Pauper: Should High Tide be banned?

In less than two weeks, the next Banned and Restricted update for Magic: The Gathering will be released.

While changes are expected in the Standard format involving the cards Vivi Ornitier and Agatha’s Soul Cauldron, the other competitive Magic environments are diverse enough not to require interventions and/or tend to be overlooked by Wizards of the Coast, except in emergencies.

In Legacy, for example, the Eternal Weekend is expected to bring the spotlight to Reanimate and Nadu, Winged Wisdom, but there is a low expectation of bannings.

Pauper, on the other hand, has an important decision to make on November 10th: the fate of High Tide as a card that will permanently remain in the format, or whether it returns to the Banned and Restricted list after a few months of testing.

Due to its gameplay pattern and the changes it has caused in the Metagame, High Tide has been a common target of ban discourses, and now that the verdict on it is so close, the question remains: should the blue spell maintain its place as one of, if not the best, combo archetype in the current Metagame? Or would it be too dangerous for the overall health of Pauper in the medium and long term?

High Tide is a Combo deck focused on the interaction of its key card with effects that untap lands to generate an absurd amount of mana. In essence, the archetype is equivalent in Pauper to decks like Lotus Field Combo in Pioneer or, in some patterns, to the Storm archetypes of Modern and Legacy, despite not having a spell with this mechanic.

The game plan involves sequencing High Tide to make each untapped Island generate an additional for each High Tide cast and using the combination of Psychic Puppetry and Peer Through Depths or Ideas Unbound to untap lands while digging for more spells to cast, generating more mana in the process, culminating in a Stream of Thought to mill the opponent's entire deck—once that's done, and as a response to the inclusion of Campfire, the player casts Deep Analysis to force the opponent to draw cards.

This is, in part, the only "full combo" in Pauper that doesn't rely as much on the graveyard as Balustrade Spy or Dredge lists, while also being the most flexible in dealing with targeted removal by being in the ideal color for Counterspells and Bounces.

A Unique Deck for the Format

High Tide offers a strategic approach in Pauper that doesn't usually exist in the format, since non-interactive decks based on sequencing spells tend to break the Metagame and only existed in the form of Storm—the new archetype breaks this metric by presenting a deck that, today, accounts for 5% of competitive results in the last three months, offering a category of combo fans who dedicate themselves to strategies like this a reason to try Pauper and find an archetype to call their own.

If we look at other spellslingers since Chatterstorm, practically none have survived the wave of power creep that Pauper has undergone in recent years: Kiln Fiend and similar decks are too vulnerable because they depend on a creature attacking for their combos to work, while Familiars or Flicker Tron are too reliant on permanents to fit into the category.

Removing High Tide would mean taking away from a portion of players a reason to play Pauper and dedicate themselves to mastering one of the most complex strategies in the format in recent years.

Pauper has adapted well to High Tide

High Tide was never the best deck in Pauper while it existed. In fact, it was more of a decisive factor in solidifying the position of Mono Blue Terror as one of, if not the best strategy in the format today, and put more spotlight on Faeries and the Red Aggro versions that were already popular before the unbanning.

Its non-interactive nature plays an important role in maintaining the Metagame: the archetype punishes slow and/or overly greedy decks that in other circumstances would also take too long to finish games, while motivating decks like Elves, Spy Walls, and Bogles to exist as a means of going for the race, where whoever finishes their "combo" faster wins.

Finally, but not least importantly, the number of archetypes using side-in Pyroblast and Campfire against High Tide should not be ignored — and neither of these cards is played exclusively for this match, but also against other major strategies of the current Metagame.

Good High Tide Players Don't Take Long

One of the main reasons players request the banning of High Tide is the time a player takes to finish the game, since this is a non-deterministic combo that requires a specific play and, therefore, does not have shortcuts to accelerate the process in tabletop.

In Magic Online, taking so long is even an advantage for the opponent, since the platform's clock is individual, and if an opponent takes 15 minutes to win Game 1, they will need to finish Games 2 and 3 in the remaining ten minutes, which can be a challenge if they are not quick in their decisions and clicks.

Many players complain about the risks the deck poses in tabletop events, where the clock is shared. However, good High Tide players — and those who play with this category of strategy tend to dedicate themselves to mastering it — don't take so long in making decisions in turns that don't involve the combo to preserve their time for the decisive plays on the combo turn.

If a player spends time playing spells and making trades in Midrange mirrors that can last between three and five minutes per turn, a High Tide player can spend several turns using less than two minutes for their plays before the combo, since all they need to do is prepare the setup while avoiding losing.

Furthermore, strategies like Jund Wildfire, Affinity, and the various Midrange variants like Golgari Gardens and Boros Synthesizer — not to mention Familiars and Tron — tend to create prolonged matches due to the "fair" nature of their games and often spend more time than a good High Tide player during tournament rounds.

It's worth noting that time is essential for those piloting a combo deck with constant sequencing: in longer events, it can be very exhausting not having ten or more minutes between matches to clear your mind before moving on to the next round. This can cause fatigue as bad as physical exhaustion, considerably reducing your performance as the tournament progresses.

High Tide is not a fun deck

High Tide has gameplay patterns that are a little too similar to Storm not to raise red flags.

One of the most common traits in strategies like this is that games are basically defined by how quickly you can win while ignoring the opponent or how well you can respond to their key plays, creating matches that tend to polarize around whether they explode before reaching zero life or not.

This pattern is far from fun. For most players, Magic matches are expected to be defined by a mix of good decision-making and gradual resource development to achieve victory, making them a constant back-and-forth between both players to determine who stays ahead longer and, consequently, dominates the pace of the game.

Combos like High Tide deviate from this pattern because they can win out of nowhere even if they are far behind, nullifying all the progress the opponent has made in the first turns and creating that bad feeling that your efforts were wasted because the opponent combined Card A with Card B.

The logistical problem in tabletop events

In-person events share the clock among the various players present during the rounds, in addition to offering an extra time of five turns before declaring a draw.

If the match extends to this point — and it can if a High Tide player takes too long to complete the combo in one of the games — there is a risk that the other tournament participants will exceed the estimated time for the next round by ten or more minutes: if a player, during these five turns, tries to complete the loop and spends too much time on it, the collective clock of the tournament and all participants and organizers is negatively affected by the individual experience of a few.

This problem creates more uncomfortable situations and more collective fatigue, as well as giving the bad feeling that High Tide is a harmful strategy for the Metagame and for tournament organization, not unlike Amalia Benavides Aguirre in Pioneer and Nadu, Winged Wisdom in Modern.

High Tide dictates the Metagame much more than it seems

Even without being a dominant strategy, the introduction of a combo based on spells without the addition of effective tools to deal with it in other colors has placed High Tide in a position where it is one of the pillars that defines the Metagame.

Its existence justifies the rise of Blue Tempo and other Aggro and Combo decks in the current Metagame, as these are the most consistent ways to combat the archetype: Tempo is the natural predator of Combos, and Mono Blue Terror and Faeries definitely take advantage of the space that High Tide guarantees in the Metagame to exert a greater dominance than they would under other circumstances, and they also take advantage of the fact that another common win condition is to ignore and go for the race against other combos.

High Tide also limits the viability of slower and fairer strategies. Boros Synthesizer and others that don't have as much disruption and speed, but are historical predators of Blue-Based Tempo, can't thrive in the Metagame because it's virtually impossible for them to beat a combo, further solidifying its relationship with Mono Blue Terror or Faeries, where these don't allow it to dominate, while High Tide ensures that archetypes good against blue decks can't stand out too much in tournaments.

Opinions on the continued presence of High Tide tend to be very divided.

Some believe that it has an important place in the format and appeals to a demographic of players who have difficulty finding this category of strategy in Pauper because most of these decks end up being banned due to a lack of effective answers — others, however, believe that the combo dictates the rules of the Metagame a little too much, has very frequent free wins, and has an inherent gameplay problem since its most explosive turns demand too much time, causing problems in tabletop tournaments.

My personal verdict is that Pauper would be better without High Tide as it limits interactive strategies too much while favoring Combo and/or "goldfishing" archetypes. However, it's impossible to deny that the same criticisms I offer to the archetype can also be interpreted as reasons for it to stay. Elves and Bogles, for example, might not have a place if it weren't for the rules and conditions that the archetype has created for the Metagame.

Thank you for reading!