one of the only decent blue cards from fallen empires
Posted By:
davidhuman
(5/3/2009 1:24:47 PM)
This card isn't that great too early. Dark ritual is 100% better in terms of speed. In order to really get any use out of this you need at least 3 islands on the board, and even then, it only produces 1 extra. Having 5 islands out brings it up to speed and while not so good at first, a blue mana ramp can win games, dropping a sphinx or leviathan.
Posted By:
Accuran
(2/12/2012 7:49:50 AM)
Did you just say it's "no dark ritual?"
Seriously this card is bonkers. Dark ritual is a pretty good one turn of acceleration, dropping High Tide means you should have just won the game, the amount of mana this produces is pretty nuts.
Ritual is a tempo gain early, this is a degenerate win condition.
Posted By:
Gilgiga
(2/6/2010 4:26:37 PM)
Agree this card is bonkers. I do believe dark ritual is better though, overall.
This is certainly one of the best cards from FE, but I think the best is probably Hymn to Tourach, personally.
Posted By:
Baconradar
(9/9/2010 7:35:36 AM)
it's no dark ritual, but this is actually a pretty useful card.
@gilgiga, they're reasonably-similar mana-producing spells. high tide is late game and dark ritual is good at any time. however, dark ritual is literally useful in ANY deck, whereas high tide absolutely requires the entire deck to be built around the use of it. you can't just throw high tide into any deck with islands and expect it to work. no one played this card for years until free spells came along, and that says more about free spells than it does about high tide. it requires the deck to run almost all islands AND the rest of the deck has to be composed mostly of cards that can abuse high tide: stroke of genius, free spells, thawing glaciers, etc. throw 4 dark rituals and the mana to cast them in a similar deck, or any other for that matter, and they will still work perfectly. you could never say that about high tide, and that is why it is an inferior card.
look at the comparison of mana produced by each card -... (see all)
Posted By:
gasimakos1
(5/2/2011 6:55:07 PM)
What! Off-Color-Wheel Antics?! Oh, Early Days of Magic!
Posted By:
Dalek9
(6/22/2009 9:56:46 PM)
The problem Gasimakos is that building around a card DOES make it better or worse. No one will tell you Emrakul, Progenitus, or heck Dream Halls are bad cards unless they're idiots, but they're also cards that require a specific "build around me" status to work very well. Just because this can't be thrown into EVERY blue deck for *maximum* effect doesn't mean that it can't be thrown in for pretty-darn-good effect.
Further, unlike Dark Ritual, High Tides stack in a beautiful way. You tap for 1, then play high tide. Tap for 2, play two more. Now the third island produces more mana than the original 3 islands you had! I have a mill deck that goes off TURN 3 because of High Tide shenanigans. All it takes is a single untapper and a draw engine and you'll run into other untappers of various kinds. Further, it's trivial to create infinite combos with this card:
((Earthcraft + any 1 creature) OR Argothian Elder OR Juniper Order Druid/autoca... (see all)
Posted By:
blurrymadness
(5/30/2011 12:43:09 PM)
Wait...you're comparing it to Dark Ritual? One mana for three or one mana for 2 x the number of Islands you control (minus the one for this card)...
Combine this with one of the blue cards that untaps your lands when you cast them (Peregrine Drake, Cloud of Faeries, Great Whale, etc) from the Urza block (or, god forbid, something later on...perhaps Bear Umbra) and use it to power some big nasty spell...my favorite finisher is a High Tide-powered Stroke of Genius to deck the opponent.
Posted By:
Alsebra
(4/21/2011 3:35:05 AM)
This card is absurdly strong; it's one of the reasons that I refuse to play against one of my friends' blue decks. Doubling your mana at instant speed is kind of a good thing. Ritual is great; this is broken.
Posted By:
Dustylou_2
(5/17/2012 10:50:18 PM)
One of the coolest sleeper cards ever. Was totally ignored when FE came out.
Posted By:
Lord_of_Tresserhorn
(3/4/2012 3:48:08 PM)