Opponent Pre-Sideboard Post-Sideboard

Eldrazi Aggro This is a chalice deck. You will mostly fight this deck out of the wishboard. Their key threats are Chalice and Trinisphere. If you live and they dont have one active in time to stop a combo, you pretty much win. Thought-Knot Seer is annoying, but thats about the extent of their disruption. They do have a "gotcha" in the form of Warping Wail but nothing else threatening. This is still a chalice deck. You may want to consider Snap to bounce some creatures and stay alive. Hurkyls Recall and Rebuild are good to have in your Wishboard.

Death and Taxes How this matchup goes depends on heavily on the build of the Death and Taxes player. Builds of this deck aiming to take on fair decks are generally easy matchups. Versions of this deck aimed at fighting combo decks are going to be much tougher. Be careful of Sanctum Prelate, since Sanctum Prelate naming three is an auto-loss for us pre-board and difficult to beat postboard. Having a variety of bounce to break different locks is helpful. Death and Taxes has access to some very nasty creatures postboard, including Ethersworn Canonist and the exceptionally rare Spirit of the Labyrinth. Postboard games are very similar to preboard games. How well they do depends on how well they draw and what their list is tuned to beat.

Stompy The cards we care about coming from most Stompy decks are Chalice and Trinisphere. Get around those and you win. Their primary plan of Blood Mooning people out of games just isnt applicable to High Tide. Sideboarding is very similar to Eldrazi. The creatures are secondary to the artifacts. Get around those and youll have no issue comboing.

Maverick Were heavily favored in game 1. Maverick is a deck designed to mostly beat up other fair decks. They dont offer much disruption until postboard. Sometimes all they have to put in our way is Thalia, Guardian of Thraben. Maverick has access to Ethersworn Canonist, Gaddock Teeg, and various other nasty hatebears out of the board. High Tide has the advantage as long as the board is clear of hatebears. If the game goes too long, they will be able to vial in something nasty, so combo as soon as practical.

Death's Shadow This matchup is functionally similar to Grixis Delver. The creature core of Delvers, Anglers, and Deaths Shadows presents a fast clock to back up countermagic and discard.

Burn Dont die and you win. The only card you care about is Eidolon of the Great Revel. Dont die some more. Pyrocstatic Pillar is the only thing from the sideboard that we care about. Teferis Realm can phase them out if youre worried.

Goblins We have a good matchup here. Goblins is a very similar deck to Death and Taxes, only its much more skewed to defeating fair decks. They can simply drown a lot of decks in Legacy with little green men generated by card advantage. Occasionally they can close a game quickly with a Piledriver kill, but that is uncommon. For the most part, they are too slow and interact with us too little in game 1 to have much of a chance. This changes in game 2. Many lists run Earwig Squad in the side to help fight combo, and artifact hate is another possibility. Some lists are leaning heavier into black for discard as well. For the most part, they are still simply too slow and interact with us too little to prevent us from going off. This matchup is changing with innovations in the black splash, so you cant always expect a bye in postboard games.

Affinity Affinity in Legacy is essentially a Chalice deck with a combo kill. Whether or not they get to be that depends entirely on how they draw. Sometimes they just have a nut draw and win. However, Affinity is fragile, so you can fight it off with countermagic and bounce. Lists that run Tezzeret are less consistent, but are more flexible. Artifact hate is important here. Hurkyls Recall and Rebuild are good cards to have in the wishboard

Canadian Threshold (RUG Delver) This is a bad matchup for similar reasons to Grixis Delver. The threat suite is different and actually slightly more difficult for us to interact with due to Nimble Mongoose having shroud. Overall, RUG Delver trades disruption for speed, but the game plan of play a threat or two and back it up with cheap disruption remains the same. Bounce is still decent in the matchup for unflipping Delvers. Survival is key, since a fair portion of their countermagic gets weaker the longer the game goes. Its a better matchup than Grixis Delver, but its still not a good one.

Merfolk This is a Chalice deck that runs Force of Will. Their disruption is varied and it can be tricky to fight through all of it. The real threats in this deck arent the creatures, though Merfolk presents a fast enough clock to be able to kill us before we combo in some cases. This can be as bad a matchup as Grixis Delver. Theyre more consistent than other Chalice decks and have a wide variety of tricks to play with Phantasmal Image and can develop a powerful board very quickly. Be prepared to fight a counter war over Chalice. Echoing Truth is a good card to have for this matchup. They will have extra countermagic in the sideboard, but the key threat remains the same. If Chalice resolves, theyre fast enough to close the game before we recover.

MUD This matchup is largely functionally identical to Eldrazi and Stompy. Chalice and Trinisphere are what matters. Sometimes MUD has more disruption we care about, such as Thorn of Amethyst and Lodestone Golem. MUD is much more artifact heavy than both Eldrazi and Stompy. Rebuild and Hurkyls Recall are both excellent cards out of the Wishboard.

Bant Bant decks tend to be midrange decks that use Noble Hierarch to power out powerful threats like Stoneforge Mystic and Knight of the Reliquary. Bant has a wide variety of threats and reliable countermagic, as well as a suite of powerful sideboard cards due to having access to White. In postboard games, they will have sided out their dead removal and sided in a variety of hatebears and countermagic. Gaddock Teeg is a threat from any deck running Green and White, and Ethersworn Canonist is a similarly prevalent sideboard threat

Jund Unless they manage some ridiculous curve along the lines of Thoughtseize-Hymn to Tourach-Liliana of the Veil, this deck wont give us serious problems. High Tide has so much redundancy that discard by itself generally isnt going to prevent us from assembling the combo. This deck is designed to beat other fair decks, so were heavily favored. Jund has access to Chains of Mephistopheles out of the sideboard. This card shuts everything in our deck off aside from Merchant Scroll and Cunning Wish. Do not let it resolve. Fortunately, their primary interaction with us is still discard, so we have the advantage.

Esper Mentor Esper Mentor has a similar countermagic and discard package to Grixis Delver and Deaths Shadow decks, giving them a disruption suite that can be very difficult to win through. However, Esper Mentor presents a slower clock than tempo decks, which gives us an opportunity to put a potential combo together. This matchup starts out tricky and simply gets harder postboard due to their ability to side out removal. Consider cards like Defense Grid to help get your combo off the ground. By the time they can pay to get over the Grid, were favored to win.

Grixis Control Grixis Control is a similar matchup to Esper Mentor. The biggest differences are in the removal suite. Lightning Bolt and Toxic Deluge are frequently present in Grixis Control decks. We dont care much about removal. Prodigal Pyromancer replaces Monastery Mentor. Despite these differences, what matters is that they have access to plenty of disruption in the form of discard and countermagic. Similar to Esper Mentor, they get to side out their dead removal for live counterspells. However, Grixis Control is a tougher matchup due to their access to Pyroblast/Red Elemental Blast. Mass bounce spells are effective against token strategies in general, so Echoing Truth is nice to have access to. They present a faster clock than other control deck, so we dont have all day to grind them out and put a hand together. We cant outpace them directly much of the time, so prepare for a counter war. Survive, run them out of disruption, and combo.

Lands Lands is a goldfish game 1. Their only hope is a fast 20/20. Lands often has sideboard Sphere of Resistance, so they can slow us down a little in postboard games. There isnt much nuance to this matchup. Just have bounce ready for any Marit Lages or particularly annoying artifacts that may pop up. Were a nightmare matchup for Lands.

Miracles This is another deck that likes long games. Miracles can be either the control or the beatdown in this matchup depending on how they draw and what their list is. We arent favored either way. Monastery Mentor is their most powerful clock against us, and Counterbalance is one of their most important pieces of disruption against us. Cunning Wish is a hugely important card in this matchup since Miracles doesnt have many cards that cost 3. Finding your way out from under Counterbalance is the most important part of setting up to combo and there isnt really any way to learn how other than experience. Be ready to fight a counter war from an unfavorable position This matchup gets more difficult postboard due to the fact that many Miracles pilots run Red for cards such as Pyroblast. Additionally, Flusterstorm is a very common card to be aware of when fighting a Counterbalance or beginning to combo.

Stoneblade Stoneblade is a jack of all trades deck in Legacy. Its often said that it has 49-51 matchups across the board, and High Tide isnt an exception to that. While some versions splash Red for Red Elemental Blasts and some splash Black for discard, Stoneblade decks are overall on the slow side. We have plenty of time to assemble a strong hand and cast our combo. This matchup doesnt change much postboard. Both sides get ready for a counter war. If we win the counter war, we go off. If we lose, they have a fast enough clock to have a reasonable chance of winning before we rebuild. The versions splashing Red for Blood Moon and blasts are most common, so be ready to fight through cheap counters.

Loam Aggro Loam is a deck that runs a variety of artifact hate as well as hatebears. They lean strongly on Chalice in game 1 to interact with combo, so if that doesnt resolve or gets bounced were in the clear to combo off. Aggro Loam has access to a wide variety of hatebears and artifacts out of the sideboard. Most dangerous to us is Gaddock Teeg. Fortunately, most of their interaction doesnt line up well against us unless they resolve and early Chalice. We do relatively well against Loam, even postboard.

Nic Fit Nic Fit doesnt present a large amount of disruption in game 1. Discard is about the extent of it. Theyre a slower deck aiming to go big, so we have plenty of time to assemble a hand and combo off. How much this matchup changes depends on what kind of Nic Fit the pilot is running as well as what colors they have access to. Straight BG versions generally dont have access to much more interaction out of the sideboard than they do in the main. Chains of Mephistopheles is one possibility, but it is rare. Junk versions have access to Gaddock Teeg, and Academy Rector versions of Junk Nic Fit have access to Spirit of the Labyrinth. Ethersworn Canonist is an unlikely possibility from Junk versions of the deck. Jund versions of Nic Fit arent likely to offer any more interaction than straight BG lists. And finally, BUG versions of Nic Fit have access to counterspells in the sideboard, so be prepared for Force of Will. Scarier is Leovold, Emissary of Trest. A resolved Leovold is very difficult to combo through. Dont let him resolve.

4c Control The primary version of 4c control is Czech Pile (BUrg). Its essentially a pile of some of the best individual cards in the format. It is very good at grinding against other fair decks due to a wide suite of removal and individually powerful cards ranging from Baleful Strix and Leovold, Emissary of Trest to Gurmag Angler.



The biggest factors in this matchup are counterspells and Leovold. High Tide is favored in game 1 due to the durdly nature of Pile, as well as the fact that Pile barely has enough blue cards to consistently cast Force of Will for free. Game 2 gets more difficult due to Pile being able to side out the many dead cards in this matchup. They will inevitably side out the suite of permanent removal and side in extra countermagic. They should have more Blue cards in postboard games, making Force of Will more consistent, but were still the better deck in a counter war.



Due to the grindy nature of the matchup, knowing what counters to use and when becomes very important. Leovold is backbreaking and is the biggest permanent based threat they have to us. The rest is all countermagic and discard.

BUG Midrange/BUG Control This matchup comes in a variety of flavors. Most of them are fairly similar to 4c control variants (which branched off from BUG midrange style decks back when Deathrite Shaman was legal). These decks usually aim to drown their opponent in card advantage and card quality. Shardless Agent, Baleful Strix, and other value creatures feature prominently in this archetype. Leovold does as well.



BUG Midrange also encompasses decks such as Food Chain and Aluren. These are combo decks that have a grindy plan B. They both have different key cards and different finishes. However, stopping their combos should slow them down enough for us to combo off in return. Their critical turns come online at a similar time as ours, so which deck is the beatdown is occasionally up in the air.



All BUG decks are capable of fighting a counter war. However, some versions are less good at it than others. Shardless BUG often doesnt have any countermagic in the main aside from Force of Will due to a lack of synergy with Shardless Agent for example. This matchup will be very similar to 4c control postboard. They have access to the same tools. Discard, countermagic and Leovold, and Liliana of the Veil can all make appearances.



Experience is crucial in this matchup due to the sheer variety of cards BUG decks can play. Knowing what to counter against Food Chain, Aluren, and other BUG decks takes practice.

Pox Pox aims to make life miserable for whoever is sitting across the table by means of attrition. Smallpox is a key card, as forcing us to discard and sacrifice a land slows us down considerably. Discard and land destruction is obnoxious. The key is simply hitting land drops until we manage to build our hand to the point we can combo. Pox has Chains of Mephistopheles in the sideboard. Sometimes they even have it in the main. As slow as Pox is, we cant afford to make the matchup difficult for ourselves. Build to the point you can safely combo, then win.

Landstill There are three varieties of Landstill, UR, UW, and UB. Landstill is a very slow deck. You should have no problem surviving and winning a counter war when it comes time to combo.



The counterplay to Standstill is just play into it or ignore it. Sure, they get to draw cards, but theyre going to have problems stopping you once you resolve Time Spiral.

The Rock (Junk) There are two versions of The Rock, straight BG like the original standard lists, and Junk. Both matchups are fairly simple for us due to their lack of interaction. Bounce or counter any real threats and be prepared to deal with discard. Junk versions are the most dangerous versions for us to face due to their access to hatebears such as Thalia, Guardian of Thraben and Gaddock Teeg. However, the matchup remains relatively simple as long as nothing backbreaking is resolved.

Stax Most of their interaction is artifact based. As long as we manage to hit our land drops, were favored against Stax simply because theyre incredibly slow. Postboard games depend on what kind of Stax were facing. Dutch Stax (white) has access to hatebears. Black versions of Stax have access to Chains of Mephistopheles. MUD Stax simply has even more artifact hate, which can appear in both Dutch and Black Stax decks. No matter what version of Stax youre up against, theyre slow. Hit land drops, use countermagic and bounce to prevent a lock, and youll safely survive to the point where you can combo.

Sneak and Show Sneak and Show is a resilient combo deck that goes off faster than we do. Additionally, it matches our countermagic with countermagic of its own. In other words, its not a favorable matchup for us. They key is survival. If both decks deplete their hand from a counter war, we can rebuild better and have a higher chance of successfully comboing that they do. Neither deck changes much in posboard games. We side in extra countermagic to fight their combo and survive. If Show and Tell decks are popular in your local meta, you may want to consider giving a sideboard slot to Ashen Rider or Oblivion Ring.

Omnitell This matchup is functionally similar to Sneak and Show. Its slower, but has added resilience. There isnt much difference from our perspective.

Dark Depths Theyre going to try to combo off as quickly as possible. Sometimes they have a nut draw and just win, but we can interact with them often enough to survive and combo ourselves. Bounce and counterspells are both useful in this matchup, but knowing what to counter can be tricky without experience and youll sometimes have to make tricky judgement calls. This matchup doesnt change much postboard. Both decks will have the same strategy going into game 2 as game 1, unless the Depths player is running a transformative sideboard. In either case, have bounce ready and try to live. If they lost game 1, youre favored.

TES The dividing line between TES and ANT can be summed up by 2 cards. Rite of Flame and Chrome Mox. TES is meant for a more consistent post naus and wants to win on turns 1 or 2. It relies heavily on speed and synergies to make up for not having as much raw power as ANT. Burning Wish is often present in TES, giving it added flexibility. Its harder to play than ANT, but easily as dangerous.



There is often no Tendrils of Agony so you have some assurance in that Empty the Warrens is the kill card. Beware of Cabal Therapy and youll do fine. This has the same threats as ANT but with Tendrils in the Sideboard to allow for a better Ad Nauseam.

Reanimator This is a terrible matchup. Reanimator is a combo deck that eats other combo decks for breakfast due to going off very quickly. Blue versions have additional resilience in the form of countermagic and Show and Tell. Quickly dropping a Griselbrand is going to win quite a few games. Red versions are all in on speed and use their interaction primarily to clear the way for a combo. Bounce is very important in this matchup. Saving countermagic to protect your combo is sometimes the right play against UB versions, but not often. Stranding their large threats in hand is a winning strategy and they will sometimes use discard such as Cabal Therapy on themselves in order to bin a fatty.

Elves Game 1 of this matchup High Tide is clearly playing the control side. Theyre a faster combo deck, so hold up countermagic for their combo. Natural Order is a key spell and determining when to counter a Glimpse of Nature is one of the most important skills in this matchup. Postboard games get even trickier due to Elves ability to side in Gaddock Teeg while still being a faster combo deck than us. Green Suns Zenith or the Finale become a highly critical spell in the matchup instead of just being a combo payoff like in pre-board games. Additionally, some Elves pilots run discard in either the main or the side.

Infect Infect is a faster combo deck that also presents countermagic in order to both protect its combo and disrupt other decks. While Infect is capable of playing a pure tempo game, its ability to simply win out of nowhere is its primary advantage. Like Reanimator, Infect can accidentally kill on turn 2. Aim bounce at creatures during your turn so that they may waste a protection spell defensively instead of offensively. Offensive Turnabouts on our side can effectively slow Infect down. Not much changes in this matchup in postboard games. Expect more countermagic. They have a clear advantage in speed, but we have better counterspells. Infect is like most matchups in that were favored if we can manage to survive to cast the combo.

Manaless Dredge Manaless dredge gives up lands for more counterspells. Force of Will and Disrupting Shoal can pose a threat. Manaless dredge can also run Chancellor of the Annex along with the other threats from its mana counterpart. Other than that, we dont have too much of a worry. Same game plan as with the mana counterpart. Survive and win.

Cloudpost There are several variants of Cloudpost: U/G, Colorless/G, and Colorless or Eldrazipost. The versions with Green tend to mostly be based heavily on it. They dont present much disruption for us since a large portion of their deck is built around ensuring their ability to ramp into a massive fatty. Force of Will is very rare in the main. Artifact hate is more common, but they just dont do much to us in game 1. Just combo before the drop an Emrakul and you should win.



Eldrazipost is a little different. Youre more likely to see artifact hate and Thought-Knot Seers, but game 1 is still simple. Postboard is still simple. Cloudpost can run some artifact hate, but Chalice is unusual. Versions running Blue can have Force of Will in the sideboard. Lodestone Golem and other Sphere effects may make an appearance, but are unusual.