Extended High Tide deck
High Tide is a mono-blue combo deck which came to fame when Kai Budde won Grand Prix Vienna 1999 with it.
High Tide was designed to combat decks based on Tolarian Academy and overpowered that deck by having less artifacts and more countermagic. In principle, High Tide casts the namesake High Tide and uses so called Free Spells of Urza's Legacy to produce massive amounts of mana and cast a Stroke of Genius on the opponent to force him to draw more cards than his library contains, ending the game.
The Free Spells are spells which untap as many lands as their converted mana cost. Specifically used by the deck were Frantic Search, Palinchron and Time Spiral. All of these cards would also help the deck otherwise as well as Frantic Search and Time Spiral were card draw and Palinchron could be played repeatedly once enough mana was in pool. Turnabout was used for the same effect of untapping lands but did not produce an additional effect. Since Islands under one or multiple High Tides produce a multiple of their normal mana production, this process ramps up enormous amounts of mana rather quickly.
In 2008, Mike Flores called it the 3rd best Extended deck of All Time. [1]
Other (19)
4 Impulse