponent both have the ability to attempt wins on top of each other. These games get extremely complicated so I won’t go into too in-depth of a breakdown here but here are some important things to note:

Do not attempt to go off at sorcery speed if your opponent has ample mana available. Ever.
Avoid tapping out at any cost, even to Turnabout your opponent. Wait a couple turns if you are able.
Try not to be the one who blinks first. If you attempt to go off first you will be the one who is lowest on resources the soonest, giving your opponent more opportunities to sneak in a win.
Prioritize Instants. You may find yourself discarding to hand size in the mirror. This is normal. When you are choosing what to discard, or making a choice as simple as taking a card off of an Impulse, prioritize instant speed spells like Frantic Search and Dig Through Time over sorcery speed payoffs. This allows you significantly more flexibility when the time does come to fight on the stack.
If you are suspecting your opponent is bringing in Test of Talents, be willing to board out a tide and keep in Cunning Wish. Or even keep in Spell Snare. The loss of one Tide isn’t nearly as back breaking when your opponent is playing them as well.

Infect

Vibes: Unfavored-Neutral

The Plan:

+2 Spell Snare, +3 Perilous Voyage / -1 Expansion//Explosion, -1 Cunning Wish, -1 Sleight of Hand, -1 Divergent Equation, -1 Gitaxian Probe

“What do I do?”

This matchup is pretty simple. Don’t die on turn two if you can help it. Spell Snare hits all of their threats outside of Glistener Elf. As long as you don’t die early and fast they have very few ways of interacting with you. It’s the not dying that’s the problem.

The new kid on the block, RW Converter or “Yard Sale” is an extremely popular deck at time of writing that has been putting up incredible win rates. Game one against this deck should be entirely free with your opponent playing 0 ways to interact with you and their kill being a few turns too slow to really matter. Postboard things get much more difficult. Converter pilots know how bad of a matchup High Tide is for them unprepared, so they will often have 8-10 cards to bring in. This does not make the matchup unwinnable necessarily, but it does mean it is more of an uphill battle than it was before. Aggressively Gigadrowsing your opponent to take them off of Boil/Brain mana on their turn, or on their end step to keep them from casting Calamity’s Wake can be game winning plays. Again, if this deck is a significant meta contender for you, consider packing additional copies of remand in your sideboard.

Mulligans

Mulliganing in High Tide is not as backbreaking as it is with other combo decks, but it should very much be avoided if possible. Even some one land hands are keepable if they include a Preordain and something proactive to do after finding a second land such as a Remand or Impulse. When deciding mulligans, it is ideal to keep in mind the probability equations we discussed earlier in this primer. With a single preordain, especially on the draw, you will likely be able to find a second mana source. After that finding more mana and establishing your engine can be extremely simple. That being said, if the rest of the hand is going to be slowed down by potentially needing to bottom gas off preordain, ship it. You will likely get shot down by whatever your opponent’s doing before you can really get running.

Be sure that when you’re evaluating your hands you’re taking into account the “alternate” modes for all of your combo pieces. For example, if your hand is lacking in card selection but you already have three Islands, that Frantic Search is likely going to be most useful cast on your opponent’s end step. That Cloud of Faeries might be better off cycled than in play. Just about every card in your deck with the exception of the titular High Tide has more than one use case to it. Always have a plan. Just as general Magic advice, know what you need to accomplish in order to put yourself in a winning position in whatever given matchup you’re sitting across from, and do whatever you have to in order to fulfill those needs.

Cards I’m Not Playing

There are close to infinite ways to build a High Tide list that can win tournaments, my 75 is just one of them. I’ve made a huge number of concessions and decisions to arrive at the list I play today, but there are a notable handful of cards I’ve chosen to omit.

Temporal Fissure: There have been a number of decks that have registered Temporal Fissure and done very well! It is a card that I respect but I also see as a bit of a trap. The mindset behind it is that resetting your opponent’s board is a great gameplan if you can’t win the game on the spot. A sentiment that I ultimately agree with, but would much rather play a card in this slot that does help me win the game instead.
Ponder/Brainstorm: Some of the most powerful cantrips in the history of Magic, these cards don’t really do a whole lot in the Value Vintage format. Thanks to our lack of fetch lands, they don’t really provide the same level of card selection that they do in other formats. This in addition to being a significant budget sink makes their inclusion very hard to justify. Both of these cards often end up as my 61st card when working on adjusting my list. They certainly feel strong in some contexts, but they are hard to make work on a greater level.
Fae of Wishes: Similarly to Temporal Fissure, there have been multiple High Tide decks riding Fae of Wishes to victory, but it has always felt just a little too clunky for me. I tested the card a lot and found that I had far more success and consistency in just playing more draw spells and tutors. There’s not a lot that we particularly need to hide in our board for game one. By the time we’re able to get the silver bullet pieces available to us, we’re likely already dead. There is a real discussion to be had about the win condition of drawing your deck and wishing for Jace, Wielder of Mysteries and ignoring your opponent entirely but that is not a line that has ever particularly interested me.
Into the Flood Maw: This card is undeniably powerful, and one of the best bounce spells printed in recent memory. Several pilots have proven (to great success) that it is able to be played despite its hefty price tag, but I haven’t found it to be a necessary investment in the grand scheme of things. I would much rather be spending that money on more impactful spells and be slightly less mana efficient with a main deck Echoing Truth. Additionally, Flood Maw is not able to bounce back a Glamdring which is occasionally a huge downside.
Mathemagics: At exactly this second I am not playing Mathemagics. The card is comparatively expensive next to something like Stroke of Genius. However, I have played the card previously and it is incredibly powerful. There is a world in which I play Mathemagics over Merchant Scroll but this is heresy until I get a chance to properly test this build. If you believe Mathemagics is right for your build, you are likely correct.
Reset: I believe there is a version of Reset tide or “Solidarity” that can be extremely powerful. But with Resets at over $3 a pop and the loss of some of the most powerful spells available to the archetype (Bond of Insight, Mind’s Desire, etc.) I haven’t been able to find a build that feels worth the time and money.
Lock and Load: Is it strong? Probably. More than anything it doesn’t spark joy. The fact that it does next to nothing until you are already winning the game leaves a bad taste in my mouth. You could make the same argument for Mind’s Desire, but that card can often be cast off of a couple turnabouts on turn 50 for a free handful of cards to try to piece together a win, the same cannot be said for Lock and Load. Other pilots have had success with it in the past, but I prefer to play cards like Glamdring in this slot.
Test of Talents/Dress Down/Spell Pierce/Leyline of Sanctity/Various Sideboard cards: The answer to basically all of these is I do play them! Just not exactly this second. My sideboard is always in flux, as should yours. Depending on what kind of metagame I’m expecting to walk into, my sideboard may be a full 15 cards different from the one we discussed in this primer. You should have something like 30 cards in mind to build a sideboard for any given event.

Closing Thoughts

I hope this primer was of some use to you, and I hope it inspires you to sleeve up some Islands yourself in the future. As I assume has been made abundantly clear, High Tide is a deck that I love very dearly and allows for some really unique deckbuilding decisions and interesting lines of play. It’s one of the many decks in the Value Vintage format that is ever evolving with the metagame and as key pieces get reprinted and new tech gets introduced. It’s an incredibly powerful deck that if played well, will take you very far.

If you’ve somehow made it this far and you’re not in the Value Vintage Discord, now’s the time to do that. There’s more primers, tournament reports, decklists, and more at your disposal. We have some extraordinarily talented deckbuilders and players brewing day in and day out and giving out their knowledge and lists for free! You really can’t beat that.

Thank you very much for reading, if you have any questions about any of my ramblings or just about the format in general you can find me in the Value Vintage discord (@a_balanced_breakfast.) at any given time of day. More than anything, thank you for being a supporter of Value Vintage. Your enthusiasm matters! A format is nothing without its players. I hope you learned a thing or two. Good luck out there, see you in the finals.

Works Cited

Chapin, Patrick. Next Level Magic: A Guide to Mastering Magic: The Gathering. RIW Hobbies, 2014.