[Deck] UBGx Landstill

[zerzab11]

Hey fellow sourcers. Do you think something among these lines might be playable again? :

4 Underground Sea
3 Tropical Island
1 Bayou
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Polluted Delta
3 Mishra's Factory
3 Wasteland
1 Creeping Tar Pit

4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
2 Spell Snare
2 Spell Pierce
3 Counterspell
2 Life from the Loam
4 Standstill
4 Jace the Mind-Sculptor
2 Liliana of the Veil
3 Pernicious Deed
3 Innocent Blood
3 Abrupt Decay
1 Damnation

Board:
3 Relic of Progenitus/ 4 Leyline of the Void
3 Vendilion Clique
4 Tarmogoyf/ Dark Confidant/ 2 Thrun, the last Troll
2 Perish/ Discard?
2 Flusterstorm/ Discard?
1 Maelstrom Pulse


The Point is to have a good-very good Canadian MU (which happens to be the most played deck here around, and maybe aswell @ BoM) a good Miracle MU (with Deed + 4 Jace mainly) and a good shot @ beating Jund (the 2 Loams + Wastelands should hopefully handle Punishing Fire)

The deck is very slow, that's one reason why I think the Sideboard should contain creatures. Clique is an amazing tool vs Combo and Control, while Goyfs are good against Canadian/Burn/others or any other MU where the Opponent is Boarding out his removal!

What are your thoughts+ constructive criticism?

[Koplinchen]

It is a shame nobody is interested in this deck - which I think is one of the strongest out there. It does not have any weak match - ups (I beat burn every single time)

my aproach is a little bit different:

2 Snapcaster Mage
4 Deathrite Shaman
2 Counterspell
2 Spell Pierce
3 Force of Will
2 Disfigure
4 Abrupt Decay
4 Brainstorm
2 Life from the Loam
3 Standstill
2 EE
3 Lili
3 Jace

1 Creeping Tar Pit
2 Bayou
2 Tropical Island
3 Mishra’s Factory
4 Wasteland
3 Polluted Delta
3 Verdant Catacomb
2 Místy Rainforest
4 Underground Sea

Side:
3 Tarmo
2 Surgical
2 Flusterstorm
4 Thoughtseize
1 E Plague
1 Darkblast
2 Deed

First I think Shaman is amazing. Second I want to play 2 Life from the Loam and 4 Wasteland. Third siding into bug aggro-control means many afterside games last like three minutes. Confidant is not worth it. I wanted 24 lands since we can not afford to run any basics. Furthermore it makes Standstill even better. EE is usually little bit faster then Deed.

Storm combo is sometimes a problem since they can wait with standstill for a good hand and then kill us with two therapies... Consider at least siding out Standstills. We struggle against Tombstalker as well.

Good luck! Any crticisms on my list welcomed as well.

[th3 w1z4rd]

It is a shame nobody is interested in this deck - which I think is one of the strongest out there. It does not have any weak match - ups (I beat burn every single time)

my aproach is a little bit different:

2 Snapcaster Mage
4 Deathrite Shaman
2 Counterspell
2 Spell Pierce
3 Force of Will
2 Disfigure
4 Abrupt Decay
4 Brainstorm
2 Life from the Loam
3 Standstill
2 EE
3 Lili
3 Jace

1 Creeping Tar Pit
2 Bayou
2 Tropical Island
3 Mishra’s Factory
4 Wasteland
3 Polluted Delta
3 Verdant Catacomb
2 Místy Rainforest
4 Underground Sea

Side:
3 Tarmo
2 Surgical
2 Flusterstorm
4 Thoughtseize
1 E Plague
1 Darkblast
2 Deed

First I think Shaman is amazing. Second I want to play 2 Life from the Loam and 4 Wasteland. Third siding into bug aggro-control means many afterside games last like three minutes. Confidant is not worth it. I wanted 24 lands since we can not afford to run any basics. Furthermore it makes Standstill even better. EE is usually little bit faster then Deed.

Storm combo is sometimes a problem since they can wait with standstill for a good hand and then kill us with two therapies... Consider at least siding out Standstills. We struggle against Tombstalker as well.

Good luck! Any crticisms on my list welcomed as well.

And you beat Burn how exactly?

[thefreakaccident]

It is a shame nobody is interested in this deck - which I think is one of the strongest out there. It does not have any weak match - ups (I beat burn every single time)

my aproach is a little bit different:

2 Snapcaster Mage
4 Deathrite Shaman
2 Counterspell
2 Spell Pierce
3 Force of Will
2 Disfigure
4 Abrupt Decay
4 Brainstorm
2 Life from the Loam
3 Standstill
2 EE
3 Lili
3 Jace

1 Creeping Tar Pit
2 Bayou
2 Tropical Island
3 Mishra’s Factory
4 Wasteland
3 Polluted Delta
3 Verdant Catacomb
2 Místy Rainforest
4 Underground Sea

Side:
3 Tarmo
2 Surgical
2 Flusterstorm
4 Thoughtseize
1 E Plague
1 Darkblast
2 Deed

First I think Shaman is amazing. Second I want to play 2 Life from the Loam and 4 Wasteland. Third siding into bug aggro-control means many afterside games last like three minutes. Confidant is not worth it. I wanted 24 lands since we can not afford to run any basics. Furthermore it makes Standstill even better. EE is usually little bit faster then Deed.

Storm combo is sometimes a problem since they can wait with standstill for a good hand and then kill us with two therapies... Consider at least siding out Standstills. We struggle against Tombstalker as well.

Good luck! Any crticisms on my list welcomed as well.

I've never been a huge fan of darkblast, much more powerful options IMO, probably perish, or another EE. I would probably also skip plague. Other than that, I think I like the list. If you're having a tough time with big fliers like tombstalker, there's always gilded drake. It's not often but sometimes you start bouncing the drake with jace for further thievery, pretty hilarious.

[Koplinchen]

And you beat Burn how exactly?

You must understand that he has no answer for Tarmogoyf. The only way how to beat you is to be faster. You have shaman which needs to be killed, you have a ton of removal for his creatures, inc T1 Disfigure for his lackey - shaman fodder, you also have counterspells for his crucial spells - Pierce and Flusterstorm are very relevant here, goyf is at lest 4/5 if not more. Our deck is much more stable. Standstill goes out after sideboarding.

[Koplinchen]

I've never been a huge fan of darkblast, much more powerful options IMO, probably perish, or another EE. I would probably also skip plague. Other than that, I think I like the list. If you're having a tough time with big fliers like tombstalker, there's always gilded drake. It's not often but sometimes you start bouncing the drake with jace for further thievery, pretty hilarious.

I even droped Standstill at some point and replaced it with Baleful Strix, but Jund matchup (and a few more) got significantly worse. I like darkblast because it deals with Xantid Swarm, Confidant (multiple times), Grim, Delver, Clique and it wins goyf wars which is very relevant in sideboard games when they often have no real answer for your goyf other then their goyf.

We have a ton of Elves here in Prague and the Engeneered Plague is really great. Combined with Darklblast feels just great. Soul tokens, gobbos, humans and lately even wizards... (I would never play more than one though)

Gilded drake seems like a great idea :-)

[th3 w1z4rd]

You must understand that he has no answer for Tarmogoyf. The only way how to beat you is to be faster. You have shaman which needs to be killed, you have a ton of removal for his creatures, inc T1 Disfigure for his lackey - shaman fodder, you also have counterspells for his crucial spells - Pierce and Flusterstorm are very relevant here, goyf is at lest 4/5 if not more. Our deck is much more stable. Standstill goes out after sideboarding.

BUG Landstill is more stable than a deck with all basics, um okay. Every card they play that isn't a land can kill you, unless their deck is sub-optimal. I mean counters only go so far when they can just sling burn at your face every turn. I've gotten Jace up to 13 counters against Burn and still lost to a final bolt. :(

[Koplinchen]

BUG Landstill is more stable than a deck with all basics, um okay. Every card they play that isn't a land can kill you, unless their deck is sub-optimal. I mean counters only go so far when they can just sling burn at your face every turn. I've gotten Jace up to 13 counters against Burn and still lost to a final bolt. :(

I do not say it is a good matchup - I only said I beat them 3 times in the tournament (2:0, 2:0, 2:1) and I think I will do it again next time. Stability does not mean that you draw lands or basic lands - it means that you have the right cards in the right time.

We will use all our tools - counters, liliana's +1 which might force them to FB even when they did not want to, jace obv, preassure.

If they are a little bit flooded we probably win. No, not every non-land card kills us - they have creatures, vortex (time walke - with decay)... So practicaly - it depends on a build, more creatures the better for us - after they killed our initial shaman and bolted us twice they have 19 spells of direct dmg (counting Fireblast and Price) with no library manipulation, 4 cards in hand and us having 12 life... Sounds good to me.

Have a nice day!

[eldpojken]

How have your experiences been in the UWR Delver matchup?
Both with and without Geist and/or with and without Stoneforge?

Geist seems like we can just block with Mishra but 4 Swords and 4 Bolts is concerning.

[Koplinchen]

Mishra, Snapcaster, double Shaman, CTP can block it. We usually have some counterspells, force and we definetly run liliana/Pernicious Deed/Engeneered Explosives.

They have 4 bolts, 3 swords.

[pandaman]

Think it might be time to bump this thread. With True-name Nemesis making waves, Innocent Blood and Pernicious Deed are starting to look like good cards to have in a deck. I might break this out for next week's local, since Ooze didn't work out too well for me last week.

Maybe something like this?

25 lands

2 Island
1 Forest
1 Swamp
4 Polluted Delta
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Underground Sea
4 Topical Island
4 Mishra's Factory
1 Creeping Tar Pit

36 spells

4 Innocent Blood
4 Abrupt Decay
4 Pernicious Deed
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
4 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
4 Counterspell
2 Spell Pierce
2 Spell Snare
4 Standstill

Sideboard (15)

4 Thoughtseize
4 Surgical Extraction
3 Flusterstorm
2 Vendilion Clique
1 Life from the Loam
1 Krosan Grip

Any suggestions?

[thefreakaccident]

No love for standstill?

[pandaman]

No love for standstill?

Much love for Standstill. I may have ninja-edited my post on you, sorry mate!

[thefreakaccident]

I've been wanting to fit veteran explorer in here. I don't want shaman b/c he does nothing when I kill him, and I like reusing my lands. Explorer is an excellent wall/accelerant that could potentially make the manlands stronger. Granted, it does nothing against Nemesis. My Nemesis!

I've been wanting to do the same with miracles, since they play lots of basics usually anyway.

[kiblast]

So isn't this deck already prepared to fight the new rise of Uxx Midrange decks playing Nemesis? We have Deeds and Golgari Charm in sb… I think it's a good choice right now isn't it?

[Nastaboi]

It indeed is. I just went 5-0 on a local tourney with it, beating monoblack, Jund, BUG Delver, TES and Bant with it. I'll post my list after Finnish Legacy Championships next Saturday.

[kiblast]

It indeed is. I just went 5-0 on a local tourney with it, beating monoblack, Jund, BUG Delver, TES and Bant with it. I'll post my list after Finnish Legacy Championships next Saturday.

So why don't you just send it to me right now so I can play it tomorrow :D ?

[kiblast]

Sorry for double replying.

Yesterday I brought BUGStill to a 40ish players tournament going 4-1-1 in swiss and losing in top 8 to Miracles.
The only round I lost in swiss was to Punishing Miracles so I'm starting to see something here… How is this matchup so bad? How can we make it better? The draw was against RUG just because I couldn't win in time g3.

The list:

3 Seas
3 Trops
1 Bayou
7 BUG fetchlands
1 Island
1 Swamp
3 Waste
4 Factories
1 Tar Pit

4 Baleful Strix
2 Snapcaster Mage

4 Fow
4 Brainstorm
2 Pierce
2 Snare
4 Standstill
3 Decay
3 Deeds
1 Loam
1 Disfigure
1 Diabolic Edict
1 Counterspell

3 Jace, tms
1 Liliana

SB
3 Thoughtseize
3 Vendilion
1 Flusterstorm
2 Golgari Charm
3 Extirpate
2 Perish

Manabase was a bit underwhelming sometimes, might want to rework it. Liliana is not the best thing ever but it's a versatile tool as deals with Nemesis while not being completely dead vs combo. The remaining is pretty much the stock list if you ask me, except a couple of slots devoted to fight Blade decks, Merfolks and TNN strategies, because I was fearing them as major contenders (and they should be, I don't know why people keep playing bad decks when you can play 4 TNN Merfolks or 4 TNN Stoneblade.) Whatever.

I remember vs ANT I wanted to experiment a bit during the 4th round... I lose g1 and I side out 3 Deeds 1 Loam 1 Diabolic edict, all the planes walkers and 1 Mishara's Factory and 1 Wasteland (-11) Siding in 3 Seize 3 Clique 2 Golgari Charm (gotta fight those Etw tokens somehow, and kills Xantid Swarm or Confidant much better than Deed here since Golgari can deal with EtW tokens dropped turn 1 before you die) 2 Extirpate and 1 Flusterstorm. Between the man lands and all the creatures I had g2 and g3 I could play as some sort of Bug Fish-esque abomination. This plan served me well as I won both g2 and g3.

Round 5 playing vs Deathblade, I win g1 on the back of Loam Waste (opponent scoops turn 4 if I recall correctly), but I couldn't tell if he was on Deathblade since I only saw 2 Seas. I lose g2 due to Nemesis… g3 outraced him thanks to V Clique taking his Nemesis at the end of his draw step. Clique was undoubtedly the all star of my sideboard all day, and confirmed what I knew already when I was playing Jace Landeed two years ago, Tarmogoyf can't take the slots of Clique in your sideboard because the disruption and information that Clique gives are invaluable… plus any combo and control deck just laughs at you 4/5 while Clique is a pain in the ass for them… for example again vs UBr Ant during turn 4 opponent has 3 lands out, plays Gitaxian Probe, plays Lotus Petal. Resp to Petal I Clique him seeing Dark Ritual and EtW, I obliviously take Etw; If I had Goyf I would have had a useless wall vs. his mini Etw and he would have won in 3 turns.

[pandaman]

So why don't you just send it to me right now so I can play it tomorrow :D ?

Me too!! :D:D

[HardBrain]

2 Island
1 Forest
1 Swamp
4 Polluted Delta
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Underground Sea
3 Mishra's Factory
1 Creeping Tar Pit
3 Innocent Blood
3 Abrupt Decay
3 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
4 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Counterspell
2 Spell Pierce
2 Spell Snare
4 Standstill
2 Liliana of the Veil
1 Life from the Loam
3 Tropical Island
3 Counterbalance
2 Sensei's Divining Top
2 Toxic Deluge
SB: 3 Surgical Extraction
SB: 2 Vendilion Clique
SB: 1 Krosan Grip
SB: 1 Life from the Loam
SB: 2 Virtue's Ruin
SB: 3 Sadistic Sacrament
SB: 2 Energy Flux
SB: 1 Golgari Charm

This is my 75 of bug standstil. i add balance to stanstill control. maybe some problem with sb. but still workin on it. your opinion?

[kiblast]

I think that the main reason you go BUG control is Pernicious Deed. You should pack at least a couple in your 75. I'm not sure about the effectiveness of Counterbalance in a deck packing just 2 Tops. In general I don't see Counterbalance belonging in a deck not packing 5-6 Miracle spells.

[phazonmutant]

Sorry for double replying.

Yesterday I brought BUGStill to a 40ish players tournament going 4-1-1 in swiss and losing in top 8 to Miracles.
The only round I lost in swiss was to Punishing Miracles so I'm starting to see something here… How is this matchup so bad? How can we make it better?
<etc>

Honestly, I'm shocked that BUGStill could ever lose to Miracles. I've played against Miracles with every sort of BUG deck since Decay got printed and I never felt like it was close. I have to think that you're misplaying somewhere because Deed + Decay is very good against them.

The only way you lose to Miracles is Entreat. Play Deed, don't lose to that.

[Nastaboi]

Actually Punishing Fire is somewhat problematic. I have had never problems beating Miracles, but Punishing Fire decks can make me sweat. As you can lock Miracles from winning with Deed, they can lock you out of win conditions with Punishing Fire - it even beats Jace. Also finishing the match in time can be really difficult, when neither deck can really win from some positions.

[phazonmutant]

Actually Punishing Fire is somewhat problematic. I have had never problems beating Miracles, but Punishing Fire decks can make me sweat. As you can lock Miracles from winning with Deed, they can lock you out of win conditions with Punishing Fire - it even beats Jace. Also finishing the match in time can be really difficult, when neither deck can really win from some positions.

You play Wasteland, Loam, and 6+ Enchantment destruction spells, right? Come on.

[kiblast]

Honestly, I'm shocked that BUGStill could ever lose to Miracles. I've played against Miracles with every sort of BUG deck since Decay got printed and I never felt like it was close. I have to think that you're misplaying somewhere because Deed + Decay is very good against them.

The only way you lose to Miracles is Entreat. Play Deed, don't lose to that.

Yeah that was my initial thought as well. Probably not seeing a single Deed and one Decay in 4 matches helped them though.

Anyway, I began testing a copy of Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver and it seems interesting. Stealing one creature every 2 turns vs any deck packing at least 15-18 creatures seems good. Plus he acts as a (way) better Nephalia Drownyard vs Control.

[Adryan]

I've said it before and i say it again. Baleful Strix was so bad in this deck, and now with TNN it's even worse. Innocent Blood is so much better.

I won a Daily Event months ago with a 4 Innocent Blood List (edit link if i find it), and it was a very good removal. But now with TNN everywhere it's even better.

[HardBrain]

ok. now im after some test on cocka with my spar frinds. and i have a look at meeeeny decklist. the only problem was with sneak show when he go combo. this is my list for now. please spend couple of minute and think about my solutions:
4deathrite shaman
2snapcaster mage
2venser shaper sevant
...8
4brainstorm
4force of will
3abrupt decay
2counterspell
2spell pierce
2disfigure
1diabolic edict
1life from the loam
1dismember
...20
4standstill
...4
3jace tms
2liliana otV
...5
2mishra factory
2creeping tar pit
2wasteland
2verdant catacombs
2misty rainforest
4polluted delta
1island
1swamp
1forest
1bayou
2tropical island
3underground sea
...23

SB:
1life from the loam
1krosan grip
2energy flux (yes!)
1maelstrom pulse
3misdirection (who knows why hehe)
2surgical extraction
1nihil spellbomb
3enginered plague
1golgari charm

and now im gona test your tech UBplaneswalker and one nephalia. could be ok. any suggestions? im still working on sb but main works enough good o think. especially diabolic edict vs tnn at eot or vs sneak. also T1shaman gives us acces to play standstill in T2. also make us faster. on second turn lily?

[Nastaboi]

You play Wasteland, Loam, and 6+ Enchantment destruction spells, right? Come on.

How does enchantment destruction spells help against Punishing Fire? I do rely on Wastes and Loam to keep it in check, but things don't always go like in movies. I for myself have never lost to Punishing Miracles, but was mainly referring to other Punishing Fire decks that also play Loam and can thus fight back your Wastelands.

HardBrain: Sneak and Show is indeed a hard matchup because 1) combo 2) Blood Moon. Shamans help though. I have both Cliques and Goyfs for my transformal anti-combo plan.

[pandaman]

I've said it before and i say it again. Baleful Strix was so bad in this deck, and now with TNN it's even worse. Innocent Blood is so much better.

I won a Daily Event months ago with a 4 Innocent Blood List (edit link if i find it), and it was a very good removal. But now with TNN everywhere it's even better.

Adryan, what list are you rocking at the moment?

[HardBrain]

nastabol. i try to make this MU not so bad as it is now. yeah shamans works great here. also we have golgari charm. abrupt.pulse.krosan to crack moon. edict and venser try beat combo. but what do you think about whole 75 that i wrote up? TNN isnt so bad now with sacrifice engine and always we can play plague on merfolk.
Misdirection is my favourite trick. redirect TNN power on my opponent then i can block and just kill him. miss are also awesome against some discard. burn ....

[warai]

As much sexy as the idea of having Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver might be, the card sucks because it doesn't have any impact the turn it enters. Liliana is way better.


Yeah that was my initial thought as well. Probably not seeing a single Deed and one Decay in 4 matches helped them though.

Anyway, I began testing a copy of Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver and it seems interesting. Stealing one creature every 2 turns vs any deck packing at least 15-18 creatures seems good. Plus he acts as a (way) better Nephalia Drownyard vs Control.

[kiblast]

As much sexy as the idea of having Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver might be, the card sucks because it doesn't have any impact the turn it enters. Liliana is way better.

We have like 1thousand ways to deal with creatures. Sometimes you need something different from removals. My removal set up is:

3 Decays
3 Deeds
1 Disfigure
1 Liliana of the Veil

4 Baleful Strix (Pseudo removals)

That's like 12 ways to deal with creatures.One every five cards in my deck. On top of that, Snares and Counterspells. I'm definitely not looking at another Liliana if I want something to fill my flex slot. As much as Liliana is good, she doesn't actually *win* the game as Ashiok could. Not as quick. Lili's ultimate just cripples opponent's board position, while Ashiok can quickly grab a couple of Goyfs and win the game quickly.

[Nastaboi]

Misdirection is my favourite trick. redirect TNN power on my opponent then i can block and just kill him.

What it that supposed to mean? Misdirection interacts in no way with True-Name Nemesis. What you however CAN do with Misdirection is direct their own removal spells to TNN. Works especially well with Decay.

[HardBrain]

What it that supposed to mean? Misdirection interacts in no way with True-Name Nemesis. What you however CAN do with Misdirection is direct their own removal spells to TNN. Works especially well with Decay.


tnn comes and target me. i use misss to change targen to himself.

[Shawn]

That doesn't work, TNN's ability is a static one, not a triggered one you could respond to, and Misdirection can't target abilities.

[somethingdotdotdot]

That doesn't even slightly work. First, read misdirection. It allows you to change the target of spells, not abilities. Second, the choosing a player part of the ability doesn't ever use the stack, so you couldn't respond to it anyways. You can only respond to the tnn while being cast, before the ability has chosen a player or after tnn has resolved, after the ability has chosen a player.

[phazonmutant]

How does enchantment destruction spells help against Punishing Fire? I do rely on Wastes and Loam to keep it in check, but things don't always go like in movies. I for myself have never lost to Punishing Miracles, but was mainly referring to other Punishing Fire decks that also play Loam and can thus fight back your Wastelands..

Oh, I was thinking of having to answer Rest in Peace, but it would be kind of silly to have a deck featuring Punishing Fire and Rest in Peace. Yeahhhhhh. Well, Decay and Deed are still good against Counterbalance...

Of course Jundy decks are going to be harder than Miracles, but those are completely different matchups.

[Phantom6879]

Well since people apparently still play this deck I'll post my list. Lol

MAIN:
3x Snapcaster Mage

3x Swords to Plowshares
3x Diabolic Edict
1x Toxic Deluge
3x Pernicious Deed
1x Life From the Loam
4x Brainstorm
4x Standstill
2x Spell Snare
4x Counterspell
4x Force of Will
1x Liliana of the Veil
3x Jace, the Mind Sculptor

3x Wasteland
4x Mishra's Factory
1x Creeping Tar Pit
2x Flooded Strand
4x Misty Rainforest
3x Underground Sea
1x Watery Grave (budget normally doesn't matter)
3x Tropical Island
1x Tundra
1x Island
1x Plains

BOARD:
1x Engineered Explosives
4x Rest in Peace
3x Duress
1x Abrupt Decay
1x Vedalken Shackles
3x Vendilion Clique
2x Mindbreak Trap

I would also agree with Aushiok not being as good as Liliana in my personal perspective due to the fact she seems more "cute" and less bomby. Basically she doesn't impact the board as soon as she hits. Plus I feel I may be a little removal light? I don't know?

Also.. I don't know how the hell you can lose to Miracles.. Honestly. Pernicious Deed and Abrupt Decay. That's all you need for the most part. Punishing fire gets hosed by Wasteland and Extirpate or Rest in Peace.

Toxic Deluge is the best card against Tribal and all Blade archetypes. I almost prefer it over Deed sometimes!

[klaus]

Back-in-the-day LS player here,
I recently picked up this beast and have been liking its performance so far.
Some insights:
* While Lili can be a house, more often than not, I don't really want to use her +1, since between SS and Jace my hand is hardly ever empty. The archetypes she shines in simply don't run as many C/A spells.
* Still undecided on whether Thoughtseize is MD or SB material
* Clique seems like a necessary evil in the wake of the rise of Combo
*

Here's my current list for reference (crits = welcome):

4 SS
4 BS
4 FoW
3 Jace
3 Deed
3 AD
3 Innocent Blood
3 Jace
3 Clique
3 CS
2 Snare
1 LftL

4 Delta
1 Rainforest
2 Verdant Catacombs
4 Sea
3 Tropical
2 Island
1 Swamp
4 Factory
2 Wasteland
1 Tarpit

SB:
2 Relic
1 Deed
1 Extirpate
3 Thoughtseize
3 Spell Pierce
1 Clique
3 Plague
1 Fluster Storm

[Phantom6879]

* While Lili can be a house, more often than not, I don't really want to use her +1, since between SS and Jace my hand is hardly ever empty. The archetypes she shines in simply don't run as many C/A spells.
* Still undecided on whether Thoughtseize is MD or SB material
* Clique seems like a necessary evil in the wake of the rise of Combo


I feel your pain Klaus on the Liliana subject. I usually keep a land in my hand to tick her +1. Theoretically turning my lands into target player discards a card or if you play her followed by a Standstill you will end up having more cards and you can tick her +1 until they are hellbent. Not to mention Life From the Loam paired with her.

As for Thoughtseize I wouldn't criticize anyone for playing it main, but I would just rather have the chance to respond to exactly what they play. Not to mention the information is valuable at worst. Ex: I Thoughtseize and take their best card and pass the turn. They play a threat and in the early turns I don't have enough mana to respond.. So therefore I keep discard in the board personally speaking.

The necessary evil that is combo I will 100% agree with you on. I have addressed that with
4x Force of Will
3x Duress (except Sneak and Show they all have mostly noncreature spells)
3x Vendilion Clique
2x Mindbreak Traps

I haven't tested Clique in the main as a three of except against Blade archetypes and combo so I can't give much insight there for you, sorry.

[H]

I took BUG Landstill to my weekly Legacy last night. The deck did well, didn't drop a game, although it was just a few rounds.

Here's the list:

3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 Garruk Relentless
1 Liliana of the Veil
4 Brainstorm
4 Standstill
4 Force of Will
3 Counterspell
2 Spell Snare
1 Life from the Loam
3 Innocent Blood
1 Diabolic Edict
3 Abrupt Decay
3 Pernicious Deed
1 Darkblast
2 Snapcaster Mage

3 Underground Sea
3 Tropical Island
1 Bayou
4 Polluted Delta
3 Verdant Catacomb
3 Wasteland
4 Mishra's Factory
1 Creeping Tarpit
1 Island
1 Swamp

Sideboard
1 Perish
2 Egineered Plague
1 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Zuran Orb
2 Chill
1 Hydroblast
2 Vendilion Clique
1 Extirpate
2 Duress
2 Flusterstorm


I'm not sure Garruk is correct, I just wanted another Planeswalker and I don't feel that Liliana really has enough synergy with the rest of the deck, since I want to keep cards in my hand. I could discard Lands, but with his deck, I really want to make my land drops, so I'm not really looking to max out on her. 4 Jace would be ok, but even with the new rules, I am not really looking to open up too many multiple Jace hands.

I was really pleased with the one Darkblast. I managed to take out a series of Delvers so I could keep my Bloods for Nemesis, Giest, etc.

I'm not sure that Edict was needed, I liked that it is an Instant, but I don't know it's necessary. I had it in when I wasn't going to run a Lili and when I added one of her back in, I didn't take it out.

The sideboard is a mess, as Elves and Burn are usually pretty over represented in our small meta. In fact, a kid playing his first competitive event went 3-1 with Burn and I would not be pleased losing to something that linear, hence the Chills and the Hydro with the Orb. I feel this deck is really well positioned in the current meta, although I might try to find another walker to run with Jace and a Lili, although Relentless may be the best one, since he can also be removal at times.

[Phantom6879]

I'm not sure Garruk is correct, I just wanted another Planeswalker and I don't feel that Liliana really has enough synergy with the rest of the deck, since I want to keep cards in my hand. I could discard Lands, but with his deck, I really want to make my land drops, so I'm not really looking to max out on her. 4 Jace would be ok, but even with the new rules, I am not really looking to open up too many multiple Jace hands.
When it comes to Planes walkers your only options unfortunately are Jace Beleren, another Liliana, and Elspeth but Elspeth would do WAY more harm than good.



I'm not sure that Edict was needed, I liked that it is an Instant, but I don't know it's necessary. I had it in when I wasn't going to run a Lili and when I added one of her back in, I didn't take it out.

I would personally keep the Diabolic Edict since it is one of your very few outs to a Sneak Attack, hard casted Emrakuel, or Æther Vial shenanigans. The fact that its two mana versus Innocent Blood probably won't ever matter much.

[H]

When it comes to Planes walkers your only options unfortunately are Jace Beleren, another Liliana, and Elspeth but Elspeth would do WAY more harm than good.


I would personally keep the Diabolic Edict since it is one of your very few outs to a Sneak Attack, hard casted Emrakuel, or Æther Vial shenanigans. The fact that its two mana versus Innocent Blood probably won't ever matter much.

A good point. I sometimes don't really think about Sneak Attack, as I rarely ever see it at our locals.

As for Garruk, I'll probably keep him in there for the time being, see how it goes. Thanks for the feedback though.

[cuthbertthecat]

Looking to play this deck because it seems great right now, here's what I plan on starting with:

4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
4 Innocent Blood
3 Pernicious Deed
3 Spell Pierce
2 Life from the Loam
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Liliana of the Veil
4 Standstill
3 Vendilion Clique
3 Abrupt Decay
2 Counterspell

4 Polluted Delta
4 Misty Rainforest
3 Underground Sea
3 Tropical Island
1 Bayou
3 Mishra's Factory
2 Wasteland
2 Island
1 Swamp

Sideboard

3 Thoughtseize
1 Flusterstorm
2 Golgari Charm
4 Tarmogoyf
2 Nihil Spellbomb
2 Krosan Grip
1 Darkblast

I'm playing 3 pierce and no snare because I'm more concerned with getting quickly combo'd out than I am with Stoneforge/Goyf. For the sideboard, I'm not sure if the Goyf plan is the best thing to do, or if including perish, blue blast, venser, or something else is better. I'm also not sure about grip, but both batterskull and blood moon seem problematic, and sadly golgari charm doesn't kill both. I'm also not sure if I want a forest in the board for when I bring in goyf against RUG.

[Nastaboi]

Okay, here goes. Finnish Legacy Champs, 101 players, 2nd place. Lost in the finals against a good matchup, but your luck can't last forever. That makes it 13 wins in a row, if you take into account practice tournament last weeked that I sweeped. The list:

3 sea
3 trop
1 bayou
8 fetch
4 mishra
2 tar pit
3 waste

3 dr shaman
1 clique

3 jace
2 lily

4 standstill
3 deed

2 seize
1 inquisition
1 loam

4 brainstorm
4 force
2 snare
1 counterpell
3 decay
2 disfigure

SB:
4 tarmo
2 clique
3 flusterstorm
2 nihil spellbomb
1 loam
1 golgari charm
1 toxic deluge
1 notion thief

The matchups:

R1 ANT 2-0

G1 got just enough disruption with Shamans keeping his off threshold for Cabal Rit, him struggling to find blue mana and timely Clique and Snare to foil his last effort. G2 I kept one-lander with multiple Brainstorms and infty counters, and managed to dig for lands to take it home with an ease.

R2 Omni-Tell 2-1

G1 he had 2nd turn Show and tell with counter backup. Second game I got everything, and in third i mulled into following five: UG Sea, Thoughtseize, Thoughtseize, FoW, Clique.

R3 BUG Delver 1-0-1

This was neverending grind, as seen in result.

R4 BUG Delver 2-1

Won 1st game and then had to play Standstill in second one against his Delver as I got nothing but lands. It almost worked out, but got myself on too low life before breaking it myself that could not dig it out. Won 3rd game easily though.

R5 Sneak and Show 2-1

Lost 1st game as excepted and Liliana locked him out in the second after countering his T1 SNT. Third game was though, but I drew the right cards in right time. A bit luck is needed to win this MU.

R6 UWB Deathblade 2-0

Got paired down and had to play. My opponent was not really in the game, and dropped after the match despite he still had changes to win some prizes

R7 ANT ID into 1st seed swiss

Finally some food.

Top 8 Shardless BUG 2-0

Total blowout. G1 I got to take his Vision with discard and he was left for mostly lands. I also had mostly lands, but mine ran him over. G2 he suspended two Visions and I drew Notion Thief just when he was about to resolve the first one.

Top 4 BUG Delver 2-1

G1 I stabilized once, but he drew more gas while I drew bricks. Games 2 and 3 went according to plan.

Finals BUG Delver 1-2

G1 he got all the way with Delver, backed up with some Wasteland, Daze and usual stuff. G2 he got me low with Hymn, but I drew a fourt land just in time to turn tables with Jace. G3 I mulled to five and never drew a green source.

Toxic Deluge was the underarchiver of the day, but other than that I liked the list a lot. If Sneak and Show becomes more played, I'd make some adjustments - or just play a different deck. Otherwise, I wouldn't change a much.

[kiblast]

Congrats Nastaboi!

[Sigar]

Deathrite Shaman + Deed
Standstill + Discard

Care to explain your choices? The list looks really weird.

[Phantom6879]

As for Garruk, I'll probably keep him in there for the time being, see how it goes. Thanks for the feedback though.
No problem! Garruk is nice on the front side and the flip side. He offers an endless stream of blockers. He's really a green Elspeth that doesn't jump creatures in the air and make them retarded big. He can also -2 and tutor up your Snapcasters. Lol



I'm playing 3 pierce and no snare because I'm more concerned with getting quickly combo'd out than I am with Stoneforge/Goyf. For the sideboard, I'm not sure if the Goyf plan is the best thing to do, or if including perish, blue blast, venser, or something else is better. I'm also not sure about grip, but both batterskull and blood moon seem problematic, and sadly golgari charm doesn't kill both. I'm also not sure if I want a forest in the board for when I bring in goyf against RUG.
I wouldn't be too worried about combo even pre board. You have:
4x Force of Will
3x Spell Pierce
3x Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2x Liliana of the Veil
4x Standstill
3x Vendilion Clique
2x Counterspell

That's pretty good for game one against combo. It only gets better after board for you with;
3x Thoughtseize
1x Flusterstorm

You even have Tarmogoyf and Clique to clock them early on. I wouldn't worry unless they play Silence or Orim's Chant. Remember on the flip side Spell Snare is a hard counter for Burning Wish shenanigans. Lol

Also on another note I would like to ask why you guys are moving the three Vendilion Cliques into the main? Just curious. I've only tested them against Combo and Blade archetypes.

[Nastaboi]

Deathrite Shaman + Deed
Standstill + Discard

Care to explain your choices? The list looks really weird.

I have been playing DRS for a quite some time, and I think it's quite essential for the deck. It just does so many things.

1) It fixes your colored mana, thus helping one inherit weakness of the deck. I think this is the most important reason. Without Shamans, I'd play 25 lands and maybe had to shave another colorless source.

2) It gives acceleration. As long as I can get several cards with Deed, I don't care if I lose my own Shaman in progress. Without Shaman I would have not even be able to cast and activate Deed in time, and losing Shaman at this point usually means that I already have enough mana to operate even without it.

3) It speeds up your clock, making you finish your matches in time.

4) Lifegain ability helps you stabilize in low life, often 2 or 4 extra life points is all you need.

5) Graveyard removal is relevant from time to time.

Maindeck discard is concession to combo matchup while not being dead in others. I usually side Thoughtseizes off against non-Mystic Delver decks, but otherwise they're from okay to great. First turn discard is an okay setup for second turn Standstill. While counters are better after Standstill, you should be more concerned how to get Standstill profitably in play, not how to win afterwards. And usually when they break Standstill, you can Decay their threat and then next turn make them discard whatever they were left with.


Also on another note I would like to ask why you guys are moving the three Vendilion Cliques into the main? Just curious. I've only tested them against Combo and Blade archetypes.

I bring Cliques in practically every match, but for different cards each time. You can just play so many three drops, so you have to make choises. I liked one Clique main very much, but I like my 8 Lily/Deed/Jace more to make a switch.

[Phantom6879]

Yeah, I'll have to defend Nastaboi on that. Didn't you hear? Liliana is pretty good on turn two! Lol

[cuthbertthecat]

Also on another note I would like to ask why you guys are moving the three Vendilion Cliques into the main? Just curious. I've only tested them against Combo and Blade archetypes.

I like them because they're never bad; they're either awesome or trade off in combat. Also letting you hold up counterspell and clique eot if they don't do anything worth countering is important for not wasting mana.

[Phantom6879]

I like them because they're never bad; they're either awesome or trade off in combat. Also letting you hold up counterspell and clique eot if they don't do anything worth countering is important for not wasting mana.

Yeah, I just didn't want too many three drops, but they make sense if you're not running Snapcaster Mage. I run three Snapcasters (my list is a page or two back) which is actually a 3cc spell. Two for the Mage and at least one for the spell. Was just curious. Thanks though! :)

[H]

Any thoughts on Worm Harvest? I am thinking of working one into my list (above, first post on this page), perhaps in for the Darkblast, or maybe for the Garruk.

My thinking is that it is another win con, one that works pretty well with Loam and Lili, and isn't a PW for the purposes of going up against heavy Red decks.

[ZimAshe]

I was at my LGS yesterday for a legacy event. and while it didn't fire there were some players that that I got to test this deck against. Particularly one who is very good at legacy, has made some SCG top 8's and plays a TNN deck that I had built my version of BUG to hopefully beat.

The List:


Creatures:3
3 Deathrite Shaman

Spells:32
4 Brainstorm
3 Innocent Blood
1 Ponder
2 Spell Pierce
4 Thoughtseize
3 Abrupt Decay
2 Life from the Loam
1 Intuition
3 Liliana of the Veil
3 Pernicious Deed
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
3 Force of Will

Lands:25
2 Bayou
1 Cephalid Coliseum
2 Creeping Tar Pit
1 Forest
1 Island
2 Mishra's Factory
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Polluted Delta
1 Swamp
1 Tropical Island
3 Underground Sea
3 Verdant Catacombs
3 Wasteland


I think that this list is pretty ripe for the meta. while everyone is trying to get there TNN's in play you have all the answers. Deed is really, really good right now in the midrange blue matchup. While there are no Standstills in this deck I feel that is not a hindrance. IMHO standstill is a very low impact card. it has the potential to draw you three cards sure but there is no guarantee that those cards will be relevant. Furthermore with an active Jace or brainstorms Life from the Loam can give you all the card advantage you need. The only card in this list that I am one the fence about is Intuition. It's a bit clunky and could easily be a fourth Jace, but being able to tutor up your loam engine is very relevant.

I played against Belcher 4 times and only lost once. Then against Robots and won all three games including post sideboard. and played My friend's Esper Deathblade deck 5 game ones and won 3 of the 5.

[H]

While DRS is certainly a good card in this deck, even though I don't run it in my build because I want to be able to run out Innocent Blood at any time. You might want more Diabolic Edicts since you run DRS.

Also, why a Coliseum?

[ZimAshe]

While DRS is certainly a good card in this deck, even though I don't run it in my build because I want to be able to run out Innocent Blood at any time. You might want more Diabolic Edicts since you run DRS.

Also, why a Coliseum?

I could give it a try but I'm actually not too concerned with having to sac my DRS. There a many win conditions in the deck and DRS, while a very powerful card with multiple functions in the deck is merely a tool. I can't envision too many scenarios where I would want to hold back my Innocent Blood just because I have a DRS on board.

With an active Loam, Coliseum becomes an Ancestral Recall. It can be tutored up as part of a Loam package with Intuition and can be bought back with Loam for extra card advantage. If I didn't' have Intuition in the deck Coliseum would most like come out and become another dual or tarpit.

[Jay_Gatz]

I could give it a try but I'm actually not too concerned with having to sac my DRS. There a many win conditions in the deck and DRS, while a very powerful card with multiple functions in the deck is merely a tool. I can't envision too many scenarios where I would want to hold back my Innocent Blood just because I have a DRS on board. With an active Loam, Coliseum becomes an Ancestral Recall. It can be tutored up as part of a Loam package with Intuition and can be bought back with Loam for extra card advantage. If I didn't' have Intuition in the deck Coliseum would most like come out and become another dual or tarpit.

Intuition and coliseum seem way too cute and slow, I really don't thing they are worth it

[Phantom6879]

Colosseum is just worse than Ancestral Vision. If you're not going to play Standstill or eight cantrips over Colosseum then you should just play BlueLands.dec (42 Lands with Jace).. Standstill isn't a bad card everyone talks crap about it but.. One they suck with the card, two never tested it, or three they still suck with Standstill. I've seen people play a turn two Standstill with a clear board and unless you're playing Vintge, guess what?? You're doing that wrong too. Don't play Standstill on a Noble Heirarch, you'll lose that battle too. Basically the moral of playing Standstill is.. Don't be an idiot. If you can't play Standstill just play visions. It'a just subpar to play anything else but Standstill and Visions.

[Nastaboi]

I lost again finals to deviant playing BUG Delver, this time it was GPT. I'm now 24-5-3 (two ID's) with the deck this winter, but just can't beat him. Last time I won against him was 2010. I played the same MD as in the champs, but changed -1 Flusterstorm -1 Toxic Deluge +1 Thoughtseize +1 Damnation SB. I might add another Damnation to SB as Tombstalker is nigh unbeatable otherwise, Dismember is also a consideration. Other matches:

R1 UW Miracles 2-0
R2 Dredge 2-0
R3 Shardless BUG 2-0
R4 Burn 0-2
R5 Dredge 2-1
R6 UWR Delver ID
TOP8 Bant /w Deathrites 2-1
TOP4 Monored Painter 2-1
Finals BUG Delver 0-2

[H]

Yeah, Tombstalker is quite rough, glad to not have seen one recently. Only real chance would be to counter it.

I have come around to the DRS version of the deck, I played it last night. My record wasn't great, but that was almost all due to my own misplays. I drew with Burn, since i miscounted how many Islands I had left in deck and so couldn't counter the Fireblast that was cast in response to my Jace. Game 3, I was one turn from swinging to win, with double Force and Counterspell, Jace and him with zero in hand. I lost to BGW Rock, since in game 3, I, for some reason, didn't board in my extra removal and ended the game with a bunch of useless counters to his board with Knight and Smiter. I drew with Lands, because game 3 I Wastelanded him twice (the first was a good play, the second was really lose) and ended up one mana short to kill him in 5 Turns.

I am going to try out Team America for a bit, but no doubt I'll be back on this deck soon.

[theBloody]

I lost again finals to deviant playing BUG Delver, this time it was GPT. I'm now 24-5-3 (two ID's) with the deck this winter, but just can't beat him. Last time I won against him was 2010. I played the same MD as in the champs, but changed -1 Flusterstorm -1 Toxic Deluge +1 Thoughtseize +1 Damnation SB. I might add another Damnation to SB as Tombstalker is nigh unbeatable otherwise, Dismember is also a consideration. Other matches:

R1 UW Mystic 2-0
R2 Dredge 2-0
R3 Shardless BUG 2-0
R4 Burn 0-2
R5 Dredge 2-1
R6 UWR Delver ID
TOP8 Bant /w Deathrites 2-1
TOP4 Monored Painter 2-1
Finals BUG Delver 0-2

Was DRS that good against dredge? I'm impressed you beat them 4-1. Gratz for finish.

[Nastaboi]

I never drew my Nihil Spellbombs, but Shamans, counters, discard and them not hitting much with dredgers (because that's what the deck often does) was enough. Wouldn't push my luck too much though and going to keep some grave hate in the SB for the time being.

[kiblast]

Stalker? You have Jace and Liliana. Just play 4 JTMS and 1 Sac effect (mine is Innocent Blood, was Liliana before. Blood is much better when you want to deal with TNN in a pinch). The sacrifice effect or spell must be used in conjunction with Deed or another removal, but I'm stating the obvious, y'all know this.
BUG decks play, like, 2 or 3 Stalkers… You have counters, Jaces, Liliana… Damnation seems overkill to me.

Also, thanks for introducing me to Deathrite builds… there is no comparison with traditional non creature lists, feels like playing a different deck!

Regarding Dredge, I found that we beat them even G1 quite often. Forcing or Pierceing their 1st enabler forces them to go DDD, and this gives us time to develop board, deeds, Deathrites etc.

[Nastaboi]

It seems overkill until you actually play the matchup. The deck hits very hard and you need specific combination of answers, mana to cast them, and them no to be countered and you usually have just a couple of turns to have them. I'm not saying I can't beat Tombstalker, I certainly can and have, I just can't beat deviant.

Yea, Shaman is so good. Can't imagine playing the deck without them.

[kiblast]

A friend just linked me this (http://www.tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=12508&iddeck=91685) and I think it's an interesting concept. Maybe a bit away from UBGx Landstill but I don't know where to discuss this type of deck.

Needs to be tinkered a bit since I see too little blue to properly support Fow (though he decided to run 3 because of that). I also think that 4 Liliana is overkill and 1-2 of them should be trimmed for more business (probably additional card quality/filtering tools.)

Nonetheless an interesting approach to UBGx control. Worth considering.

Furthermore, I'd like to hear your opinion on cards like Lat-Nam's Legacy and See Beyond. They seem janky at first, but actually they provide some decent recycling effect if you have useless stuff stuck in your hand, like Disfigures vs combo decks or Spell Pierces versus Goblins.

See Beyond is not a bad top deck late game in case you are left with no cards in hand-even if on a second thought, sorcery speed really sucks- but I think Lat-Nam's Legacy is actually good. I played it as a singleton for a while and I appreciated it every time I drew it.

[Holly]

A friend just linked me this (http://www.tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=12508&iddeck=91685) and I think it's an interesting concept. Maybe a bit away from UBGx Landstill but I don't know where to discuss this type of deck.

Needs to be tinkered a bit since I see too little blue to properly support Fow (though he decided to run 3 because of that). I also think that 4 Liliana is overkill and 1-2 of them should be trimmed for more business (probably additional card quality/filtering tools.)

Nonetheless an interesting approach to UBGx control. Worth considering.


Thanks.

The bluecount is kinda low I agree but after boarding its quite good actually versus combo (I play a way different sideboard but did not have the cards I needed).
Anyway I changed the list quite a bit since the Mox did suck and thus I could went back to play deed instead of EE and went up to 3 Loam.
Intuition got cut aswell in this process.
Oh and I play 4 tops again since as you said there was to few card filtering tools in this list. But I did not cut any Lilianas for it and I wont since shes great with 3 Fires & 3 Loams.


To your suggested cards.. I'd rather play Nights Whisper.

[kiblast]

Thanks.

The bluecount is kinda low I agree but after boarding its quite good actually versus combo (I play a way different sideboard but did not have the cards I needed).
Anyway I changed the list quite a bit since the Mox did suck and thus I could went back to play deed instead of EE and went up to 3 Loam.
Intuition got cut aswell in this process.
Oh and I play 4 tops again since as you said there was to few card filtering tools in this list. But I did not cut any Lilianas for it and I wont since shes great with 3 Fires & 3 Loams.


To your suggested cards.. I'd rather play Nights Whisper.

Whoa that was fast! Thanks a lot for your insight! The Source, your sure for connecting blue based decks players all over the world :)

Any chance you could consider Deathrite Shaman in place of Moxes?
All the other changes make sense, Top is undeniably good. Intuition provides some good manipulation though, we all know how good is it in a deck packing 3 LftL.
I get your point of view on Liliana. I understood it was good in a deck like that but in general I dislike her in blue based control decks, probably is just a wrong pre concept of mine; due to the fact that I never really played a deck were she has the possibility to shine (like yours). Care to share your newer list?

Also regarding Lat-Nam's Legacy : I know this card's utility seem rather suspicious… but let's just compare it to Night Wisper. No life loss, Instant speed, pitches to Fow. Of course is not gonna be the next staple for BUGlandstill but still an interesting find. Just some food for thought.

[Holly]

Whoa that was fast! Thanks a lot for your insight! The Source, your sure for connecting blue based decks players all over the world :)

Any chance you could consider Deathrite Shaman in place of Moxes?
All the other changes make sense, Top is undeniably good. Intuition provides some good manipulation though, we all know how good is it in a deck packing 3 LftL.
I get your point of view on Liliana. I understood it was good in a deck like that but in general I dislike her in blue based control decks, probably is just a wrong pre concept of mine; due to the fact that I never really played a deck were she has the possibility to shine (like yours). Care to share your newer list?

:)
I really don't need the Intuition anymore because I play 3 Loams I can draw into it naturally. One might consider playing a lower amount of Loams in favor of Intuition but thats really to slow (+ Intuition gets countered.. but rarely anyone counters Loam even if its more often correct than one might think).
And No I never considered DRS because
a) Innocent Blood.
b) G1 it dies instantly since its the only target for removal.
c) It's not good enough for the sideboard.
d) The ramp isn't really needed (don't get me wrong, it nice but not essential)
e) Innocent Blood. Yep twice on the list. Should be 4 since I do play 4 :p.

Btw. I just counted; my bluecount g1 is abysmal with 16 cards (the 3 FoW included). G2 versus combo I go up to 25 (with 4 FoW) which should be fine.

[kiblast]

:)
I really don't need the Intuition anymore because I play 3 Loams I can draw into it naturally. One might consider playing a lower amount of Loams in favor of Intuition but thats really to slow (+ Intuition gets countered.. but rarely anyone counters Loam even if its more often correct than one might think).
And No I never considered DRS because
a) Innocent Blood.
b) G1 it dies instantly since its the only target for removal.
c) It's not good enough for the sideboard.
d) The ramp isn't really needed (don't get me wrong, it nice but not essential)
e) Innocent Blood. Yep twice on the list. Should be 4 since I do play 4 :p.

Btw. I just counted; my bluecount g1 is abysmal with 16 cards (the 3 FoW included). G2 versus combo I go up to 25 (with 4 FoW) which should be fine.


Yeah I see your point. I barely run one copy of Innocent Blood in my Bug landstill so I included Deathrite and never looked back (ty Nastaboi). I know blanking all opponents removal spells is nice but the utility it provides is amazing. Not so amazing with 4 Blood main deck though.

Regarding LftL being countered, back when I was playing Threshold I won games on the back of countering Loam 2-3 times in a Row. People just don't realize that Dredge doesn't mean ''can't be countered by spell or abilities''.

16 Blue count for Fow means that most of the times Fow will be just clogging your hand, until you net massive amount of CA through Jacestorm+Loam (=late game). I really think you either move to 18 or move Fow to the board and play Thoughtseize. But BUG control is not the type of deck that can afford to eschew Fow.

[Holly]

Regarding LftL being countered, back when I was playing Threshold I won games on the back of countering Loam 2-3 times in a Row. People just don't realize that Dredge doesn't mean ''can't be countered by spell or abilities''.
Yep, just like I said. People should counter Loam way more often but thankfully they don't :).



16 Blue count for Fow means that most of the times Fow will be just clogging your hand, until you net massive amount of CA through Jacestorm+Loam (=late game). I really think you either move to 18 or move Fow to the board and play Thoughtseize. But BUG control is not the type of deck that can afford to eschew Fow.

I could see moving force to the sideboard in theory but so far in praxis I don't have the slots to do that at least not with the sideboard I'm playing at the moment.
I'd like to step my bluecount up for Force but again..slots :p (I'm allready playing the Kötter 61^^).
So for the moment till I can change something I'll have to live with the problem.. so far most of the times I have a Jace/Brainstorm to pitch (I can hear the cringe about the Brainstorm one).

[kiblast]

Yep, just like I said. People should counter Loam way more often but thankfully they don't :).



I could see moving force to the sideboard in theory but so far in praxis I don't have the slots to do that at least not with the sideboard I'm playing at the moment.
I'd like to step my bluecount up for Force but again..slots :p (I'm allready playing the Kötter 61^^).
So for the moment till I can change something I'll have to live with the problem.. so far most of the times I have a Jace/Brainstorm to pitch (I can hear the cringe about the Brainstorm one).

:laugh:

I'll give it a twist on cockatrice for sure.

[ZimAshe]

Played in a LGS legacy event with BUG last night. I take back everything bad I said about Standstill. The card was pretty amazing and I even played in the pseudo mirror match (he was playing UW Landstill). Over all I was very happy with the deck after adding the standstills. If anyone is interested in the rest of the matches or the deck list let me know.

[Holly]

I'm interested in an analysis since I still dislike standstill in a control shell in this meta (and I'm convinced mishras fabrik is garbage). But I'd be glad to be wrong..standstill is such a sweet card.

[danyul]

Holly I really like the direction your list is taking. Please do keep us updated on any further development...so I can netdeck your list and beat people up with it.

[wweenieking]

Holly, could you post your list with your most recent changes. I recently won an 80 person tournament with this deck and am happy with my list, but I'm always looking to spice it up. It would be tough for me to cut abrupt decay basically in favor of punishing fire, but they each have their plus and minus'.

Thanks!!

[Holly]

Allright guys, when I get home from work I'm gonna post my lists. Do you want just them or should I do some kind of write-up as I did here
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?27004-The-Voice-of-Germany&p=763873&viewfull=1#post763873
to see where I'm coming from / going towards too?

[danyul]

Holly, a write up would be very much appreciated. You don't have to be as thorough as your Voice of Germany primer because that is legitimately a lot of work. But reading your thoughts behind each card is both interesting, entertaining, and educational! I look forward to reading it whenever you post it.

[sdematt]

Yeah, someone post a list. I'm interested in seeing it as well. I've got my own list, but I'd like to see what other people are having success with as well.

-Matt

[Higgs]

I've been testing Jaco's list from the pimp thread, -2 cliques +2lands, and it's playing incredibly sweet in a TNN world. But I'm not sure if it's a better control deck than Miracles overall.

[Holly]

Okay here it is guys: 3h 40: of non stop working.
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?27422-Pernicious-Punishment&p=782371#post782371

[ZimAshe]

I'm interested in an analysis since I still dislike standstill in a control shell in this meta (and I'm convinced mishras fabrik is garbage). But I'd be glad to be wrong..standstill is such a sweet card.

First off for reference here is the deck list.


Creatures:3
3 Deathrite Shaman

Spells:33
4 Brainstorm
3 Innocent Blood
2 Spell Pierce
4 Thoughtseize
3 Abrupt Decay
1 Life from the Loam
4 Standstill
3 Liliana of the Veil
3 Pernicious Deed
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
3 Force of Will

Lands:24
2 Bayou
2 Creeping Tar Pit
1 Forest
1 Island
2 Mishra's Factory
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Polluted Delta
1 Swamp
1 Tropical Island
3 Underground Sea
3 Verdant Catacombs
3 Wasteland

Sideboard:13
1 Darkblast
1 Flusterstorm
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Pithing Needle
1 Spell Pierce
1 Krosan Grip
1 Maelstrom Pulse
1 Perish
1 Damnation
1 Garruk Relentless
1 Night of Souls' Betrayal
1 Force of Will


I realize that the side board does need some work. there are some slots that I want to adjust for certain match ups.

Round 1 Oops all spells.

This was my first time playing against the deck. I kept a reasonable hand with a DRS and a Thoughtseize. He won the die roll and got a Undercity Informer in play on turn one. My out was to top deck an Innocent Blood and didn't get there. So I scooped with out even playing a land as to not give him an information about what I was playing hoping that maybe he would sideboard incorrectly.

In:
Force of Will, Spell Pierce, Nihil Spell Bomb, Grafdigger's CAge
Out:
Pernicious Deed x 3, Liliana

On the play I keep a hand with FoW and DRS. He must've kept a weak hand because he said, "We'll try it." I play land and DRS and pass. He draws and moves to discard. I drew a Standstill for the turn. Played a land and standstill and passed. he disacarded again. I drew runner runner man lands and brought the beats with them for a while. At one point he attempted to go off and broke the standstill which let me draw into more counter and win fairly easily.

Game 3 he had the stone nuts and killed me before I played land.
0-1

Round 2 Oops all spells...again

He won the die and opted to draw which lead me to believe that he was on manaless dredge. I mulliganned to a pretty sweet had that had a couple of lands, a DRS and a Thoughtseize which I thought would be good for a dredge deck. I thoughtseized him turn one and saw Spy, Spy, chromemox, spirit guide, cabal therapy, dark rit, cabal rit. I thought to myself, "oh great this again." Since the mox was his only true source of mana I took it and passed. He drew, tanked for a second and passed. I drew a thoughtseize. I played a land and thoughseized him again, he drew a lotus petal. I wanted to ask him why he didn't play the petal but since it was his only true source of mana I took it, played DRS and passed. he drew and passed. I drew played a land and passed. he drew again and moved to discard. He discarded Lab Maniac. I shocked him for 2 at end step. We played a bit of draw go as I was lacking the green mana to exile the lab maniac. I finally drew it and during his and step exiled the lab maniac and he scooped.

Game 2 he opted to play and had the nuts and went off turn 1.

Game 3 I kept a hand with Fow, standstill, DRS and Innocent Blood. I forget how this game went but there was some draw go, he probed me and the game ended when I was beating down for 2 a turn with a Factory and my hand consisted of Force, Force, Standstill, Standstill, Innocent Blood, Innocent Blood.

1-1

Round 3 UW Landstill

He won the die roll (it really wasn't my night for that apparently). I kept a reasonable hand in the dark of a couple lands, thoughtseize, DRS, Liliana, Abrupt Decay and Innocent Blood. He played Flooded Strand and passed turn. I drew, tanked for a minute and played verdant catacombs and passed. I didn't want to crack right away for fear of stifle. At EOT he cracked so I did to in response and got a basic swamp to play around waste land. He got an island and brainstormed. Ok so probably not Delver. He draws, plays basic plains and passed the turn. I draw, play a land to play around Daze and thoughtseize. He Enlighten Tutors in response and gets Standstill. I'm laughing on the inside because now I know this is basically the mirror. he reveals 4 land and an irrelevant card so I make him discard it and pass. he drops a land and passes. I draw play factory and pass. He plays factory and passes. I waste his factory and get in for 2. he plays fairy conclave and passes. I waste his conclave and get in for 2 again. He's getting a little frustrated at this point. He drops another factory and passes. I get in for 2. He gets in for 2. We race back and forth a bit until he finally leaves his factory back to block. By this time I've drawn a Standstill of my own. So I attack and he animates and blocks his factory and pumps it to kill mine. I say ok, main 2 Innocent Blood. He draws three off of standstill, then he Brainstorms, didn't find the counter and IB resolves. I say ok, LftL get back Waste, Waste, Factory. Play my land and tap 2, he says, "Goyf?" I say, "No Standstill." He says, "Are you serious?!" I slam standstill and pass. Then it's a bit more of draw go I waste some of his lands then continue with the factory beats. Then Tar pit joins the party. He breaks the standstill by playing Elspeth and I force it. Man land beats and I get there.

In
Fow, Maelstrom Pulse, Garruk, Pithing Needle

Out
Abrupt Decay x 2, Deed x 2

Game 2 he was on the play and it was pretty much the same as game 1. Some land go. I've got 2 wastelands in my hand and am looking to waste him out but then he plays needle naming wasteland. Ok there goes that idea. I end up resolving a Liliana and then the next turn resolve a Jace. Then I play Garruk and make a wolf. After that it was pretty much over for him. He landed an Elspeth, made a guy then jumped it and attacked my Garruk so down he goes. but then the wolf, the tar pit and the factory all get in and take down Elspeth. I have a dark blast in hand and am a turn away from ultimating Jace. he swings the token into Jace and I darkblast it just because I can. after that he scoops.

2-1

Round 4 Reanimator

I was sitting next this guy the previous round so I knew what I was in for. I lost the die roll again and then mulliganed aggressively into something relevant. I knew that I was going to need disruption. he thoughtseized me turn one and took my Innocent Blood and I ripped a DRS off the top and slammed it. He laughed and said, "It was bound to happen." there was a little back an fourth with some digging, DRS was going to work on the spells in his yard to shock him for 2 a turn but I wasn't finding green mana. After we both ran out of instants and sorceries in the yard I started swinging in with factory and took game 1.

In
Nihil Spell Bomb, Gradiggers Cage, Pithing Needle, FoW, Spell Pierce

Out
Deed x 3, Abrupt Decay, Liliana

Game 2 he was on the play, I kept a pretty lousy hand but it had an Innocent Blood in it. He turn 1 thoughtseized me again and the Innocent Blood. he played a land and passed. I played DRS on turn three and he end of turn entombed Tidespout Tyrant and then Exhumed it on his turn. after that it was pretty much game over for me as I couldn't keep a permanent in play and I scooped it up.

Game three I kept the same configuration and drew my opening 7. I tanked for a while on keeping it. It was Liliana x2, DRS, Innocent Blood, Brainstorm, Underground, Spell Pierce. it was a risky keep but I kept it on the merit of brainstorm alone. I figured if I got thoughtseized again turn 1 I could hide the relevant cards and hopefully dig into some land. He played a land and passed so I brainstormed EOT and found land, land, innocent blood. I played my land, cast DRS which resolved and passed. I was feeling like I was in a pretty comfortable spot. Turn four it got a little crazy. He was lacking a black source I could tell because he entombed Grislebrand off of a lotus petal but then he ripped one off the top and exhumed grislebrand. I let it resolve. I go to untap, my board is 4 lands and a DRS. My hand is Innocent Blood, Innocent Blood, Spell Pierce, Brainstorm. I cast the first IB, he draws 7 and casts FoW. I say ok, Innocent Blood. "You are an evil, evil man." He tanks, then draws 7 more. He's now at 3 life and casts Daze. So I start tanking really hard trying to figure out how I can get him to cast the other FoW in his hand so that I can activate DRS for the win. the line I took was pay for the daze then he said he no more responses so I activated DRS to shock him for 2 before the sac putting him at one. He draws, discards to 7 and passes. I draw a Jace. I play a land and cast Jace and Brainstrom right away into another brainstorm and pass. Now I realized this after the fact but this is where I made my mistake that essentially cost me the game. He untaps and play Needle naming Jace. My hand is Spell Pierce and Brainstorm. I let needs resolve and go for the EOT brainstorm which he Dazes. What I should've done was untap and done it mainphase. oh well. I draw dead a few turns he tries to Show and Tell in a fatty but I pierce it and we end up going to a draw.

end of the night was 2-1-1 which was good enough for 6th place and a Threads of Disloyalty.
Sorry if this was wordy and didn't make much sense. I don't take notes during matches and I was relaying all of this through memory. Over all I was very happy with the deck and thought the Standstills worked well. You will actually be surprised how many people just don't want to play anything into a Standstill.

[Nastaboi]

Another GPT, easy 4-0-two ID's and then lost to a terrible flood in quarters. Happens.

I'm going to try some Blue Elemental Blasts in board as they give some more game in the most difficult MU's (Sneak and Show, Painter, Burn). I have played them before and they were nice, just can't fit everything in the SB. There will be another GPT next Saturday, so we'll see then if they were worth the slot.

[Cabs]

I won my local GPT with DeedStill. I was playing a standard list with 2 Snapcaster as the only creatures and then 2 Cliques in the board. My one-of Arcane Laboratory in the board was insane on the day - I played against OmniTell twice and TinFins once. I also got to Notion Thief against Enchantress :)

[dsck]

I played at same event as Nastaboi yesterday and managed to top4 with same list except for some sideboard changes. There were 40 players in total.

I lost in the semis to UWR Delver in 3rd game where he had triple wasteland :frown:

[R3D]

Hi Guys,

Long time lurker here. Playing this deck a while (4 i blood version). Today i started trying to merge the decklist of chimera and viridia (pernicious strixstill http://www.eternalcentral.com/team-eternal-presents-pernicious-strixstill-a-primer/ ) and the idea of incorporating shaman in bug landstill.
Started with brewing and came up with the concept list below. Im in doubt of the low amount of counters (more counters or snappy to double the counters). What do you Guys think?

3 trop
3 sea
1 bayou
8 fetch
4 mishra
2 tar pit
3 waste

4 standstill
3 deed
3 decay
4 Bs
4 fow
4 strix
4 Drs
1 cs
3 Pierce
2 lil
3 jace
1 lftl

Side
3 flusterstorm
2 clique
1 grafdiggers cage
2 disfigure
1 maelstrom pulse
1 blue elemental blast
1 golgari charm
2 engineered plague
2 thoughtseize

With kind regards,

[Nastaboi]

I play just 4 FoW 2 Snare MD, 2 Flusterstorm 2 BEB SB. You don't need that many counters, as you can answer basicly any resolved threat with other cards. I don't like Pierce in main at all, but I might SB some if I had room. I do play 3 Thoughtseize though, I find it better that most counters against Mystics and combo decks.

I do like 4 DRS in your list. What I don't like is Strix and lack of main deck Disfigure. Disfigure costs 50 % less than Trix or Decay, both in colored mana and total, which is a key factor in surviving against Delver decks. Strix is also counterproductive against Deed (so is DRS, I know, but you should at least lessen the dissynergy).

I finally won that trial and got my two byes to Paris. Didn't get to try out those Blue Elemental Blasts, but there were many matchups where I would have liked them, so I guess I'll keep them for time being.

[R3D]

Thanks for your reply; congrats on winning those byes!

I think you are right about the counter suite. You indeed play more protection in the form of seizes though.
I started to change the list because i had Some problems vs (uwr)tempo decks, even while playing 4 innocent blood. My experience is that i have the answers but havent got enough time to cast them (eg deed is 3 mana and about 2 mana to blow it, also need counters to let it resolve in most cases).
Maybe the 4 drs are enough to shore up te m/u. I guess ill playtest to update the list.

[warfordium]

The list:

3 Seas
3 Trops
1 Bayou
7 BUG fetchlands
1 Island
1 Swamp
3 Waste
4 Factories
1 Tar Pit

4 Baleful Strix
2 Snapcaster Mage

4 Fow
4 Brainstorm
2 Pierce
2 Snare
4 Standstill
3 Decay
3 Deeds
1 Loam
1 Disfigure
1 Diabolic Edict
1 Counterspell

3 Jace, tms
1 Liliana

SB
3 Thoughtseize
3 Vendilion
1 Flusterstorm
2 Golgari Charm
3 Extirpate
2 Perish


i ran this (or something close, see below) last night at the weekly local and went 3-1 (Beat Painter, UBr ANT, and American Delver. Lost to RUG, two lop-sided games and the game 3 was a typical RUG narrow victory where there's just enough pressure so you can't afford to play around daze or pierce).

changes:

Lands

-2 Factories
+1 Forest
+1 Wasteland

I'd keep the forest (lots of wasteland and blood moon around these parts), but switch to 3 factories and 3 wastelands.

Spells

-1 Counterspell
-1 Disfigure
+2 Dimir Charm

Dimir Charm is a nice card right now. My ANT opponent named Counterspell with Cabal Therapy and saw this instead… whoops. Killed a few Painter's Servants, Stoneforge Mystics, and Phyrexian Revokers with it as well. Haven't used the Wu Spy ability yet, but... the 2 cmc didn't seem to matter. The versatility is key!

-1 Jace
+1 Ashiok

ONLY because i opened one and wanted to try it out. only saw it once, against RUG, and he mulled to 5 on the draw. the first +2 was bolt, goose, goyf. took the goose, plus'd again and hit fetch, ponder, goyf. he conceded before i could minus it again… in the right place against a threat-light aggro control deck, this card isn't as awful as i'd assumed!

SB
-3 Extirpate
-2 Perish
+1 Flusterstorm
+1 Worm Harvest
+3 Surgical Extraction

there's (manaless) dredge and other balustrade decks in the neighbourhood so i prefer free extractions. the worm harvest was pet card syndrome, and removing perishes was incorrect—i should have remember that the elves/jund siblings always show up at this particular tournament.

solid list. very much enjoyed it—you all should give Dimir Charm a spin! I boarded in 3x -1/-1 effects against TNN alongside deeds, it was a fine matchup. strixes are still crucial in my estimation. the free card is too good. enjoyed getting to have snapcaster in the mix as well. i've missed that card.

[pandaman]

Nastaboi, how did you get on in Paris? Did you play this deck?

[Nastaboi]

Sure I did. I lost last round to horrendous mana flood when a win would have taken me to top 8. 30th place, 11-2-2. I'll write some more when I'm back home.

[pandaman]

Oh boy, well done on such a fantastic result, but commiserations on the ending of the tournament... I look forward to reading the report!

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

[Nastaboi]

The Source crashed when I was about to post it, but here's my list and mini report. I'll write a longer report with more non-MTG stuff on finnish website, but this shall do it here. The list:

8 fetch
3 sea
2 tropical
2 bayou
2 tar pit
3 factory
3 waste

4 drs
1 clique

3 liliana
3 jace

4 standstill
3 deed

4 brainstorm
2 snare
2 disfigure
3 decay
4 force

3 seize
1 loam

Side:

1 disfigure
1 damnation
1 loam
4 tarmo
2 clique
2 flusterstorm
2 blue elemental blast
2 surgical

The main changes I made were factory -> DRS and Counterspell -> Liliana. I felt I had too few colored sources but at the same time too many lands, so cutting a colourless source for DRS seemed natural. I made room in SB for blasts as they are good in matchups that need most help: burn and anything with Blood Moon.

R1-2: BYE

R3 Luca BUG Delver 1-1-1

I lost G1 for using the wrong ability of DRS (lifegain) in response to his removal. Several turns later, I would have been able to race him with Tar Pit if I had chose otherwise by then. G3 he drew his own Loam and Tar Pit before mine, and got to play control game against me. When I finally archieved control we were already on extra turns.

R4 Julien UW Planeswalker control 2-1

I mulled to five 1st game and was stuck on two lands. Won the other two without much effort.

R5 Peter BG 2-1

The worst matchup: a slow player. It took three minutes just to get his staff out of his back. I called the judge when he was pileshuffling for second time after winning G1, and he played a bit faster whenever there was a judge around. I played in super ultra turbo mode and finished him off just on time.

R6 Hilbert Esperblade 2-0

A great matchup, I just casually beat him.

R7 Rasmus RUG Delver 1-1-1

Infinite grind, once again stabilized on extra rounds but this time would not have necessarily won as he could have just drawn another bolt.

R8 Cyril Deathblade 2-0

Nothing to tell here. Getting into draw bracket was in a way good thing, as there were only good matchups for me.

R9 Vidianto 2-0

He was visibly upset when I refused to draw him into day 2. I won the race with 2 shamans and Tar Pit leaving me at 1. Then he kept a hand that was weak to Wasteland and didn't draw another coloured source in time. Tough luck for him, but I wanted to make top 8, not just day 2.

Finished day 1 with 7-0-2, 5-1 would have needed to make top 8.

R10 Josué Jund 2-1

He had Punishing fire going from the beginning. Every time I was about to stabilize, he drew BB Elf and finally grinded me out. He also played slowly, and I had just 20 minutes to win two games. I bought in goyfs and went to turbo mode, leaving 6 minutes for the third game. I wasted his manabase into dust, played 2 second turns and won on extra turns.

R11 Javier (eventual winner) BUG Delver 2-0

First game I took total control at two life, and gave him no chances second game. He was nice enough to scoop early and not to play them out, giving us both some rest and time to scout for other decks. He was wondering how I can have two draws even though I play so fast. Oh man, you really don't know!

R12 Paul Lands 2-1

I got 1st turn Deathrite all three games, but was left one instant short to killing him 1st game while he topdecked depts combo parts back to back. Jace took over two other games.

R13 Loic Reanimator 1-2

I got some disruption 1st game but he had the nuts. His draws were worse second game. Third game he mulled to five and I kept 2x force, snare, four lands. Two Thoughtseizes and two more land draws later he was able to animate Asher Rider, after which i instantly drew an Extraction. Four more dead draws later it was over.

R14 Louis UWR Mystic 2-0

I demolished him in quick two games. I think he saw it coming, because he counted my deck before 1st game, desperately trying to find any way to win even a game.

R15 Stefan Deathblade 0-2

I knew he was on a fair deck and keeped a land-heavy hand. I drew nothing but lands, but was still able to trade my shamans for his Clique and Confidant and play a Standstill. Except I drew nothing but land from Standstill or any other way, and his increasing swarm of little creatures took me over. G2 I kept four lands and three spells. Several turns later my graveyard had those three spells and a Loam, my board was five lands and my hand was six lands. Meanwhile my opponent mulliganed to five and naturally drew all the right basics to cast his spells.

Final record: 11-2-2, 30th place, 400$ and massive annoyance.
The best card: Deathrite Shaman
The worst card: Verdant Catacombs (for showing up in multiples when the least needed)

I will be trying 4th Jace again for the next tournament, moving third Clique to the side. I think that's the best I can do to eliminate mana flood - the next step would be adding some Ponders, and I don't want to go there yet. I didn't need blue blasts whole tournament, but I will leave them there for now at least at local events. I might also try replacing one Tarmogoyf with a more dedicated combo hate, Swan Song maybe, as I only ever bring three of them against non-combo matchups, namely RUG and Jund.

The deck is awesome, as long as you can beat the clock. I know you are bound to lose some games to flood from time to time, but that happening twice in a row in that very spot was just heartbreaking.

[theBloody]

Gratz on your performance. I'm still resisting to play DRS and thoughtseizes because of standstill dissynergy (playing snapcasters and spell pierces). I don't have much time to play now but at the end of March there will be moderately big tournament so I'll test if my list works.

[pandaman]

That is one of the most disgusting land floods I've ever read about. Condolences. You would have been in the Top 8 for sure had it not happened. Well done again on your result!

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

[wweenieking]

Nastaboi,

You seem to have some trouble with Delver decks, in particular BUG Delver. Are there any changes you are considering to help with those matchups? I'm not saying they are bad matchups, I'm just saying judging by how popular the tempo decks are you would want to crush those decks and yet a lot of your matches vs them are very very close. Thanks in advance for any input you may have.

[Nastaboi]

I'm not losing to BUG Delver, I'm just losing to deviant :wink: Anyway, BUG Delver is very consistent and can't be easily hated. It might very well be the best deck right now, and while you can tune a deck to get a good matchup against it, you will never have a great matchup against it. I'd just add another Disfigure as they hit their tempo most, but don't want to butcher my whole side just to get another percentage point. Second Loam is important as it helps you not to just lose against double Wasteland, but everything in main except Thoughtseizes is already good against them.

[Serbitar]

Gratz on your finish! I noticed you didn't play against any Miracles. How do you feel about that matchup?
(Also, do you by any chance remember whether your Lands opponent in R12 was on the RG-Gamble or the U-Intuition-TolariaWest version?)

[Nastaboi]

Miracles is a great matchup, I have never lost against it. They can't win against resolved Deed, and you can even deal with their resolved Jace with manlands and stuff. You can ignore Counterbalance or just Decay it, and you can slam Standstill any time as they have no board presence ever. Just watch for round clock, don't play Standstills into flash creatures and don't attack multiple manlands into Terminus and you're set.

The lands player was on U-Intuition-Tolaria West -version. He also had R for Punishing Fire and B for sideboard Confidant or something.

[Koplinchen]

Congratulations on your finish Nastaboi.

I am happy somebody is doing well with my favourite deck. Unless is miracle runing Blood Moon it is a fantastic matchup.

I was wondering how did you like 4 Standstill. Isn't is too many?

What do you think aobut runing 1-2 Snapcasters (can help you with the flood). With dredge it is any spell in the deck. (amazing with Surgical and Flusterstorm)

I alway played 24 lands 2 lftl 3still; I guess you like your manabase as it is?

[Nastaboi]

Even Blood Moon from Miracles isn't that scary. They only have one and have to burn a tutor to get it, and you'll have Decay ready for it by then. Standstill is awesome, I'd play six if I could. Less than three means less T2 Standstills. I have played Snapcaster and it's allways a possibility, but right now I like my other three-drops better. I do like my manabase as it is, but with less than four shamans I'd add more land. I like one Loam main, I will find it eventually if game goes long. The second one is on the board for not randomly losing to wasteland.

[H]

Nastaboi, would you mind sharing some of your sideboard strategy? I think most things are obvious on what you would bring in and when, but what do you generally take out?

[Nastaboi]

Actually I just writed a sb guide to my friend trying the deck. It can be found HERE (http://www.saunalahti.fi/~ihonej2/sbguide.txt). This guide assumes same MD as in Paris and following test SB:

1 disfigure
1 golgari charm
1 loam
3 tarmo
2 clique
2 flusterstorm
2 blue elemental blast
2 surgical
1 swan song

Just remember not to follow the guide too strict but rather adapt to your opponent's specific build, the way he plays and time left in the round. Also, feel free to ask/comment/critisize.

[Koplinchen]

Even Blood Moon from Miracles isn't that scary. They only have one and have to burn a tutor to get it, and you'll have Decay ready for it by then. Standstill is awesome, I'd play six if I could. Less than three means less T2 Standstills. I have played Snapcaster and it's allways a possibility, but right now I like my other three-drops better. I do like my manabase as it is, but with less than four shamans I'd add more land. I like one Loam main, I will find it eventually if game goes long. The second one is on the board for not randomly losing to wasteland.

Well I have been playing miracles for two years now and it is not quite like that. I play two Blood Moon without ET. Otherwise it is easy.

You have done a fantastic job with the SB-list but there are a few things I am not sure about;

ANT - we want to keep the blue count as high as possible. Jace isnt amazing but it is good. Esp. when we know his hand. Decay is quite terrible. (I know we can blow his LED) Liliana is definetly worse than Jace here. (she is only relevant after second/third use) Standstill can be tricky here - I lost many games 5 turns after resolved Standstill. :(
I do not like this matchup without Snapcaster. Shaman is the boss.



Thank you for your comment.

[emidln]

Well I have been playing miracles for two years now and it is not quite like that. I play two Blood Moon without ET. Otherwise it is easy.

You have done a fantastic job with the SB-list but there are a few things I am not sure about;

ANT - we want to keep the blue count as high as possible. Jace isnt amazing but it is good. Esp. when we know his hand. Decay is quite terrible. (I know we can blow his LED) Liliana is definetly worse than Jace here. (she is only relevant after second/third use) Standstill can be tricky here - I lost many games 5 turns after resolved Standstill. :(
I do not like this matchup without Snapcaster. Shaman is the boss.



Thank you for your comment.

Duress paired with your usual countermagic will beat ANT. As an aside, it's actually extremely good vs most combo decks.

[Nastaboi]

Against storm combo you'll never get to cast Jace, so it's only a random blue card to pitch. You can't cast Standstill early either, but after you have some pressure on board, you can play Standstill and leave some mana up, so it's marginally better. You'll already adding more blue cards than removing them, so I prefer cards that will sometimes get cast to ones you'll just keep as a force fodder. I don't like Decay that much either and don't always keep them in, even though they hit Swarm/Confidant as well.

Liliana is different because you can get her out turn 2 and start pressuring their hand immediately. Also, castable while keeping mana up. Storm combo isn't the strongest matchup and you are definitely an underdog preboard, but sideboarded games are slightly favourable, making the matchup about even.

I used to play Snapcasters before printing of True-Name, but Liliana is so much better against the metagame right now. I do like chaining Thoughtseizes with Snapcaster, but don't feel like trying him again until meta changes a bit.

[warfordium]

this list has been great for me (i.e. i haven't lost with it yet) against storm and omni:


//Artifact Creature (4)
4 Baleful Strix

//Creature (2)
2 Snapcaster Mage

//Enchantment (7)
3 Pernicious Deed
4 Standstill

//Instant (18)
3 Abrupt Decay
4 Brainstorm
1 Diabolic Edict
2 Dimir Charm
4 Force of Will
2 Spell Pierce
2 Spell Snare

//Planeswalker (5)
1 Garruk Relentless
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 Liliana of the Veil

//Sorcery (1)
1 Life from the Loam

//Land (24)
1 Bayou
1 Creeping Tar Pit
1 Forest
1 Island
3 Mishra's Factory
3 Misty Rainforest
1 Swamp
3 Tropical Island
3 Underground Sea
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Wasteland

SB: 2 Flusterstorm
SB: 2 Golgari Charm
SB: 1 Maelstrom Pulse
SB: 3 Surgical Extraction
SB: 3 Thoughtseize
SB: 1 Toxic Deluge
SB: 3 Vendilion Clique


notice the sideboard, though i could really use -1 Vendilion Clique +1 Surgical Extraction.

I'm playing 2x Dimir Charm instead of the 1/1 Innocent Blood/Counterspell split. Since you have no (good) targets for bolt or abrupt decay, not hitting instants has been a non-issue.

I'd take this to SCG Seattle in a couple of weeks, but there aren't enough board slots to deal with the randomness i'm sure to face in the early rounds. plus 9-10 rounds of landstill = kidney failure.

[kiblast]

Regarding sideboard plans, versus storm combo and combo in general, I've had success sideboarding out most of the high casting costs and some lands, and siding in lots of fast answers/discard and lots of Cliques. Post sideboard I try to switch to a fishlike gameplay. Assuming that I play

3 Deathrites
1 Clique
4 Factories
1 Tarpit

maindeck, I would side out 2 lands (wastelands) and 2-3 Jaces, some number of slow answers like -2 Deed (obviously this depends if I'm playing vs a deck that has Empty the Warrens as a possible win con) and some Decays and Disfigures (again, this depending if I expect Dark Confidants or Xantid Swarms. Disfigures come out first because Decays can deal with Needles as well). Bringing in a combination of:

Additional Cliques (I like to have 3 post side versus ALL combo and control decks)
1 Flusterstorm/ Swan Song is a fine choice as well as it counters Sneak Attack
3 Thoughtseize
Some Extirpates ( additional information are INVALUABLE in these match ups, plus is a handy tool vs Pif loops, and obv. reanimator)

Post side the deck is configured like a bug fish deck, with lots of disruption pieces and small sized critters. It's an alternative approach that I liked a lot.

PS. I don't really like sideboarding in Goyfs, I think Cliques are almost always your best bet… and Clique eot + Factory is exactly the same clock.

[rlesko]

Actually I just writed a sb guide to my friend trying the deck. It can be found HERE (http://www.saunalahti.fi/~ihonej2/sbguide.txt). This guide assumes same MD as in Paris and following test SB:

1 disfigure
1 golgari charm
1 loam
3 tarmo
2 clique
2 flusterstorm
2 blue elemental blast
2 surgical
1 swan song

Just remember not to follow the guide too strict but rather adapt to your opponent's specific build, the way he plays and time left in the round. Also, feel free to ask/comment/critisize.

I will preface this by saying I haven't played the deck but I was very curious about some SB techniques.

Against RUG, how come you leave FoWs in and take out Snare? Disfigure only hits delvers. Thoughtseize still seems live against them and the info seems like it would be very valuable. Also, Goyfs with Pernicious deed?

Why leave in decays against sneak and show?

Why leave in decays against storm (worried about carpet of flowers / xantid swarm)?

Why leave in decays against reanimator (I don't see many lists with animate dead anymore)?

[warfordium]

Against RUG, how come you leave FoWs in and take out Snare? Disfigure only hits delvers. Thoughtseize still seems live against them and the info seems like it would be very valuable. Also, Goyfs with Pernicious deed?

you deed on 1 for goose and delver (both sides). their tarmogoyf + your tarmogoyf + disfigure = one dead tarmogoyf.

not that i agree with the tarmogoyf plan (i prefer clique, which lets you deed on 2), but this part of the strategy is reasonable.

[warfordium]

Why leave in decays against sneak and show?

Why leave in decays against storm (worried about carpet of flowers / xantid swarm)?

Why leave in decays against reanimator (I don't see many lists with animate dead anymore)?

its for anti-hate permanents such as Pithing Needle, Defense Grid, bugs, bobs, etc. Storm players have the choice of playing out LEDs/Petals or losing them to discard—you can punish them with AD.

[Nastaboi]

Regarding sideboard plans, versus storm combo and combo in general, I've had success sideboarding out most of the high casting costs and some lands, and siding in lots of fast answers/discard and lots of Cliques. Post sideboard I try to switch to a fishlike gameplay.

Hey, that's exactly what I do. I used to sb out some Wastes when I played 24-25 land, but with present 23-land configuration I don't feel like taking unnecessary risk for screw. Also random waste can add up nicely with other disruption.


PS. I don't really like sideboarding in Goyfs, I think Cliques are almost always your best bet… and Clique eot + Factory is exactly the same clock.

Of course I like Clique more, but I feel more pressure is needed. Goyfs have some additional utility working as blockers in some matchups, and you can sb them in when you have to close the match with just couple of minutes in clock.


Against RUG, how come you leave FoWs in and take out Snare? Disfigure only hits delvers. Thoughtseize still seems live against them and the info seems like it would be very valuable. Also, Goyfs with Pernicious deed?

Against RUG, stopping their 1st threat at any cost is priority. Thus FoW and Disfigure. Disfigure only hits Delvers, but Snare only hits Goyfs on stack while Disfigure also works on resolved Delvers. Thoughtseize is awful when all their cards cost the same or even less, and you bolt yourself in progress. I have sided in both Clique and Goyf. Neither is good, but still better than alternatives. I prefer Goyf as Clique costs more and Goyf blocks 2/3 their creatures and lives where Clique just trades or chumps. However, some RUG players like to side in Submerge. In that case, Clique is slightly better.


Why leave in decays against sneak and show?

Blood Moon. Then you just have to keep BG up all the game. The good thing is, if you can kill their first Moon, they won't necessarily have much else and you have time to develop your own game plan.


Why leave in decays against storm (worried about carpet of flowers / xantid swarm)?

These and Confidants. They also hit LED, and bad but reasonably costed disruption is still better than 3-mana removal or 4-mana planeswalkers.


Why leave in decays against reanimator (I don't see many lists with animate dead anymore)?

They will surely bring in Pitching Needles, which are really good against you. One or two Decays should be sufficient though. Sometimes you might also see transformative SB plan where they bring in cheap beaters while leaving in some combo parts.

[fimo]

hi all. I have been playing BUG control for a while now (walkers build) and I have been very content with the deck. I was wondering for which MUs is standstill truly beneficial as compared to more counters/discard/removals and then close the game with planeswalkers. Delver and æter vial are more common than ever so I wonder how often you guys find standstill to be akward.
I personally dislike the amount of colorless mana sources/tap lands that standstill forces to include in the list.
I am testing a combo finish in the form of intuition -> thespian stage + dark depths + loam. One copy of loam is good in the deck anyway and intuition has some other fringe plays besides keeping the blue count up. Sometimes you just win the game out of nowhere but I have not decided whether it is too cute.
I look forward to hear you thoughts.

[FatPow]

So I don't have experience with this deck, but from an outsider perspective, I don't understand running Deathrite Shamans with Pernicious Deed and Standstill. Even if the Deathrite is the lone thing on the board with a Standstill down, the graveyard will run out of instants and sorceries so quickly it would seem. And then if you have to use a Pernicious Deed, he will die... I also don't understand the Wastelands, we're not a RUG Delver tempo deck, we're slow, and our land drops matter more to us. Why would we try to make them not be able to play spells when there's a Standstill down anyway?

What about something like this:


2 Faerie Conclave
4 Creeping Tar Pit
1 Bayou
2 Tropical Island
2 Swamp
3 Island
2 Forest
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Verdant Catacombs

4 Veteran Explorer

4 Pernicious Deed
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
4 Abrupt Decay
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Standstill
2 Dismiss
3 Counterspell
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm


With a sideboard divided into anti-Delver decks with Innocent Blood, and anti-combo decks with Flusterstorm. The main deck is ambiguous between anti-combo and anti-fair deck.

[warfordium]

So I don't have experience with this deck, but from an outsider perspective, I don't understand running Deathrite Shamans with Pernicious Deed and Standstill. Even if the Deathrite is the lone thing on the board with a Standstill down, the graveyard will run out of instants and sorceries so quickly it would seem. And then if you have to use a Pernicious Deed, he will die... I also don't understand the Wastelands, we're not a RUG Delver tempo deck, we're slow, and our land drops matter more to us. Why would we try to make them not be able to play spells when there's a Standstill down anyway?

What about something like this:


2 Faerie Conclave
4 Creeping Tar Pit



i love me some man lands, but thats a lot of non-T1 Veteran explorers. i started to brew up a faerie conclave Ur landstill list a while back, but its just better as american with delver and geist and factories.

the main reason to run jace landstill is deed. before return to ravnica it was hard to survive to land deed and wipe the board (on the same turn) in the face of geese, delvers, and stifle. in our playgroup's testing, baleful strix started to bridge the gap but was too susceptible to removal.

then came abrupt decay and deathrite, both of which helped in a couple of ways.

fast aggro (zoo, goblins, merfolk), which was already suffering due to batterskull were further nerfed by a) uncounterable removal, b) a t1 blocker that survived lackey, and c) some incidental life gain. it also made team america viable again and made some competition for RUG Delver.

so, your options are to lean on abrupt decay to get to deed mana, or to lean on deathrite shaman. i prefer the former with strix and snapcaster—they both immediately gain value and you're happy to use them as mini-fogs—it huts less to lose them after a deed.

i'd like to know how games play out with deathrite shaman from those pilots who use him alongside deed.

finally, as for Wastelands, they do win you games on the basis of loam lock. my post-board wins against RUG seem to come from keeping them off bolts (their usual finisher) by keeping them off red via wasteland and/or extraction. there are also some problem lands like opposing factories, opposing wastes, and nowadays Dark Depths which you have to be able to handle—keeping blade lists from tar pits/jace mana is also important. i wish i could play 1.5 because they don't make coloured mana, yet you want to see them midway though a game.

[Nastaboi]

i'd like to know how games play out with deathrite shaman from those pilots who use him alongside deed.


You play Deathrite Shaman. They remove it, which means they can't develop their board that turn. You're traded 1-for-1 and gained some tempo.

You play Deathrite Shaman. They have to commit on board, you play Deed and trade 3-for-2 or just 2-for-2 and they are low on threats.

You play Deathrite Shaman. They play some threats, but you answer with other removal or planeswalkers and Shaman starts eating their life total.

You play Deathrite Shaman. They have next to nothing, and you shuffle your Deed back with Jace/Brainstorm.

My point is that planeswalkers and Standstill gives you so much card advantage, that you can just burn your Shamans/Brainstorm/Deeds/removal early to survive to midgame and let your big cards take over. You can sacrifice some card advantage for tempo, you don't have to milk every percentage point from Shaman/Deed/Brainstorm early on. For the same reason I want my curve to start from one, not from two.

[Koplinchen]

Hey Nataboi, (and everybody)

I really like the deck. I played it yesterday and for the first time in years I managed 0:3 -> bye. I did not always played optimaly. Never mind.

A few things I have noticed:

1) Clumsy draws. Often your hand are really sketchy. We can catch up with deed and standstill but somtimes we cant.

2) Sometimes there is nothing we can do - double wateland, double daze or pierce and some threads. Pernicious Deed is too precious to play it into daze but sometimes ther is no other possibility. Way too often we can't play around it.

3) We must play either shaman or some basics. I prefer shaman. (there no way not runing basics NOR shaman)

4) I have always played two Loam. I am not saying it is perfect set - but Loam is not that much about grinding as it is about keeping our land drops. Especialy when we think aoubt the point 2.

5) I love Standstill - but as we all know it is bad against good players and good against bad players. It happened to me so many times - I start play land, opponets play one and then I cast standstill - resolves. He plays lands like a pro. I miss mi next five landrops. How to deal with that?

6) Goyf in the board are just amazing. Board games that take 5mins (shuffling included?). Yes please!

7) We can deal with anything but sometimes we do not have the right cards for the right time. Decay, Disfigure, Deed, Snare. Fow... But sometimes you need something else.
I always compare it with Miracles which is the other deck I play - it can not deal with artifacts or enchantments but for W it wipes the board out. It even kill mother+revoker which is difficult for us to deal with. (ok they have a hard time with mother+teeg - we dont); my point is that their card selection is amazing - ponders nad tops+fetches and cards that are simply more flexible really make the difference. Not to mention the basic lands.

8) I still do not understand Spell Snare. It is good when we are on draw and they play something turn two, against Mystic, Snapcaster, Hymn, Infernal Tutor... What else? Pierce counters everything (non-creature) early on (SDT, Hymn, Vial, Thoughtseize, Natural Order, Jace; after board Choke, CAtaclysm...) and almost everything that cost 3+ later (with wasteland). I am not criticising - I just want to understand :-)


For the reference here is my decklist from the times before TNN: (I admit EE are probably not viable anymore)

4shaman
2caster
3standstill
4brainstorm
3fow
2cspell
2spierce
2disfigure
4decay
2ee
3lili
3jace
2life

4sea, 2tropico, 2bayou, 4wasteland, 3mishra, 1ctp, 8fetch

side:
3goyf
3tseize
3flusterstorm
1surgical
1spellbomb
1darkblast
1plague
2dedd.


I really want this deck to work!

Tomáš

[warfordium]

You play Deathrite Shaman. They remove it, which means they can't develop their board that turn. You're traded 1-for-1 and gained some tempo.

You play Deathrite Shaman. They have to commit on board, you play Deed and trade 3-for-2 or just 2-for-2 and they are low on threats.

You play Deathrite Shaman. They play some threats, but you answer with other removal or planeswalkers and Shaman starts eating their life total.

You play Deathrite Shaman. They have next to nothing, and you shuffle your Deed back with Jace/Brainstorm.

My point is that planeswalkers and Standstill gives you so much card advantage, that you can just burn your Shamans/Brainstorm/Deeds/removal early to survive to midgame and let your big cards take over. You can sacrifice some card advantage for tempo, you don't have to milk every percentage point from Shaman/Deed/Brainstorm early on. For the same reason I want my curve to start from one, not from two.

thanks for this. i bet the T2 disfigure into standstill is nice to hit with a deathrite on board…

there's a fair amount of wasteland and painter in Vancouver's legacy scene so i'm inclined to swap a couple of duals for basics, but i'll try your deck structure out sometime soon. your blue blasts in the board are an efficient card when moon, burn, bolts, and blasts are major spoilers to the deck.

[Nastaboi]

I strongly suggest staying away from basic lands. Adding couple of basics doesn't make you more likely to survive Blood Moon, but it does make you more vulnerable to Wasteland. You can't really fetch basics early and spells off them. If you have two basics in play, you can't cast all your cheap spells off them. If you have a basic and a dual and they waste your dual, you're worse off than with two duals. Sometimes they do have two or three wastes in a row and you just lose, but with basics they don't even need those wastes as you can't cast the spell you need anyway.

[warfordium]

I strongly suggest staying away from basic lands. Adding couple of basics doesn't make you more likely to survive Blood Moon, but it does make you more vulnerable to Wasteland. You can't really fetch basics early and spells off them. If you have two basics in play, you can't cast all your cheap spells off them. If you have a basic and a dual and they waste your dual, you're worse off than with two duals. Sometimes they do have two or three wastes in a row and you just lose, but with basics they don't even need those wastes as you can't cast the spell you need anyway.

in a 3 DRS build i can get behind this. i tried 2x Kitchen Finks in the board yesterday knowing there were 2x Merfolk, 2x Burn, 1x Miracles in the tournament yesterday, but found myself unable to cast them having fetched basic swamp and island against burn as a hedge against Price.

i should just give up the burn matchup.

new thought: how hard would it be to shoehorn Depths/Stage into this shell?

[kiblast]

i should just give up the burn matchup.

new thought: how hard would it be to shoehorn Depths/Stage into this shell?

Hydroblast is ok if you are really concerned about this matchup. In a ur burn infested meta I would not run BUG Landstill anyways. If it is just a marginal presence in your metagame you can just ignore it. Goyf helps a lot speeding your clock (this is probably the only matchup where Goyf is superior to Clique, because you just need a fast clock here), probably much more than Hydroblast.

Depths/Stage? You need to run 2-3 Intuition, and at least 2 turns to assemble it if your opponent doesn't have Wasteland… a bit clunky if you don't run Exploration or Mox Diamond. While I can see a BUG Loam deck work, it doesn't belong in a Landstill shell imho.

[Adryan]

-Some thoughts from someone who played this deck a lot on Magic Online with good success a few months ago:

- Against Miracle slamming a Turn 2 Standstill when they have SDT is a good way to lose the game, unless the miracle pilot is bad.
They make more land drops, find more relevant stuff (counter, threats) and will EOT Brainstorm or StP your Mishra's Factory when you have 7 cards. Needless to say that with all the card quality they got you will lose the counterwar for their jace. GG.

- I don't like Deathrite Shaman/ Baleful Strix in this deck because then you cant play your best Removal, which is Innocent Blood.

- I see a lot of people playing 3 Wastelands, which in my eyes is just wrong. The losses you get because you are colorscrewed will occur much more often than the benefit you get from punishing your opponent for keeping a bad hand.

My list plays 1 Cepahild Coliseum, 1 Cabal Pit and 1 Wasteland and 1 Intuition to search for them with Life from the Loam. Both lands produce mana and are really powerful with Life from the Loam. Cabal Pit kills almost every threat against Jund, Death and Taxes etc.
Cephalid Coliseum is an Ancestral Recall every turn with Life from the Loam. These are tools a Controldeck wants. Colorproducing Lands that have a powerful effect, not random 0 mana Stone Rains that make your manabase worse. I understand the fact that this deck needs Wasteland against opposing Manlands, especially with Standstill, but few decks play Manlands anyway and only playing 1 Wasteland will result in a more consistent and powerful deck.

[pandaman]

Adryan, mind sharing your current list? I, too, am more about creature-less Landstill builds, at least pre-board.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

[Admiral_Arzar]

I'm looking into building this deck as it seems like a good metagame predator against Miracles, TNN.dec, etc. My question for y'all is, why no Sensei's Divining Top? It allows insane sculpting under Standstill and also provides the ability to sideboard Counterbalance, which is great hate against Burn and Storm to name a couple of matchups.

[Nastaboi]

My question for y'all is, why no Sensei's Divining Top? It allows insane sculpting under Standstill and also provides the ability to sideboard Counterbalance, which is great hate against Burn and Storm to name a couple of matchups.

1) It's not blue. I'd play Ponder before this to keep blue count up.

2) The deck already has 4 Brainstorm, 4 Standstill and Jaces. Which of these are you going to cut? You have to play spells with an effect, too.

3) With the amount of card draw, you don't need that much selection as you'll eventually draw what you need.

4) The deck durdles already much and has time management problems. I don't want another thing that has to be executed every turn.

5) Counterbalance would be bad in all matchups where you keep Deeds in. I like more dedicated SB cards against Storm and Burn (some of which also overlap).


8) I still do not understand Spell Snare. It is good when we are on draw and they play something turn two, against Mystic, Snapcaster, Hymn, Infernal Tutor... What else? Pierce counters everything (non-creature) early on (SDT, Hymn, Vial, Thoughtseize, Natural Order, Jace; after board Choke, CAtaclysm...) and almost everything that cost 3+ later (with wasteland). I am not criticising - I just want to understand :-)

Spells I like to counter with Snare:

1) Hymn. The most common target. Pierce usually works here too, but not allways.
2) Infernal Tutor. Would be #1 but is not that played. Spell Pierce would not work most of time as they can pay for it and still go off.
3) Tarmogoyf
4) Snapcaster
5) Dark Confidant/Exhume/Library/Rest in Peace/Price of Progress/other seldom played good card
6) Stoneforge Mystic. I don't care if they resolve one as I can just deal with the equipment, but I'll still counter it if I happen to have it.

Spells I'd like to counter with Pierce:

1) Sneak Attack
2) Show and Tell
3) Hymn
4) Top (works only on play)
5) Natural Order

So there is one matchup where Pierce is considerably better. But the main problem is that you want to drag game long, and while you have to play cheap spells that get you there, you want those spells to be relevant late game also. Snare and Disfigure still trade 1-for-1 late turns when Pierce will be Force fodder at best. Snare is the worst card in the deck, but its alternative needs to be something 1) blue 2) cheap 3) preferably distruptive. I do have played Pierce, found it really dissapointing and cut it. Later I added two Spell Snares and started winning.

[Tea]

But most of the Spell Snare targets can also be dealt with by any normal removal spell, whereas most of the Spell Pierce targets are combo pieces. Not that I'm a proponent of Spell Pierce, but Spell Snare is clearly - as you've said - the weakest card in the deck.

[Nastaboi]

If they only were a cheap blue removal spell. Just waiting them to print that blue lightning bolt.

[warfordium]

If they only were a cheap blue removal spell. Just waiting them to print that blue lightning bolt.

but then surely one would just play UR Delver…

[Jay_Gatz]

Spell snare is the most efficient card to keep the board clear for us to play a turn two standstill, especially on the draw.

[th3 w1z4rd]

Spell snare is the most efficient card to keep the board clear for us to play a turn two standstill, especially on the draw.

Playing a turn 2 Standstill is not the objective. Playing a Standstill in a situation where we either have strong board advantage or can leverage the Standstill into a significant resource advantage is the objective. I can't tell you how many times turn 2 Standstill didn't go so well for me when I was a noob playing this deck. Even turn 2 Mishra's Factory into Standstill when the opponent has no board presence is no guarantee of success considering the number of decks that play Wastelands and the variance inherent in the game. Sometimes you play a turn 2 Standstill and your opponent laughs as you are forced to discard cards as they make twice as many land drops as you do. Them's the bad beats but my point is Standstill needs to wait until you really want it, like Brainstorm. I used to be so hardcore about card advantage that I ran 3 Standstill 3 Ancestral Vision 4 Brainstorm but I found it rather ineffective as well as a nonbo. Here is my newest list that I have been having great success with.

3 Mishra's Factory
3 Underground Sea
3 Tropical Island
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Misty Rainforest
1 Creeping Tar Pit
1 Island
1 Swamp
1 Scalding Tarn
2 Wasteland
1 Bayou

4 Abrupt Decay
4 Force of Will
1 Counterspell
4 Brainstorm
2 Spell Pierce
1 Flusterstorm
1 Diabolic Edict

2 Tombstalker

1 Maelstrom Pulse
3 Innocent Blood

4 Pernicious Deed
4 Standstill

3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Liliana of the Veil
1 Garruk Relentless

SB: 2 Duress
SB: 2 Sadistic Sacrament
SB: 3 Extirpate
SB: 1 Virtue's Ruin
SB: 1 Flusterstorm
SB: 1 Life from the Loam
SB: 2 Inquisition of Kozilek
SB: 1 Krosan Grip
SB: 2 Tormod's Crypt

[Jay_Gatz]

I didn't say it was always the goal, I was pointing out a strength of spell snare


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Adryan]

Because some guys asked me a while ago about my decklist. I played and tuned it some months ago, won some local events, some dailies on Magic Online etc. but nothing really big. I think it's a really powerful but complicated deck, and deserves to be played a lot more. I stopped playing because there are some fringe decks like Goblins, Burn, Painter, Dredge,Loamdecks etc. that are very hard to win. You also lose to some Wasteland nutdraws, because you can't (yes you can't, it makes your deck less consistent) play basics. Those MU's felt very disappointing and i didn't want to hope for good pairings every tournament. Nevertheless it's a really strong deck that has a positive MU against the whole DTB section and even crushes some DTB like Death and Taxes and Jund. About the last I'm totally sure, because i played and tested it a lot. One way to improve all the bad MU's is to somehow incorporate the Thespian Stage Combo. Before really tuning such a list i switched to Miracles, which doesn't have so many good MU's like this deck but has a lot of 50/50 MU's and very few bad MU's. I would have switched in a heartbeat at GP Paris Day 2 to this deck, because when the stupid players that think that Dredge, Burn, Goblins, Loamdecks etc. are competitive decks are gone then it's much better than Miracles.

Anyway here is my list:

1 Wasteland
1 Creeping Tar Pit
1 Cephalid Coliseum
1 Cabal Pit
3 Mishra's Factory
4 Polluted Delta
3 Tropical Island
2 Misty Rainforest
3 Verdant Catacombs
1 Bayou
4 Underground Sea

2 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Brainstorm

3 Abrupt Decay
4 Innocent Blood
3 Pernicious Deed

2 Counterspell
3 Snapcaster Mage

4 Force of Will
3 Standstill
1 Worm Harvest
4 Jace TMS
1 Liliana
1 Life from the Loam
1 Intuition

SB:
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Pernicious Deed
3 Vendilion Clique
4 Flusterstorm
4 Thoughtseize
1 Duress
__________

SB may seem kind of dumb, but it was the best i could get figured out. You have to accept your bad MU's, there is no point in making an overall 10/90 with f. ex. 5 slots a 30/70 MU. Just concentrate yourself on the good MU's like the whole DTB section and combo (with the SB it's an overall very good MU). Please also note that this build was before TNN so playing 2 Lilianas and 3 Jace is better.

If you have any questions, feel free to PM me, ask me on Magic Online or post here.

[H]

A little late, but I took BUG Landstill to SCG Dallas two weeks ago and took 49th place with a 6-3 record.

I essentially played Nastaboi's list:


4 Misty Rainforest
4 Polluted Delta
3 Underground Sea
2 Tropical Island
2 Bayou
2 Creeping Tar Pit
3 Mishra's Factory
2 Wasteland
1 Cabal Pit

4 Deathrite Shaman
1 Vendillion Clique

3 Liliana of the Veil
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

4 Standstill
3 Pernicious Deed

4 brainstorm
2 Spell Snare
2 Disfigure
3 Abrupt Decay
4 Force of Will

3 Thoughtseize
1 Life From the Loam

Side:
1 Disfigure
1 Golgari Charm
1 Life From the Loam
3 Tarmogoyf
2 Vendillion Clique
2 Flusterstorm
2 Blue Elemental Blast
2 Surgical
1 Swan Song


My losses were to UR Delver, Miracles, and Elves. I beat D&T, Burn, RUG Delver, Reanimator, and Mono-Red Sneak Attack.

The loss to UR was due to me being an idiot and not boarding in Surgicals to get rid of Prices, so eventually he draws enough Snapcasters to Price me out.

The loss to Elves I essentially got nut drawn, every time I countered or made him discard a Glimpse or NO, he drew another or just drew the Craterhoof. To be honest, I am pretty sure I just don't know how to beat Elves, since it seems I should actually have a pretty decent matchup but I just never win.

The Miracles loss bothered me, it really should have been a draw, but I misplayed in turn one of extras, not tapping my DRS for mana to activate a Factory after my opponent had Brainstormed. I forgot that he had because I felt like I could win and if I had my Trop untapped, I could have Spell Snared his Stoneforge that he played after a Miracled Terminus and it would have ended up a draw.

Force of Will was very underwhelming on the day, it mostly was in my hand with no other Blue card, but it did get hardcast a few times on the day. I am going to continue to try to refine this deck, I feel like too often though, I had too many Standstills in my hand that I simply did not want to cast.

I am going to be testing the following changes to the main:
-1 DRS
+1 Trop
-1 Standstill
-1 Deed
-1 Jace
-1 Liliana
+1 Clique
+3 Goyf
-4 Force
+2 Sensei's Diving Top
+2 Spell Pierce

Some of these are kind of just (bad) ideas but I want to see how they work out. I am going to put the Forces into the board, probably with the 3rd Deed. I'll let you guys know how it goes.

[Adryan]

I think a sample size of one tournament is too low to make more than 1-2 changes to a decklist.

[H]

I think a sample size of one tournament is too low to make more than 1-2 changes to a decklist.

I actually agree 100%, that was too much. I still did well in my local, but I will be rolling back the changes, with the exception of the Tops. Those preformed extremely well and did exactly what I felt I needed them to: dig for answers, aid in finding places to dredge profitably, and make land drops.

[theBloody]

Long time no see my fellow BUG controllers.

Note:
My decks contains exactly zero Standstills. I scrolled back in this thread and it seems that there were lists without Standstills before (eg. Ancestral Visions version) so I hope you wouldn't mind my post here. I played Standstills and Mishra's Factory but weren't satisfied with them recently.

I played in small tournament. Total of 26 participants, top 12 prizes (organisator expected more players :-(). Cut to top 8.
I ended out of top 8 (9th) as the only one with 4:2 record. So yeah, that is it.

Anyway. I'm very satisfied with list so that is the main reason for my post. I took inspiration mainly from here (http://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=6242&d=235855&f=LE). Game plan was to stabilize board and resolve Jace or Intuition for the win. I had two reasons to play Intuition package: 1) I wanted to have access to quick win condition in mid to late game (Worm Harvest), 2) Access to Loam + Wasteland combo to lock out greedy manabases. Worm Harvest also give me nice edge against control decks.

NO Creatures BUG:

4 Force of Will
3 Spell Pierce
1 Counterspell
2 Thoughtseize
1 Duress

4 Innocent Blood
3 Pernicious Deed
3 Abrupt Decay

4 Brainstorm
2 Ponder

3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Liliana of the Veil

2 Intuition
1 Worm Harvest
1 Life from the Loam

4 Polluted Delta
3 Misty Rainforest
2 Verdant Catacombs
3 Underground Sea
2 Bayou
2 Tropical Island
2 Wasteland
2 Creeping Tar Pit
2 Island
1 Forest
1 Swamp

SB: 3 Surgical Extraction
SB: 3 Duress
SB: 1 Spell Pierce
SB: 2 Notion Thief
SB: 1 Raven's Crime
SB: 2 Golgari Charm
SB: 1 Abrupt Decay
SB: 1 Darkblast
SB: 1 Drown In Sorrow


Matches:
R1: RUG Thresh - 1:2 loss - G1 win (Worm Harvest), G2 loss (double Delver), G3 (Mongoose)
R2: BW Stoneblade - 2:1 win - G1 loss (Thalia + Karakas), G2 win (Survived Cataclysm thanks to Loam + Innocent Blood and Worm Harvested him), G3 win (Jace's ultimate)
R3: Shardless BUG - 1:2 loss - G1 loss (just Shardless things), G2 win (Notion Thief his Visions), G3 loss (my Deed got Golgari Charmed)
R4: Mono U Ninjastill - 2:1 win - G1 loss (Ninjaed), G2 win (Notion Thief), G3 win (Jace's ultimate)
R5: Shardless BUGr - 2:0 win - G1 + G2 win (he didn't found answer to my Tar Pit)
R6: Deathblade - 2:0 win - G1 win (double Wasteland + Jace's ultimate), G2 win (Loam + Wasteland + Harvest)

As you can see I didn't faced any pure control or tribal or combo deck. This should be noted when evaluating deck.

Today's pros and cons:
+ Notion Thief - Not gonna cut him. I was expecting more Treasure Cruise (only Ninjastill played it), but he still rocked because of Visions, Jaces and Brainstorms.
+ Innocent Blood - The only situation where I wished to have Disfigure instead was against manlands. Wasteland solved this problem (if found in time).
+ No creatures - People held dead Decays and Swords all day long. They often didn't siding them out because they didn't saw enough on my deck.
+ Loam + Waste - Resolving Intuition for ultimate blowout.

- Spell Pierce - Very underwhelming. Sided them out almost every game. Guess they are for other matchups.

Conclusions:
The deck felt very strong. Especialy against greedy manabase. Basics where relevant because they let me develop board, cast Intuition for Loam, cast Deed and other stuff. The changes I'm considering right now are -1 Island +1 Wasteland and -1 Duress (md) +1 Thoughtseize. Also I will keep testing Ponder. This slot is potentially for Dig Through Time/Treasure Cruise.

[FoolofaTook]

@theBloody

That's an interesting list however you're going to go to time against Miracles way too often and you're going to lose game 1 against Miracles while going to time way too often.

The list does have play against a lot of the meta but not being able to put Miracles down in a timely fashion is really bad in this meta. The Elves matchup is a bit iffy also, although if you get them past turn 3 you've won the game.

[Bobmans]

So anyone still running/working on this deck? Seems awesome, but a bit slow in the current meta?

[nodahero]

I'm sure there are however, in the current format the deck lacks the efficency to go toe-to-toe with its tier 1 competition.

The deck needs to lower its curve to have a chance in the current environment and that simply isn't possible in this deck.

[H]

So anyone still running/working on this deck? Seems awesome, but a bit slow in the current meta?

I haven't sleeved this up in a while, but the UR match up was bad before the printing of Cruise. I can't only imagine how bad it is now.

Problem is this is an attrition deck, which isn't really all that effective if your opponent can just draw 3 a few times. Versus Stoneforge decks you'll still be in a favorable position as long as you can somehow deny them Cruise.

I had thoughts of a redesigned version of this, without Standstill and adding Cruise, but I never got the time to work on it. The more I think of it though, the more I feel it wouldn't make any of the problem matchups better.

[Nastaboi]

Me and my friend took the deck to a 100-player event. I went 5-2 and my friend started 4-0 beating three or four UR Delvers only to lost final three rounds. I lost 1st round against UR Delver to a small mistake and won against Sneak and Show, Stoneblade, Burn, Reset High Tide and Painter. 2nd loss was against Infect. The list:

4/2/2 fetch
2/2/2 dual
1 island
1 swamp
3 mishra
2 tar pit
2 waste

4 shaman
3 lily
3 jace

2 seize
2 pierce
3 disfigure
3 decay
3 deed
4 force

4 bs
3 standstill
2 cruise
1 loam

SB:
3 tarmo
3 BEB
2 swan song
2 flusterstorm
2 nihil spellbomb
2 clique
1 disfigure

- I got sick losing to Blood Moon and decided to add some basics, cutting a colorless land and thus keeping the same colored mana ratios. The mana was good, but I really missed 3rd wasteland. I will try 3 waste/2 factory split next and see how it fares.

- I switched back from Snares to Pierces as my 1cc counter of choise and while I still don't love them, I think I'm gonna hold on Pierces for a while.

- I went down to two Thoughtseize and upped MD Disfigure count. As it turned out, UR Delver was actually a good matchup now while Miracles have become stronger and more difficult matchup with MD Pyroblasts and such. I think I'll revert the black 1cc split back and might even add another Thoughtseize on board.

- I went overboard with Swan Songs against Sneak and Show. With MD Pierces and manabase that don't autolose to Blood Moon, they are no longer needed.

- I thought I might use Spellbombs to keep opposing Cruises in check in addition to them being there against dedicated graveyard decks, but they were too low of an impact to find room in those matches. I'll switch back to Surgicals which are better against Loam decks.

- I lost to Infect. The deck is really scary. I was suggested Darkblast which should be good against UR Delver while not that good against other Delver decks. Additional Wasteland helps too against their best threat.

Suggested new list:

4/2/2 fetch
2/2/2 dual
1 island
1 swamp
2 mishra
2 tar pit
3 waste

4 shaman
3 lily
3 jace

3 seize
2 pierce
2 disfigure
3 decay
3 deed
4 force

4 bs
3 standstill
2 cruise
1 loam

SB:
3 tarmo
3 BEB
0 swan song
1 seize
2 flusterstorm
0 nihil spellbomb
2 surgical
2 clique
1 disfigure
1 darkblast

[theBloody]

@theBloody

That's an interesting list however you're going to go to time against Miracles way too often and you're going to lose game 1 against Miracles while going to time way too often.

The list does have play against a lot of the meta but not being able to put Miracles down in a timely fashion is really bad in this meta. The Elves matchup is a bit iffy also, although if you get them past turn 3 you've won the game.

Miracles are fine matchup. Deed > Enreants. Decay > Counterbalance. Worm harvest > Terminus/Counters. The only thing that should worry you is Council's Judgment, but you have counters too, you know. Sorry for late answer.

My last two tourneys I went 4-1 and 2-2-1. Beat Goblins, Enchantress, Mono R stompy, UR delver, URW delver, Reanimator. Lost to Elves (1:2), BUG aggro (1:2), ANT (1:2). Drawing with DnT (g3 was very winable).

Maindeck changes from previously posted list are:
-1 Duress, -1 Spell Pierce, -1 Liliana, -1 Island
+1 Thoughtseize, +2 Dimir Charm, +1 Verdant Catacombs

Sideboard is different. Generally I want cards against tribal/little guys (Engineered Plague, Golgary Charm, Drow in Sorrows) and combo (Surgical Extraction, Duress, Spell Pierce).

So this deck doesn't utilize todays popular Treasure Cruise, we have Intuition here. Once it resolve and game is going from mid to late we won. Sometimes I felt that lack of pressure is missing but I dont think there is way to fix it really. I would gladly include some kind of rave card advantage (Cruise/Dig/Standstill) but that would mean removing Intuition package and put in more ways to close game, so probably also removing Innocent Blood.
No changes to maindeck planned. Dimir Charm was good most of time. Sometimes its two manacost was problem when UR delver hold Daze + Pierce, but I couldn't think about other card except Envelop I wanted here more and Envelop is not flexible enough for maindeck.
I'm glad you guys are still interested in playing true BUG control. Keep it up.

[thefreakaccident]

I had tried fitting veteran explorer into Uw Miracles with a mild green splash, and desert. It wasn't that bad tbh, and desert would still be good in today's meta, but I really want to try and fit it into here, somewhat trying to make a hybrid between landstill and Nic-fit. The way I see it, blue would allow for complete abuse of explorer, especially with cruise.



I sI will post a list in a few days after I've had a chance to test things.

[Ahtii]

Hi , Just recently bought last pieces for the deck and started playing it. For now , I have been playing TNN as substitute to Sideboard Tarmogoyf (mainly budget reasons) But noticed that I like TNN in board a lot. Do I even want tarmogoyf?! (TNN + Deed is also super nice , since deed for 2 is usually enough.)

This deck feels damn strong! especially now after cruise being banned! Snapcaster + Dig Through time is also cool.
Somehow , I still miss playing with ponders :/ most of the losses I get , are due land / colour screw.
2 Counterspells are the flex slots in the deck now, those are the easiest to cut. But im playing with vanilla counterspell since I dont have any idea what I really want in that place.


My list atm:

4 Deathrite Shaman
1 Snapcaster Mage

2 Jace, The Mind Sculptor
2 Liliana of the veil

1 Innocent Blood
1 Life From The Loam
3 Thoughtseize

3 Pernicious Deed
3 Standstill

3 Underground Sea
2 Tropical Island
1 Bayou
2 Creeping Tar Pit
4 Polluted Delta
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Wasteland
4 Mishra's Factory

4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
2 Counterspell
2 Dig Through Time
4 Abrupt Decay

SB:
1 Life From The Loam
1 Thoughtseize
3 True-Name Nemesis
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Krosan Grip
2 Spell Pierce --> Flusterstorm?
1 Swan Song
1 Disfigure
1 Golgari Charm
2 Hydroblast

[theBloody]

I was able to play at saturday event. Ended 4th, 29 participants.

Games:
R1: UB Reanimator - win (2:0)
R2: Urgw Faeries/wizards - loss (1:2) - deck with Mutavault, Spellstutter Sprite, Snapcaster, Vendilion Clique. We were short on time g3. I went all in instead of stabilizing board. It was bad decision.
R3: RUGb Delver - win (2:0) - Both games survived at 3 lives. He could't find Bolt.
R4: BUG Mosswort bridge + Phyrexian Dreadnought combo - win (2:1)
R5: Death and Taxes - draw (g3 was very winable)
T8: UG 12post - win (2:1) - hardest games of my life. Thankfully every game I had Jace + Lili + Wasteland/s (for Eye of Ugin). Two games it was in time.
T4: Death and Taxes - loss (1:2) - freaking Vials, man. It is so hard to play around instant Flickerwisp and Revoker. Last game I wasn't able to find Deed in time (Digged about 12 cards deep).

Dig Through Time shined. Like a sun. I didn't expect it to be this good. It is possible to play them at the end of turn 3. Often played confortably at the end of turn 4. Thing I like about them is that they help you when you are behind. Which is something where Standstill is lacking. Give it a shot, guys.

Possible changes: -1 Dimir Charm, -1 land, +1 wasteland, +1 ???. Sideboard needs lot of work. Considering Dread of Night against Death and Taxes. Also Disfigures.


4 Force of Will
3 Thoughtseize
2 Spell Pierce
1 Dimir Charm

4 Innocent Blood
4 Abrupt Decay
3 Pernicious Deed
2 Liliana of the Veil

4 Brainstorm
2 Ponder

3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
3 Dig Through Time

1 Life from the Loam

3 Underground Sea
2 Tropical Island
2 Bayou
4 Polluted Delta
3 Misty Rainforest
3 Verdant Catacombs
2 Creeping Tar Pit
2 Wasteland
2 Mishra's Factory
1 Island

SB: 1 Drow In Sorrow
SB: 2 Duress
SB: 3 Surgical Extraction
SB: 2 Golgari Charm
SB: 1 Thoughtseize
SB: 1 Notion Thief
SB: 1 Spell Pierce
SB: 3 Engineered Plague
SB: 1 Life from the Loam


How do you beat Death and Taxes, guys? Once they have Vial online for 3 I feel pretty screwed.

[H]

I never found Death & Taxes to be that bad a matchup. Dread of Night is not a possibility, you run Deed. Disfigures are good though.

Spell Pierce never impressed me in this deck, but 3 Liliana might be right again now. I also wouldn't cut down on Factorys, the deck needs more ways to win, not less.

I haven't played this in a while, so I am not sure how the meta is suited for it, though Dig Through Time seems good.

[Ahtii]

Have you tried Massacre against Death and Taxes? elves also splash white pretty often (and even if they dont , its very hard castable on turn 4 , assuming you are still alive)

Anyway I cant find much room or need for _dedicated_ death and taxes hate. Yes its not easiest matchup of all, but I still think we have most of the needed tools already in maindeck. So far I have been quite victorious against death and taxes , but clearly not enough testing yet.

[twndomn]

I was able to play at saturday event. Ended 4th, 29 participants.

Games:
R1: UB Reanimator - win (2:0)
R2: Urgw Faeries/wizards - loss (1:2) - deck with Mutavault, Spellstutter Sprite, Snapcaster, Vendilion Clique. We were short on time g3. I went all in instead of stabilizing board. It was bad decision.
R3: RUGb Delver - win (2:0) - Both games survived at 3 lives. He could't find Bolt.
R4: BUG Mosswort bridge + Phyrexian Dreadnought combo - win (2:1)
R5: Death and Taxes - draw (g3 was very winable)
T8: UG 12post - win (2:1) - hardest games of my life. Thankfully every game I had Jace + Lili + Wasteland/s (for Eye of Ugin). Two games it was in time.
T4: Death and Taxes - loss (1:2) - freaking Vials, man. It is so hard to play around instant Flickerwisp and Revoker. Last game I wasn't able to find Deed in time (Digged about 12 cards deep).

How do you beat Death and Taxes, guys? Once they have Vial online for 3 I feel pretty screwed.

if u don't run standstill, is it still landstill?

[FoolofaTook]

if u don't run standstill, is it still landstill?

I think it's BUG Control at that point. Standstill is one of the best cards in the meta right now if your list supports it. Draw 3 and if they wait a turn or two to break it you're either hitting them with a manland or fully untapped when they finally break it.

[Nastaboi]

Hi , Just recently bought last pieces for the deck and started playing it. For now , I have been playing TNN as substitute to Sideboard Tarmogoyf (mainly budget reasons) But noticed that I like TNN in board a lot. Do I even want tarmogoyf?! (TNN + Deed is also super nice , since deed for 2 is usually enough.)


TNN might be better when you just want to block all day, but main reason to have Tarmo on board is to get a clock in play against combo decks and then keep counters up for the rest of the game. Doing stuff in other matchups is just bonus.



Somehow , I still miss playing with ponders :/ most of the losses I get , are due land / colour screw.


You should probably cut a colorless land and add another dual, likely Bayou. I would also cut down on UU mana costs, and bring the curve more down in general. See my list or theBloody's for comparison.



Dig Through Time shined. Like a sun. I didn't expect it to be this good. It is possible to play them at the end of turn 3. Often played confortably at the end of turn 4. Thing I like about them is that they help you when you are behind. Which is something where Standstill is lacking. Give it a shot, guys.


I believe 4/1 split between Standstills and Digs to be correct, but I'll test 3/2 split next tournament to see how it goes. I like pure card advantage Standstill provides and find UU from Dig to be significantly worse than U from Cruise, but Standstill not helping when you are behind is a thing.


Spell Pierce never impressed me in this deck, but 3 Liliana might be right again now. I also wouldn't cut down on Factorys, the deck needs more ways to win, not less.


I still don't like Pierce, but right now it feels like the least bad card for the spot. Cutting down in Factories is fine if you have Shamans, and even if you don't, Jace ultimatum does the trick when you need to finish them up.

Remember to watch round clock when playing against Dn'T as the games will be long and grindy. You want all the Disfigures in the matchup. I'm adding Darkblast in my board to fight Infect, but it should do some serious damage against Dn'T, too.

[H]

I still don't like Pierce, but right now it feels like the least bad card for the spot. Cutting down in Factories is fine if you have Shamans, and even if you don't, Jace ultimatum does the trick when you need to finish them up.

Remember to watch round clock when playing against Dn'T as the games will be long and grindy. You want all the Disfigures in the matchup. I'm adding Darkblast in my board to fight Infect, but it should do some serious damage against Dn'T, too.

Thanks for weighing in, Nastaboi, I consider you to be pretty much the authority on this deck, so I defer to you on this.

I am unsure of what to play going forward, I might pick this back up. Would you mind sharing what list you are currently playing? I think I have pretty good idea, but I am curious how far off I might be.

[Nastaboi]

I'd probably just take my proposed list from previous page, switch Cruises to Digs and then make adjustments for local meta. I think I might run the exact list next tournament and see where it takes me.

[theBloody]

@H I can see 3 Lilianas main if you aren't playing full Innocent Blood version.

@twndomn Yeah. I addressed this issue before. Thing is that I'm switching between various builds including Standstill one so I keep posting my results here. I don't think there is any pure bug control thread and I don't feel my lists are different enough to create one. Of course if my lists would offend people here, I will reconsider my stance.

@Nastaboi You are right. Finding UU is not easy. That is the reason I cut maindeck Counterspells completely.

I keep playing Innocent Bloods. We all know when they are good and bad. They are the main reason why I don't play Deathrite Shamans. So I'm playing Ponders to fights Wastelands and it works nicely.

Also I'm glad I get rid of Intuitions + Harvest. The deck is compact now.

Thanks for comments on DnT match up, guys. Going to include some Disfigures/Darkblast to sb. Massacre can be good, but without Deathrites it seems slow against elves. I will consider that.

[Sloshthedark]

I was able to play at saturday event. Ended 4th, 29 participants.


Congrats, I ended up 2nd in this very event losing to the D+T player in the finals playing Storm, don't worry I think it was just his lucky day (DoN would be an overkill, you're running 3Plague already), those 12post games were awesome, I have to say DiG looked pretty impressive watching your games

[theBloody]

Haha. Sorry for the super long matches. I think that 12post one was about 75+ minutes or something. Also cool to meet another sourcer!
Against DnT guy I had one moment where I had FoW in hand. I was able to hardcast it but I tap out for something (Liliana maybe?) to pressure his board. I don't recall if had to play it. I opened myself to Cataclysm and he had It.
Congrats on your placing too. Hope I can make it to Prague next time.

[JustABee]

Hello All,

I go to weekly tournaments in the US (New Jersey to be a little more specific). A friend has been playing a very tuned UW still deck for weeks, but it takes forever to win. In the hopes of winning a little faster I have looked to take his shell and turn it into a BUG still deck. While the wins might not be any faster I think people are more likely to scoop to Lilliana + Jace both ticking up. Here is the list I'm going to run tomorrow. I have read the last 10 or so pages of the thread but would like input from veterans. I'll say that that past few weeks we have had some Storm decks show up and there are always a few burn players there.

23 Lands
1 Academy Ruins
1 Creeping Tar Pit
2 Wastelands
3 Misty Rainforest
3 Polluted Delta
1 Verdant Catacombs
2 Island
3 Tropical Island
3 Underground Sea
4 Mishra's Factory

4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
4 Standstill
2 Counter spell
2 Dig Through Time
3 Spell Snare
3 Jace the Mind Sculptor
1 Crucible of Worlds

2 Disfigure
3 Abrupt Decay
2 Lilliana of the Veil

3 Engineered Explosives
2 Toxic Deluge
2 Pernicious Deed

In the transition I lost (from UW to BUG)

4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Supreme Verdict
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Humility
1 Ajani Vengent

Because of this I did some odd things like adding a 4th sweeper and including two disfigure for a 1cc answer to some cards.

Let me know what you think and I'll make some edits and post a small report after the event on Saturday.

My SB looks like 9 cards to bring in vs control decks (as I have 12 creature removal spells obv some stay depending on the mach up) and 6 other cards.

SB

1 Arcane Laboratory
1 Energy Flux (More for MUD than affinity)
1 Pithing Needle
1 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Graf digger's Cage
2 Spell Pierce
2 Thoughtseize
2 Flusterstorm
2 Hyrdoblast
2 Chill

[theBloody]

Two things from me.
First: Loam seems generally stronger than Crucible because it is:
- virtually counter-proof (dredge)
- decay-proof
- immediate card advantage (3 for 1)
- combo with Liliana (discarding lands is often better than discarding other cards)
- a turn faster which helps a lot early game (especially when facing Wastelands)

Second: I wouldn't play more than one Explosives mainboard. I see it as weaker sweeper because of how mana intensive it is. It has similar function as Deed and Deed is more powerful.
I get that you can play Explosives turn 1 to kill early birds like Delver/Deathrite, but it will eat your whole turn 2 and you tap yourself out. At minimum I would change -1 Explosives +1 Disfigure.

Good luck at tournament.

[anwei]

Not a veteran:
Agree on Explosives, and I'd go for Innocent Blood over Disfigure.
I'd probably play 3 Decay, 3 Deed, 1 Deluge, 1 Explosives, 4 Blood in those slots.

[Bobmans]

Not a veteran:
Agree on Explosives, and I'd go for Innocent Blood over Disfigure.
I'd probably play 3 Decay, 3 Deed, 1 Deluge, 1 Explosives, 4 Blood in those slots.

Also not a veteran, but do play a lot of Veteran Explorer. I would go for Maelstrom Pulse instead of Engineered Explosives, because it takes down what Abrupt Decay can't (Jace, Ugin or multiples like 2 pithing needle) AND it can get rid a sea of tokens, being Zombies, Goblins or Angels for example. EE just misses some reach in that regard AND you already have Pernicious Deed, which is a better card then EE in my oppinion. Academy Ruins + EE is not worth it when you have no ways to fetch the land. EE would be better in a deck that is build around artifacts more. Trinket Mage, Baleful Stri and Sensei's Divining Top. Or some Intuition+Life from the Loam shenenigans (with 1 Depths + 1 Stage possibly). Just some random thoughts here.

[cdnza]

Hey guys, I'm starting to build this deck right now and wondered if anyone else was trying to play it in this meta. I'm curious about peoples' opinions on a few things:

Vraska. Is anyone running this as a 1-of? I really like the idea of having the vindicate ability now that walkers can't vindicate each other.
Intuition. Grabbing loam + 2 wastes seems really strong. If you run worm harvest it gets even better.
Innocent Blood versus Disfigure. Has anyone got any strong opinions on either side?

Lastly, I'm curious about mana. I've seen several different configurations, but presumably we want at least one each of usea, bayou and trop with 6-7 total duals with ~8 fetches?

[cdnza]

So I'm going to try out something like the following next week if I can. I know this deck isn't popular right now (the Shardless Agent style BUG deck is quite common around here right now though) but I am interested to see how it will do. If anyone has anything to suggest about the following list, please share :)

1x Forest
1x Island
1x Swamp
4x Polluted Delta
2x Verdant Catacombs
2x Misty Rainforest
2x Tropical Island
2x Underground Sea
1x Bayou
2x Creeping Tar Pit
2x Mishra's Factory
3x Wasteland

4x Deathrite Shaman

3x Jace the Mind Sculptor
2x Liliana of the Veil
1x Vraska the Unseen

3x Abrupt Decay
2x Disfigure
4x Brainstorm
4x Force of Will
2x Spell Pierce
3x Standstill
3x Pernicious Deed
3x Thoughtseize
1x Intuition
1x Life from the Loam
1x Worm Harvest

edit: fix deck format

[Miscanthus]

So I'm going to try out something like the following next week if I can. I know this deck isn't popular right now (the Shardless Agent style BUG deck is quite common around here right now though) but I am interested to see how it will do. If anyone has anything to suggest about the following list, please share :)

1x Forest
1x Island
1x Swamp
4x Polluted Delta
2x Verdant Catacombs
2x Misty Rainforest
2x Tropical Island
2x Underground Sea
1x Bayou
2x Creeping Tar Pit
2x Mishra's Factory
3x Wasteland

4x Deathrite Shaman

3x Jace the Mind Sculptor
2x Liliana of the Veil
1x Vraska the Unseen

3x Abrupt Decay
2x Disfigure
4x Brainstorm
4x Force of Will
2x Spell Pierce
3x Standstill
3x Pernicious Deed
3x Thoughtseize
1x Intuition
1x Life from the Loam
1x Worm Harvest

edit: fix deck format

I tried out something very similar to that at my LGS about this time last year.
My findings:

1.) Even with Deathrite Shaman and four Mishra's Factories, this deck has a painfully slow, fragile, and inefficient clock. This matters because without some sort of pseudo hard lock (such as CounterTop in Miracles, for example), you often find yourself in situations where you have cleared the board of all threats and "gained control", but then are unable to capitalize on it. You sit there either without a threat waiting to draw one, or slowly chipping away at your opponent's life total with a manland or Deathrite while they inexorably recover in front of you by drawing into Wasteland/Abrupt Decay/more threats/whatever it is they need. This is a frustrating experience that will make you want to tear your Standstills in half...
In order to address this, I would suggest adding a couple more efficient win conditions. I experimented with Tombstalker with mixed results. Tasigur might be decent here.
I'm doubtful about Worm Harvest because of it's casting cost combined with the manlands' activation costs, but would be curious to hear about your results. Same for Vraska.

2.) I often found Pernicious Deed less effective than I had hoped (again due to mana costs in a field full of Delvers, Thalia's, Wastelands, Dazes, etc.), and eventually switched them out for Engineered Explosives. This enabled me to deal with turn one Delvers more effectively (often responding to my opponents turn one Delver play by dropping an EE at zero followed by a Standstill on my second turn), and overall seemed just as effective at removing problems from the board as deed.

3.) The lifeloss from Thoughtseize is quite relevant in this deck (particularly against stuff like Delver, Burn, and Storm), and cost me several games. I eventually switched them out for Inquisition of Kozilek...again to mixed results, but they did seem somewhat better than Thoughtseize here.

Hope that helps, and best of success to you with this deck!

[theBloody]

I recommend you to teach yourself to play very quickly (30 seconds per your turn max). That way you will buy yourself time for one or two deeper thoughtful turns when you really need it and close the game under 15 minutes.

[pandaman]

I'd say 15 seconds per turn! You can go 10 seconds or less on most turns.

[pandaman]

*as a goal of course, turns you're making your move will need longer.

[LarsLeif]

Alright guys, I've stalked this thread for some time now and I feel that this deck has sort of stagnated in it's 2012 form a bit. I feel that the best deck to take advantage of the tap-out control plan in BUG colours is Shardless BUG, but as this is the Landstill thread lets brew with that. One of the problems I've always had with the classic tap-out shell of BUG Landstill is that standstill wants you to play a more reactive game if possible, which playing walkers, discard and loam sort of goes against. With this in mind I will post a brew that I have tested just briefly that tries to capitalize on the key-card Standstill more than just playing tap-out goodstuff.dec

So I will present a brew that is in no way meant to be the "new best deck" or the correct way to build this deck, but I think that it might be a good starting point for discussing different approaches when it comes to constructing this deck.

I present BUG Standstill Draw-Go With Pearl Lake Ancient (Still Lake or LakeStill might be a cool name for those of you who likes cool, non-descriptive deck names):

CREATURES (2)
2 Pearl Lake Ancient

ENCHANTMENTS (6)
4 Standstill
2 Pernicious Deed

INSTANTS (27)
4 Stifle
4 Abrupt Decay
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
2 Dig Through Time
3 Spell Snare
3 Counterspell
3 Disfigure

ARTIFACTS (2)
2 Crucible of Worlds

LANDS (23)
4 Underground Sea
2 Tropical Island
1 Forest
1 Swamp
2 Polluted Delta
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Creeping Tar Pit
2 Wasteland

SIDEBOARD (15)
3 Thoughtseize
1 Notion Thief
1 Null Rod
1 Flusterstorm
1 Krosan Grip
1 Night of Souls’ Betrayal
1 Toxic Deluge
2 Vendilion Clique
1 Leyline of the Void
3 Tarmogoyf

This is a deck that just wants to play draw-go throughout the entire game, only tapping out for Deed and Crucible.

You can certainly question the Stifles, but I can motivate it's inclusion for two reasons: Firstly, it's really good on the play to slow the opponents down so that we can have time to develop our mana a bit so Counterspell/Decay becomes live earlier, or we can just stifle their fetch and drop standstill, while it at the same time on the draw is a good protection against wasteland and a nice tempo play. That it also deal with things such as Visions, Batterskull and Stoneforge mystic is just a nice sidenote.

Dig Through Time is super good in the deck and it's what enables us to pull ahead together with standstill. Usually you kill the opponents early threats and counter their stuff, resolve a DTT or standstill, preferably with a Crucible in play, and then you just play lands and drop PLA.

Pearl Lake Ancient: As you've already stated in this thread, BUG Landstill has always lacked a good way to close out the game, and while PLA certainly is no Entreat the Angels, it actually kills very quickly once you've got to seven mana, which isn't very hard in this deck. Being both Flashy and uncounterable (and if they don't play white, almost unkillable) makes it pretty ideal as we just want to hold up mana during their turn anyways.

The absence of planeswalkers is mostly due to the fact that they are pretty hard to resolve and forces us to tap out on our turn, which we don't like. I can see adding a few jaces, but Liliana would just be poor with all the reactive spells in the deck.

Deed is mostly better than EE, but I can definitely see either play a mix between deluge, Deed and EE, or just playing 2-3 EE in the main deck and replacing a Creeping Tar Pit with Academy Ruins.

Overall, the deck has a very low curve for a traditional control deck and that makes it very easy to pilot as there is very few clunky cards overall. I recommend testing something similar, again, it does not need to be this deck at all, I'm not saying everyone should sleeve up stifles and PLA, but I think that it's interesting that there is so little discussion about a more Draw-Go approach to this deck and the possibilities that DTT has brought us.

Have a nice time guys! :)

[Higgs]

Miscanthus, I tested this deck (no creatures version though) about a year ago briefly and although my results were good overall my observations were very similar to yours. I think my results were due to me being very familiar with draw-go board control decks from days bygone and this deck playing very very similar to those old school control decks.

However, and I've also discussed this in the Golddigger thread before, I think in today's Legacy if you want to play a successful control deck you have to a have a lock/semi-lock and a quick kill condition. So if you look at the other established pure control decks in the format:
Miracles:
Counter+Top lock. End of turn Entreat for a quick kill.
UB Tezz:
Chalice+Trinisphere lock. Thopters and Ensnaring Bridge lock. Tezz ultimate or Helm combo for an insta kill.
RUG Lands:
The whole deck locks up the board preboard. Post board locks up the whole stack. Marit Lage kill once it has control.

In my testing once I reached the late game and established a strong winning position, I was going through multiple iterations of answering follow-up threats and re-establishing control until I could actually win. Although it is satisfying and fun, it didn't feel optimized or competitive. Also, this strategy sucks against combo because sometimes they can just topdeck a single card and end the game there after you've countered all of their previous attempts.

I couldn't come up with a reasonable lock that would fit into this deck's plan (draw-go, counter, blow up stuff) in BUG colors so I tried to incorporate a combo kill to at least make up for its inability to maintain control. Thinking that I was already playing with Loam I tried fitting in the Dark Depths combo but it made the manabase a mess and was still quite vulnerable to Deathrite Shaman which was rampant at the time. It didn't feel like it was worth the slots.

One last thing I've tried recently was Dig Through Time. My logic was, if this deck plays like an oldschool control deck we now finally have some actual card advantage to refill after trading with the opponent like back in the old days. The problem with Dig however is, it doesn't slow down the game in the early turns like Standstill does and if you run them both you are hard pressed for deck space to have enough counters and removals. This is assuming you will play a 4+4 or 4+3 split at least because just throwing in 2 Digs doesn't really make an impact.

My conclusion is, in the absence of a lock and a quick kill condition this deck and Golddigger will be fun decks which can do well in certain metas but are far away from being established tier decks that can be competitive in the long run.

[H]

I can't really advocate cutting all the Planeswalkers and adding Artifacts. Nastaboi's design is efficient in that you can drop and pop Deed on any number with almost no concern for wrecking your own board state. Pernicious Deed is an absurd Magic card, easily one of my three favorites, but it informs you deckbuilding in very stringent ways. The idea of this deck was to abuse the fact that it hit everything except Planeswalkers. Adding more things that only get swept up in your own Deed is not very effective.

Frankly, I consider the heart of the deck to be:

4 Brainstorm
3-4 Force of Will
3-4 Abrupt Decay
2-3 Pernicious Deed
3-4 Standstill
3 Jace
2-3 Liliana of the Veil
1-2 Loam
3-4 Mishra's Factory
2 Creeping Tar Pit

That said, this deck is painfully slow. That is one reason why Nastaboi is running Deathrite. It increases your clock, can protect a Walker, can gain you life to help you stabilize, and fixes/accelerates your mana. That is honestly way too many things to not have it in this deck. It's unfortunate that it doesn't survive a Deed, but it's not that big of a deal. It also helps greatly versus Graveyard-based strategies.

On Loam versus Crucible, it is not even close, Loam is vastly better in this deck. As theBloody said, Loam doesn't get dealt with by a single counterspell and has good synergy with Liliana. It can allow you to continually up-tick Lili, while still keeping countermagic in hand plus make land drops. Lastly, it doesn't get caught by your own Deed.

Reasons to run Nastaboi's build:

Favorable versus Miracles (You can pressure them with manlands and Planeswalkers, all while keep their board in check with Deed)
Favorable versus Stoneforge decks: Although Death and Taxes can sometimes be difficult, UWR is a favorable matchup, along with most 'Blade varients.
Favorable versus Delver: RUG Delver is the worst matchup for you, since sometimes they just draw 4 Nimble Mongoose and 3 Stifles and you just lose. BUG Delver is reasonable and UWR Delver is hilariously bad for them.
Favorable versus rouge trash: One great thing about Deed is it is really good versus all sorts of janky aggro/midrange nonsesne people sometimes try to run.

The real problem of this deck is that you need and want Deed, yet, there are such great permanent-based hate cards that you would love to run, but you can't. This is a big reason why I switched to BUG Delver actually.

I'm not really trying to squelch creativity, but I think that you have to understand why the deck was made the way it was before you can make a lot of changes.

[LarsLeif]

And the discussion is on! Nice! :D

I realise the strong points of the deck but my point of starting the discussion was mostly that this deck has sort of fallen behind team america and especially shardless, which have almost all the strengths of the deck but has no issue with going to time etc. So my point is more that I think that it could be a good idea to try to actually talk about other alternatives than the standard core, which I feel is good, but again BUG Delver and Shardless just seems like a better idea if you are going to play a BUG deck that wants to just tap out for stuff.

The Crucible/Deed interaction hasn't come up for me more than once during about 20 games, usually you either don't have crucible out when you deed, or you deed for less than 3. In a deck that wants to play draw go and also play standstill then crucible is a better alternative because it has better interactions when you have standstill in play, but again, the tap-out version can go ahead and play loam, I think it's definitely unclear whether the tapout deck deck should really play standstill at all though.

[H]

Well, once you cut the Factories, it begs the question, why run Standstill? If you cut Standstill, why run this deck over Shardless or just BUG Control?

I think it's often a slippery-slope that goes in to tinkering much with this deck. The beauty of Standstill is that once you land a Walker, you can Standstill and that is an awful lot of pressure on the opponent. Even more so if you have a manland. By cutting the manlands and Walkers, you are making it much more difficult to advantageously be able to drop the Standstills.

In the list you proposed, the only way to win under a Standstill is 3 Creeping Tar Pit. This doesn't bode well for being ahead on board to be able to Standstill with a realistic chance to win. That means you almost always need Crucible on board to Standstill. In the current meta, Decay is on the rise, so I don't feel that is a given. Lets not even get in to if they Decay your Crucible in response to Standstill, then Waste the Tar Pit.

The problems I had with the deck were: first Shardless BUG, second being unable to win fast enough, third decks like Burn and Elves that we can't really grind out, fourth (and probably the biggest) inability to play great sideboard answers because of the tension between Deed and permanent-based hate.

I would still advise you test your list, I certainly could be wrong.

[LarsLeif]

Sure, if you get to stick a planeswalker on an empty board and then slam standstill you're in a good spot no doubt, but I felt at least in my version I really didn't need to kill the opponent under standstill, actually the opposite was true. Several times I would just play a standstill and we would both sit there, and then when we both reach like 7 lands in play and 7 cards in hand the opponent would break the standstill, and I would just win as suddenly he has to try to resolve stuff through all the countermagics, digs and removal while also fending of Pearl Lake Ancient. I feel that people get too cute with Standstill sometimes and think that you need to stick a planeswalker/delver/dreadnought/Aether Vial under it and force the opponent to break it immediately, when you can rather just play it on a neutral board and be like: Ok, none of us are doing anything, so either we sit here and make our land drops (which is great for the draw-go control deck) or the opponent breaks it (which is great for the draw-go control deck).

With Pearl Lakes you mostly want to get to 7 mana anyway, so not pressuring the opponent right away I feel is fine. Not to say that pearl lake is amazing or anything but it sort of solves the deck building dilemma when it comes to utilizing standstill and the board stalls it can produce.

[H]

Sure, if you get to stick a planeswalker on an empty board and then slam standstill you're in a good spot no doubt, but I felt at least in my version I really didn't need to kill the opponent under standstill, actually the opposite was true. Several times I would just play a standstill and we would both sit there, and then when we both reach like 7 lands in play and 7 cards in hand the opponent would break the standstill, and I would just win as suddenly he has to try to resolve stuff through all the countermagics, digs and removal while also fending of Pearl Lake Ancient. I feel that people get too cute with Standstill sometimes and think that you need to stick a planeswalker/delver/dreadnought/Aether Vial under it and force the opponent to break it immediately, when you can rather just play it on a neutral board and be like: Ok, none of us are doing anything, so either we sit here and make our land drops (which is great for the draw-go control deck) or the opponent breaks it (which is great for the draw-go control deck).

With Pearl Lakes you mostly want to get to 7 mana anyway, so not pressuring the opponent right away I feel is fine. Not to say that pearl lake is amazing or anything but it sort of solves the deck building dilemma when it comes to utilizing standstill and the board stalls it can produce.

That's true but it just seems like that makes this deck even slower. I'm by no means a master, in fact, I only comment because I happen to have played the deck before.

I guess I am just fearful of only playing 5 ways to win the game, 2 of which are seven mana. Post board, it gets better, but then you are almost a Shardless deck with Standstill instead of Visions. I'm literally completely unsure if that is better, worse, or what. I guess it bears testing, but for right now I am slinging as many Hymns and seeing how far that can take me.

[cdnza]

Glad this thread came back to life!

Funny that you guys mention the long games this deck has. I was actually just recently thinking about Cunning Wish so I can have better %s in game one...

[cdnza]

Re: cutting Standstill, if we replace Standstills with Dig Through Time (on the grounds that its waaay better when you're behind) there's some argument that we could also cut manlands. Does freeing up those colourless lands give us the potential to play cycling lands alongside some conventional win condition (is Grave-Shell Scarab playable!?) or perhaps play Dark Depths combo?

[FoolofaTook]

Gigapede is probably a better win-con than Pearl Lake Ancient in a list playing Life from the Loam.

It comes online earlier, is effectively un-counterable since you'll just get it back and cast it next turn if they counter it this turn, and loam can find it for you.

[pandaman]

Gigapede is probably a better win-con than Pearl Lake Ancient in a list playing Life from the Loam.

It comes online earlier, is effectively un-counterable since you'll just get it back and cast it next turn if they counter it this turn, and loam can find it for you.
Quick clock (6/1) and doesn't leave due to Swords to Plowshares (shroud). You don't care if someone trades because you get it back. Seems like a really interesting option to explore.

[Jay_Gatz]

I used to get quite a bit of mileage out of worm harvest as a win-con

[cdnza]

I used to get quite a bit of mileage out of worm harvest as a win-con

Do you run it in the main? I can imagine it being quite good (especially if you have Intuition).

Tentative board for my list (same as previous page, but -1 trop +1 bayou for the time being). Freely admit this is heavily derived from Nastaboi's p82 SB:

1x Darkblast
1x Disfigure
3x Hydroblast
2x Nihil Spellbomb
2x Spell Pierce
2x Surgical Extraction
1x Thoughtseize
3x True-Name Nemesis (I don't particularly want to pay for Goyfs right now...)

[LarsLeif]

Worm harvest is nice, though it could be problematic to open up our wincon to graveyard hate, same goes of course for Gigapede, which is also a nice card otherwise.

I think that generally in these control decks in the BUG colors, there is no perfect wincon like Entreat, we sort of have to choose from a variety of worse options. But that opens up for creative durdling which is nice.

I'm definitely not arguing for Pearl Lake Ancient to be superior though, but I think that there is merit in opening up the design space of the deck a bit now that we have some new nice draw-go spells to choose from like DTT. Maybe Landstill is a thing of the past but it feels exciting to explore some new alternatives when it comes to deck construction.

[theBloody]

Ad Intuition + Loam + Harvest. It is strong, sure. It is especially nice versus miracles because they have no way to get rid of recuring swarm of 1/1s.

The problem of Harvest is that it is dead cart until lategame. Also with Dig you are forcing yourself to have more cards in graveyard because you want to leave all lands here for maximum Harvest later.

If your opponent saw Harvest g1, you can be sure he will bring in all the graveyard hate g2. Which is sometimes not that bad (you have still Jace + lands as win con), but you lost Loam and Dig as consequence.

Also Intuition is often dead card when drawn early game and we want as little dead cards as possible (cards with cmc >= 3). Also as little conditional cards as possible.

[FoolofaTook]

Loamstill

Win-cons

2 Gigapede
2 Jace, the Mindsculptor
2 Creeping Tarpit

Permission

4 Force of Will
3 Spell Pierce
3 Spell Snare

Removal/Disruption

4 Abrupt Decay
3 Engineered Explosives
2 Pernicious Deed
1 Maelstrom Pulse
3 Wasteland
1 Raven's Crime

Draw/Select

4 Brainstorm
3 Standstill
3 Life from the Loam
1 Barren Moor
1 Tranquil Thicket

Mana Lands

4 Polluted Delta
4 Verdant Catacombs
1 Misty Rainforest
3 Tropical Island
2 Underground Sea
1 Bayou
1 Forest
1 Island
1 Swamp

Is this going to work in the current meta?

No Stifle is bad in some matchups, like Miracles and Elves. No Counterspell is a mixed blessing. Maybe both in the sideboard for when needed?

[Ralf]

I think that generally in these control decks in the BUG colors, there is no perfect wincon like Entreat, we sort of have to choose from a variety of worse options. But that opens up for creative durdling which is nice.


Actually, you do have a black "Entreat" called "Empty the pit".
The setup is very different but I can assure you that it is pretty efficient.

I play the card in a Nic Fit BUG shell but it could also be used in a UBGx Landstill one as well I guess.
It could even be better.

Link to the list

http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?28548-Primer-Deck-Nic-Fit&p=866754&viewfull=1#post866754

[prgmctan]

Actually, you do have a black "Entreat" called "Empty the pit".
The setup is very different but I can assure you that it is pretty efficient.

I play the card in a Nic Fit BUG shell but it could also be used in a UBGx Landstill one as well I guess.
It could even be better.

Link to the list

http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?28548-Primer-Deck-Nic-Fit&p=866754&viewfull=1#post866754
I would categorize this as one of the worse options. It could win the game, but if you're going this route, I'd rather play wurm harvest, as I can recur it.

[Ralf]

I would categorize this as one of the worse options. It could win the game, but if you're going this route, I'd rather play wurm harvest, as I can recur it.

Worm harvest is sorcery speed and requires a lot of lands in your grave. But you can reuse it

Empty the Pit is instant speed and reads "20 cards in my grave" = smash your opponent for 20. (10 tokens)

I have played both. Worm Harvest in a B/G Loam deck and Empty the Pit in my Bug Nic Fit.
Both are a blow out.

But Larsleif is trying to play at instant speed. So, I have suggested Empty the Pit. Not as a main kill con, but trust me, it has won me games out of nowhere.

[prgmctan]

Worm harvest is sorcery speed and requires a lot of lands in your grave. But you can reuse it

Empty the Pit is instant speed and reads "20 cards in my grave" = smash your opponent for 20. (10 tokens)

I have played both. Worm Harvest in a B/G Loam deck and Empty the Pit in my Bug Nic Fit.
Both are a blow out.

But Larsleif is trying to play at instant speed. So, I have suggested Empty the Pit. Not as a main kill con, but trust me, it has won me games out of nowhere.
Good call, I missed the fact it was an instant.

[LarsLeif]

I actually considered EtP as a wincon, but went with pearl lake mostly for three reasons:

1. BBBB is a quite restrictive cost that forces us to have a lot of black lands to play it. This is sometimes not an issue but it does come up.

2. It's open to graveyard hate, which is a bad place to be as people will probably board RiP against the deck.

3. It has a sort of an anti-synergy with DTT, which I found to be the better card in the deck.


All this together made me not play it, but if I wasn't playing DTT I would certainly play at least 1. It is not entreat, not even close, but still pretty nice.

[Nastaboi]

Wow, the thread is alive! :laugh:

@JustABee: You have whopping seven colorless lands, yet only two Wastelands. I have five colorless lands AND shamans and still have occasional problems getting all my colors. Also if you decide to go with EE's, I'd play Island and Swamp as basics as opposed to two Islands. That way, you have a change to fight back Blood Moon with EE@3. If you want to go with just Islands, I'd suggest upping blue blast count.

Loam or Crucible: With Crucible, you have to find it AND resolve it AND protect it against removal. With Loam, you just have to find it (and protect it against grave removal, but even then you have already got at least three cards out of it). Dredging Loam also effectively draws you into Wastelands and win conditions.

Innocent Blood or Disfigure: Blood is likely to be better if you don't play shamans. However, end step Disfigure works better with turn two Standstill. It also hits opposing manlands which is more or less significant. Disfigure not killing everything is also mitigated by Liliana. In conclusion, you either play shamans, Lilianas and some Disfigures, or no shamans, less Lilianas and more Innocent Bloods.

@cdnza: If you don't want to invest to Tarmos (there are new ones coming in MM2015 BTW), I'd strongly suggest you to test Tasigur. It comes down as early as TNN, blocks as well and presents two turns faster clock. In later turns you can just cast it and have all the mana left to do other things. I'm definitely trying at least one in my board, maybe even main.

@everybody having problems winning in timely fashion: Why do you think adding more expensive cards is an answer? For me the problem has never been closing the game, the problem has been getting there first place, and dedicated win conditions won't help your here. Instead I try to keep my curve as low as possible to gain control ASAP, after which I have all the time to win however I see fit. For example I seem to use shaman's black ability over 80 % time compared to green. And that's because when I get to the point where I'm not using shaman for mana, I'm already in the position for winning. Most games end me having two active shamans, odd manland activation and a couple of minutes later it's all over. And we already have three Jace as curve-topping win condition. How much else do we need? If you really want another win con, try Tasigur main. But my advise is to concentrate on how to get to that winning position earlier.

Deed: I too have found Deed to be lacking in some matchups and consider even going down to two main. What I really want to question is Deed as a tactic against Miracles. It surely answers their Entreat as a tactic and can remove CounterTop when Decay is nowhere to be found, but then they can just ignore it and use their resources to resolve Jace or Keranos. And they are better equipped to do that with MD red blasts. While we do have manlands to pressure their planeswalkers, they have plenty of excess removal to fight back. And post-board they can side out all their Counterbalances, rendering our Decays useless. What I'm saying is that I'm not sure whether trying to be more of a control deck or try apply pressure with SB creatures and Lilianas is better against Miracles postboard. They can also leave most their removal in to make our aggro-control plan less effective. Anyways, I would like to hear your thoughts about the matchup and especially what the post-board plan should be.

[cdnza]

The thread is indeed alive :)

Thanks for the suggestion on Tasigur - if you get to play any games with it, let me know how it goes! I can imagine that activating it can be pretty insane in this deck.

I'm curious about what your current list is - I'd love to see what you're playing right now. I'm going to play a BUG Loam deck in some configuration at CFB next week assuming all my cards arrive in time, so any insight you can provide would be fantastic. I used to play this deck a few years ago when Dark Ascension first came out and both it and the wider metagame have changed a lot in that interval.

[FoolofaTook]

I go back and forth on whether or not BUG Loam is playable at this point.

It's undeniably slow to get going and that's a problem. It's overly reliant on the graveyard and that's a problem. It's blacker and greener than most BUG lists and that's a problem as well. However it has effects that the typical Legacy list can't interact with well once you get them going. Lands from the GY plus counters is a really strong combination if you live long enough to get it setup. Again, it's slow...

I'm thinking that if I decided to do Loamstill it would have to be with a transitional sideboard in which *I* attacked the GY's in game 2. Leylines of the Void + Helm of Obedience with extra hate coming in and the 9 or 10 loam based cards in the list coming out as a block in the process. Something like that would make the bad matchups, the lists that had access to a fast Rest in Peace into positive matchups. You could even forgo the Leylines against opponents that you knew would be boarding in RiP and let them cast that half of the combo for you.

I'm still thinking it is just too slow to be much good but I would love to be proven wrong on that.

[FoolofaTook]

@Nastiboi

Abrupt Decay isn't completely useless game 2 against Miracles even after they've boarded out Counterbalance. It's still one of the few effective ways to interact with an active Sensei's Divining Top and that's the key card in the Miracles matchup.

You can target a top when they fetch, forcing them to shuffle away their top. You can target a top when it has been tapped to draw a card, before the effect resolves, getting rid of the top in the process albeit at -1 card advantage since they will get the draw anyway. You can target a top at the end of their turn, preventing them from pulling off a Miracle at the end of your turn. All of these things improve the Miracles matchup.

The other thing is that you often see flashy creatures against Miracles, with main list Snapcaster Mages and post-board Vendilion Cliques. Abrupt Decay is a good card to have in that circumstance.

[Nastaboi]

My latest list is at the end of page 82. Just add Tasigur and cut a goyf or something. Haven't played in tournaments, but I'll attend one next Sunday and tell how it went. I also might not be brave enough to play 2 DTT and may default back to 4 Standstill. We'll see.

Abrupt Decay being "not completely useless" does not sound quite the same as "worth keeping in post board" to me. You can use Decay to fight Top or kill value creatures, but that'll just let your opponent get ahead in cards. The real question is: is Decay better than Deed/Tarmo/FoW/Pierce/Lily/Loam/Standstill against Miracles post board? You'll obviously side out Disfigures and bring in Cliques, but what's the next worst card after that? I'd say it's either Decay or Deed, but I'd like to hear other opinions.

[LarsLeif]

I think it's perfectly fine to cut 1-2 decay. I would probably keep some number of deeds (perhaps all of them) as miracles main trump in the matchup is EtA (they might go up to 3 post-board). Keranos and Jace are of course also problematic but you can pressure those with manlands. I think that DTT is best in a more draw-go style deck but the card is powerful enough that I'm sure you can squeeze in 1 or 2.

[cdnza]

So I was talking to a friend about this deck recently who also used to play it (much more recently than me). He advocated a much more blue version that lacked Thoughtseizes but played Spell Snares and Counterspells. It's clear that this configuration is more synergistic with Standstill (you can obviously play more reactively with reactive spells) but I wonder if it's a good fit for the current state of the format.

Anyone have any experience with both styles of build this year?

[LarsLeif]

I've played with both versions and as I stated above I like the draw-go version a bit more as it has more synergy with standstill. I've played both versions on and off for a long time.

[Higgs]

Do you have a sample decklist for the blue heavy version for discussion?

[LarsLeif]

I posted a sample list on the previous page I think, that should suffice as a possible shell, although some individual card choices can definitely be discussed.

[Jizz]

I played Nastaboi's list (see the exact list below) at my local to a 4-0 finish.

1 [UNH] Island
1 [UNH] Swamp
2 [R] Bayou
2 [WWK] Creeping Tar Pit
2 [ZEN] Misty Rainforest
2 [R] Tropical Island
2 [R] Underground Sea
2 [ZEN] Verdant Catacombs
2 [TE] Wasteland
3 [4E] Mishra's Factory
4 [KTK] Polluted Delta
4 [RTR] Deathrite Shaman
3 [WWK] Jace, the Mind Sculptor
3 [ISD] Liliana of the Veil
3 [CNS] Pernicious Deed
3 [OD] Standstill
2 [KTK] Dig Through Time
2 [ZEN] Disfigure
2 [ZEN] Spell Pierce
3 [RTR] Abrupt Decay
4 [CNS] Brainstorm
4 [AL] Force of Will
1 [RAV] Life from the Loam
3 [THS] Thoughtseize
SB: 1 [C13] Nihil Spellbomb
SB: 1 [M11] Leyline of the Void
SB: 1 [RTR] Golgari Charm
SB: 1 [M14] Duress
SB: 2 [MOR] Vendilion Clique
SB: 2 [5E] Hydroblast
SB: 2 [CMD] Flusterstorm
SB: 3 [FUT] Tarmogoyf
SB: 1 [TE] Wasteland
SB: 1 [ZEN] Disfigure

Against Miracles, I went :
-1 Decay -1 Deed -2 Waste -1 Loam -2 Disfigure
+2 Fluster +1 Duress +1 Spellbomb +2 Clique +1 Hydroblast (Keranos and Blood moon expected)

. The blue version is antiynergistic with Liliana ; Bug Landstill without lili ? A Reactive deck without Reb ?
. I don't like Tasigur because of DeathandTaxes (karakas). Mb the fish guy or tombstalker instead ? I had games where I wanted both tarmogoyf and Deed (am I wrong on this ? I did it vs DeathandTaxes - the delve creatures are nice with deed but are not turn 2 plays vs combo)

[LarsLeif]

I think that there is definitely merit to the reactive version, Liliana hasn't been missed by me there. Regarding blasts, lets be realistic: BUG Landstill isn't Miracles and will probably never be as good sadly, but our point isn't to be miracles so I think that we can dismiss discussions as "playing reactive without REB?" as it simply isn't part of our color pie.

[Jizz]

My point is that a reactive version will always be inferior to decks playing instant wrath at 1 mana or rebs. Deed is one of our best card in the proactive version but gets a lot worse when your hand is full of counterspells etc that require mana. Without Lili, you will have hard time dealing with cards like Tasigur or Tombstalker. The BUG colours don't offer an efficient 1 mana removal like bolt or stp and make snapcaster less efficient. I noticed you don't play them, but they remained the best card a reactive control deck can wish for, nonetheless. If you want to play reactive, don"t play BUG, play UR or Patriot.
(EDIT : I could go on and on on this.. I really understood the strength of Lili with this deck. With manlands, the (control) opponent will often have to choose between : dealing with your lands (stp etc) or letting standstill resolve)

I have faith in the deck. I think that the proactive version has a shot in the current metagame. It's not clear that "it is worse than Miracles", it's maybe one of the best proactive control strategy, and can't really be compared to Miracles, which is all reactive.

[LarsLeif]

My reason for comparing is mostly because BUG Landstill and Miracles are the only two real control decks in legacy, and while no deck is strictly better or worse than the other Miracles can play more efficient cards, better sweepers and a more efficient win condition. That we cannot change sadly.

This all being said I think that there are more than one way to build this deck. Not to say I don't like the planeswalker build, I do, and I've played it a lot and I've also experienced Liliana being good, although again, I didn't really miss her in the Draw-go version. You are correct that the deck lacks a good catch-all removal spell but that's life outside of white really, at least we can always play Caleb Durwards beloved Go for the Throat :P

[H]

You are correct that the deck lacks a good catch-all removal spell but that's life outside of white really, at least we can always play Caleb Durwards beloved Go for the Throat :P

Even though I know you are joking, I think Murderous Cut would actually be pretty decent in the Loam version, although obviously not as a 4 of.

[FoolofaTook]

My latest list is at the end of page 82. Just add Tasigur and cut a goyf or something. Haven't played in tournaments, but I'll attend one next Sunday and tell how it went. I also might not be brave enough to play 2 DTT and may default back to 4 Standstill. We'll see.

Abrupt Decay being "not completely useless" does not sound quite the same as "worth keeping in post board" to me. You can use Decay to fight Top or kill value creatures, but that'll just let your opponent get ahead in cards. The real question is: is Decay better than Deed/Tarmo/FoW/Pierce/Lily/Loam/Standstill against Miracles post board? You'll obviously side out Disfigures and bring in Cliques, but what's the next worst card after that? I'd say it's either Decay or Deed, but I'd like to hear other opinions.

How are you planning to fight top with no instant speed removal in the list? Deed will be your only way to remove an active top and you won't want to use it to do that because of the omnipresent Entreat threat.

If I can't fight against an active top against Miracles I'm going to lose most of the time. I think anybody will lose most of the time in that situation. I'm more likely to tune out Thoughtseize than anything else. Once they get a top down TS is a fairly useless card. On the play in the opening hand TS has some value but as a mid-game draw all it does is to make them burn a Brainstorm to put their miracles on top of the pile.

[LarsLeif]

Even though I know you are joking, I think Murderous Cut would actually be pretty decent in the Loam version, although obviously not as a 4 of.

Yes, that is a possible option for sure. Innocent Blood is pretty decent as well although sorcery speed is pretty depressing.

[prgmctan]

My reason for comparing is mostly because BUG Landstill and Miracles are the only two real control decks in legacy, and while no deck is strictly better or worse than the other Miracles can play more efficient cards, better sweepers and a more efficient win condition. That we cannot change sadly.

This all being said I think that there are more than one way to build this deck. Not to say I don't like the planeswalker build, I do, and I've played it a lot and I've also experienced Liliana being good, although again, I didn't really miss her in the Draw-go version. You are correct that the deck lacks a good catch-all removal spell but that's life outside of white really, at least we can always play Caleb Durwards beloved Go for the Throat [emoji14]
Do you not consider lands a control deck?

[cdnza]

I played Nastaboi's list (see the exact list below) at my local to a 4-0 finish...

I'm planning on playing a very similar list this weekend. Do you ever find that 4 Deathrite Shaman is too much? Something I've been thinking about lately.

[theBloody]

Murderous Cut seems sweet at first although I would not recommend it in Dig Through Time heavy version (3+ digs). Dig is much more powerful. Also you won't be able to play Cut before t3, that could be problem.

My last tourney I went 3-1-1, sadly with bye. Beating Mono R Moon/Sneak attack and Deathblade. Draw with Jund. Lost to ANT. Played 3 dig version with no standstills, no creatures.
I have tested against ANT intensively after this and man, it is almost unwinable. My win cons were 2 tar pits + Jaces, so obviously the problem is lack of pressure. With inclusion of Deathrite Shamans, Snapcasters and Notion Thiefs matchup got much better. Obviously the cost was cutting Innocent Bloods. I don't know If I stick with this. Probably not because my meta has only one storm deck.

What is your take on storm matchup? Do you find it difficult?

[LarsLeif]

Do you not consider lands a control deck?

Haha that is of course true, although I usually think of lands as a ComboControlGraveyard deck with it's own type: Lands :)

[Nastaboi]

Cut has same problems as Ghastly Demise I used to run earlier: not being reliable early game.

The problem against ANT is mainly lack of clock, which sideboard addresses. My side has right now 8 cards for the matchup: 5 more creatures and only 3 more disruption spells. Well Clique doubles as both but the point is that amount of disruption is likely enough, but only if you can combine it with a decent clock. With shamans, I have found to win reasonable amount of G1's, usually with double shaman eating away their life total in chunks of four.

Some people questioned Thoughtseize and opted for more draw-go approach. I see Seize as a necessary evil to have enough G1 disruption against combo, and Force and Seize are least dead in other matchups. I do side it out against Delver decks and such, but even there it's not totally embarrassing.

I started with three shamans but eventually upped it to full four and have never looked back. I am seldom dissapointed to draw multiples and when I do I'm usually ahead so it's not like I have lost games drawing multiples. And they tend to die often. You can always board one out if you think it won't accomplish much in a matchup, but I have always found something else to cut. Mana acceleration and fixing is just that powerful.

I don't look ahead to fight active Top against Miracles. I'd rather counter or seize it. If you have to use Decay to kill Top, they have already gotten multiple uses out of it in addition to getting to draw a card from it. They could have easily set up for Jace or another Top by then. While I would kill the Top if situation arises, I'd rather have a counter or a threat than a Decay in my deck second game.

[cdnza]

Played a blue version at CFB yesterday:

3 sea
3 trop
1 bayou
3 factory
3 waste
1 tar pit
4 delta
2 verdant
2 misty
1 island
2 DRS
2 snapcaster
4 brainstorm
4 force
3 spell pierce
2 spell snare
2 counterspell
4 standstill
2 disfigure
3 deed
1 loam
3 jace
3 abrupt decay
1 dig through time
1 maelstrom pulse

sideboard was a bit random (and I don't own any goyfs):

2 nihil spellbomb
2 tasigur
1 vendilion
1 golgari charm
1 toxic deluge
3 hydroblast
1 disfigure
1 darkblast
1 spell pierce
2 surgical

Super brief summary report:

R1 Shardless: 1-1-1 (0-0-1)
Game two look a looooong time and I lost it with 2 minutes left on the clock. No way to finish the match in 2 minutes so I start out in the draw bracket (which isn't so bad for this deck). Boarded in my Tasigurs I think.

R2 Miracles 2-0 (1-0-1)
This matchup feels really easy. Game one I dealt a lot of damage with Mishra's Factories. Eventually he had to desperation Entreat on his turn so I just untapped and made Deed. Game two I get surprised by a Back to Basics when I am tapped out... but fortunately I managed to resolve Jace already so I just spent some turns +2ing and won in short order. My opener in g2 was pretty fantastic: something like 3 lands, jace, force, pierce, snare. I boarded in Vendilion, Pierce, and I think just one Hydroblast.

R3 Miracles 2-0 (2-0-1)
Again, this matchup feels pretty easy. My opponent had maindeck REB though, which was less than ideal! I just sort of chip away 2 life at a time with Factories and a DRS in game one. I remember this time bringing in at least two Hydroblast, fearing Blood Moon or Keranos. What actually happened was that I hit two wastelands and took both his tundras, leaving him with just a mountain and an island. COOL.

R4 non-Shardless non-Delver BUG 0-2 (2-1-1)
Horrible match due to some pretty unbelievable draws. Game one I cast two spells (drew like 11 or 12 of my lands?!) and eventually he makes a tarmogoyf or something. Game two my opp mulls to 5 and my hand is pretty decent (2 lands, standstill, spell snare, brainstorm, force, x, i think) but I somehow manage to brick on mana sources and my opp has a Wasteland and double Hymn :(

R5 BGW w Stoneforge 1-2 (2-2-1, drop)
Game one I didn't have many relevant cards and just get beaten up by Batterskull. My opponent had maindeck Sword of Body and Mind (lol). Game two I get like a four-for-one off Toxic Deluge and it's basically over. For the final game we only have ~12 minutes or something, and I make a pretty huge misplay and try to kill his Thalia when he has Karakas up. If I'd actually killed his other guy (Gaddock Teeg) instead of wasting my removal spell, I'd have been completely fine because I'd just drawn Darkblast which blanks most of his deck. I end up playing on anyway (as expected, Darkblast does work) but I end up facing exactly lethal without the mana to play all my answers (so that mistake earlier would've fixed things!).

I decide not to play the last round because I am kinda tilted from my mistake and I wanna stop and get out of the unbelievably warm room. Summary:

The deck actually feels fine for this meta because all the reasonably-fair decks are good matchups. I would like to try Goyfs in the board next time. I also need to track down some Flusterstorms for the board. I switched into this build last-minute yesterday morning by doing something like -3 seize, -2 drs, -2 lili, -1 vraska for +2 snare, +1 pierce, +2 counterspell, +2 snapcaster, +1 maelstrom pulse (plus accompany changes to make the manabase more blue).

EDIT: I just realised re-reading this that Gaddock Teeg is legendary as well so my misplay against BGW wasn't quite as big a deal, though still obviously could've played better!

[LarsLeif]

Nice to hear about someone playing the deck! :)

Your list looks interesting, I wonder a few things though. Did you feel like you wanted more DTT than a 1-off in any of the games and shouldn't there be 4 decays?

[cdnza]

Nice to hear about someone playing the deck! :)

Your list looks interesting, I wonder a few things though. Did you feel like you wanted more DTT than a 1-off in any of the games and shouldn't there be 4 decays?

3 Decay feels fine. I might try one more DtT, especially because Loam doesn't actually seem all that good in the main. I'm thinking of moving Loam to the SB, and I'm not sure about running an extra DtT or DRS in that slot.

[LarsLeif]

Hey guys, I'm back in black, blue and green!

if you remember my last post I wanted to explore how a more draw-go version of this deck would work. My original idea focused a lot on mana-denial with stifles wastes and crucible, and while that was nice it had some games where you got behind and you had too many cards that didn't pull you out of the situation. Crucible turning on opposing decays was also a problem as some attentive commenters pointed out quickly. I very much liked DTT in the deck though and I noticed a real strength in the ability to just play standstill and pass the turn with counterspells and DTTs at the ready.

So I reworked the deck somewhat, added mishra's cuz the card is sweet and the deck wants to hit land-drops but at the same time not flood out and manlands (sort of) solves that problem. I took it to a 3-0-1 in yesterdays LGS-torunament and if it weren't for that players where slow and the last round only had 40 min (!) I could definitely have made it a straight 4-0.

Without further ado, here's the deck:

ENCHANTMENTS (6)
4 Standstill
2 Pernicious Deed

SORCERIES (2)
1 Life from the Loam
1 Toxic Deluge

INSTANTS (24)
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
4 Abrupt Decay
3 Spell Snare
3 Counterspell
3 Disfigure
2 Dig Through Time
1 Go for the Throat

PLANESWALKERS (2)
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

ARTIFACTS (1)
1 Engineered Explosives

LANDS (25)
4 Underground Sea
2 Tropical Island
1 Island
1 Forest
1 Swamp
3 Polluted Delta
3 Misty Rainforest
4 Verdant Catacombs
2 Creeping Tar Pit
4 Mishra’s Factory

SIDEBOARD (15)
4 Tarmogoyf
3 Thoughtseize
1 Notion Thief
1 Null Rod
1 Blue Elemental Blast
1 Krosan Grip
1 Night of Souls’ Betrayal
1 Toxic Deluge
1 Vendilion Clique
1 Leyline of the Void


Faced:
Omnitell with MD Thoughtseize 2-1
TES 2-1
Sylvan Plug 1-0
Burn 1-1

The deck felt really solid, I tuned it to beat mainly fair decks (delver/midrange) game 1 and tailored the board to be anti combo and control. I felt really favoured in game 1 vs fair decks and I also felt really favoured against combo post board so that was nice. I really liked how the deck played out, it really just trades 1-for-1 and reloads with standstill and DTT (sort of like shardless bug with visions) and it as a blast to play. Is it better than the tap-out version? I don't know. But I know that this is how I prefer the deck and I can warmly recommend trying it out, it's such a great feeling to play the really old-school land-go control style of deck.

Some card choices: As we discussed last time the BUG colours lack efficient removal outside decay. After thinking about it I ran a 3-1 split between Disfigures (which is a plow early game and can be cast off basic Swamp) and Go for the Throat, which is like a 2-mana plow most of the time. I liked the fact that it can be cast off Swamp + Mishra or double UG sea or some other non-green combination, which certainly comes up.

Loam: This I feel is a flex-slot, but I like to have access to a "Draw three lands" somewhere in the deck so that we can make land drops and protect ourselves against Wasteland.

The Sweepers where split between 2 Deeds (which are the best ones in general) 1 Deluge (which is faster and cannot be needled or be named by phyrexian revoker) and a EE which is more of another spot removal for Liliana, TNN, Mongoose or delver, or some other problematic permanent.

Props: Jace, who won all games I resolved him in (I never attacked with the manlands :p ) and to Tarmogoyf which a pure beast both under standstill vs combo (Dreadstill Mode!) and also just fantastic against fair decks as they board out their removal ',..,' )

Slops: None really, liked the whole thing, the manlands where really just lands every single game but the deck needs its land-drops so I think I will keep them anyway as I'm sure that they will do stuff in some games.

Missed: Some games Pearl Lake Ancient would have been king of the Jungle, but I like to just play more manlands I think.


I warmly recommend the deck to people who wants to durdle around a bit and make people's life miserable :)

[Chaam]

Hey everyone! I am currently playing ANT atm but I am looking for a second Legacy deck to put together. I have the cards for this and wanted to give it a try after seeing David Williams play his BUG still deck in the VSL.

Here is where I am at. Any suggestions or comments? Thanks!

Creature (4)
4x Deathrite Shaman

Sorcery (4)
4x Thoughtseize

Instant (18)
4x Brainstorm
2x Disfigure
2x Counterspell
4x Abrupt Decay
4x Force of Will
2x Dig Through Time

Enchantment (6)
4x Standstill
2x Pernicious Deed

Planeswalker (4)
2x Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2x Liliana of the Veil

Land (24)
4x Polluted Delta
4x Verdant Catacombs
2x Misty Rainforest
3x Underground Sea
3x Tropical Island
1x Bayou
4x Mishra's Factory
3x Wasteland

Sideboard (15)
1x Disfigure
1x Spell Pierce
1x Duress
2x Flusterstorm
2x Grafdigger's Cage
1x Sylvan Library
1x Life from the Loam
2x Golgari Charm
1x Krosan Grip
1x Toxic Deluge
2x Vendilion Clique

[Chaam]

Is it worth playing the 4th wasteland over a colored source?

[LarsLeif]

I think that you should consider whether you want to play a tap-out style of deck or a draw-go style of deck. Right now you are playing a lot of counters but also thoughtseize, DRS and Liliana. I personally like either playing mostly flash-spells without Liliana or cut most counters and play Liliana.

Regarding wastelands: I don't like them in a deck without loam or crucible as you have no pressure and you need to make your land drops. If you move 1-2 loan main I can see playing them.

[Chaam]

I think that you should consider whether you want to play a tap-out style of deck or a draw-go style of deck. Right now you are playing a lot of counters but also thoughtseize, DRS and Liliana. I personally like either playing mostly flash-spells without Liliana or cut most counters and play Liliana.

Regarding wastelands: I don't like them in a deck without loam or crucible as you have no pressure and you need to make your land drops. If you move 1-2 loan main I can see playing them.

The main issue is that I think DRS is just too good to not play. A flash/counter heavy build would need some way to deal with things like True-Name so you would need Innocent Blood but that is a nonbo with DRS. Your nut draw is probably something along the lines of DRS into Wasteland + Standstill. DRS also makes your planeswalkers better.

But, once you have a standstill in play counters are your best friend. I don't think there is a huge issue to having a mix of both. As of right now the main idea is that you will beat any unfair deck since you are disrupting them through Discard, counters, gy hate w/ DRS and land hate w/ Wasteland while beating fair decks with 1 for 1 removal/counters followed up with strong CA engines in Standstill, Dig, Jace, Lili, Deed.

Honestly, I think you should be favored post board vs. any matchup.

I think this version puts more pressure on the opponent than most others with DRS, manlands, jace, lili.

I could see making an arguement for running 25 lands with the additional land being a 4th wasteland.

[LarsLeif]

DRS into Waste + Standstill only gives your opponent time to recover from the wasteland. I feel that if you want those kinds of openings you should play goyf or something as that is severely much more pressure under standstill.

This is a semi-personal preference, so it's up to you, but I've always felt that Liliana thrives best in a deck with few reactive answers (like counters) and is more at home in a deck where you can deploy stuff beside her, being it Jace, goyf, DRS, Deed etc. +1 on Liliana when you have counterspells in your hand is at times problematic. Force + discard is enough game 1 against unfair decks IMO, as you say, the decks strength is in it's powerful board.

Regarding wasteland I think that you are missing my point a bit. Wasteland is great when you want to keep a gamestate unchanged (making both players miss land drops) and to deny mana for your opponent (and yourself) long enough for your quick threats to get there (more or less). That is why it's such a great card in tempo decks as you can deploy a delver, and then keep both you and your opponent stuck on turn 1 (mana-wise) for an extended amount of time. I feel that because you need so much mana to operate (playing deeds, walkers, attacking with manlands, casting counterspells etc) wasting opponents is often-times unproductive for you (if you don't have a loam and can start doing it every turn for the hardlockz). This is why I prefer more real lands instead (or loam) as it will make you able to make continuous land drops and deploy answers and threats that your opponent (hopefully) cannot keep up with.

None of the above is true if you are allowed to have an unmolested DRS of course, so there is of course merit in playing wasteland as well. But consider main-deck loam as a lot of decks fold to that type of cards game 1.

Standstill is great with counters yes, but those wont help you if you have already tapped out for your turn when you play standstill. Playing either more flash-cards or just betting on dealing with stuff when it has resolved I think is better strategy than doing both, but this could also be a preference. I've had a bit too many Standstills crack for me with the opponents spell on the stack only for me to draw like liliana, drs and a land, and also vice versa (drawing counters and discard when you need to deal with the board).

[Chaam]

You have a point. I was just thinking DRS + Wasteland was just too good not to play in BUG colors but you are probably right and I should just go full "flash" control.

Something like this?

Creature (1)
1x Snapcaster Mage

Sorcery (3)
2x Innocent Blood
1x Toxic Deluge

Instant (24)
4x Brainstorm
2x Disfigure
2x Spell Pierce
2x Spell Snare
3x Counterspell
4x Abrupt Decay
4x Force of Will
3x Dig Through Time

Enchantment (5)
4x Standstill
1x Pernicious Deed

Planeswalkers (3)
3x Jace, the Mind Sculptor

Lands (24)
4x Polluted Delta
4x Verdant Catacombs
2x Misty Rainforest
3x Underground Sea
3x Tropical Island
1x Bayou
1x Creeping Tar Pit
4x Mishra's Factory
2x Wasteland

Sideboard (15)
1x Disfigure
2x Flusterstorm
2x Golgari Charm
2x Grafdigger's Cage
2x Hydroblast
1x Innocent Blood
1x Krosan Grip
1x Nihil Spellbomb
1x Sylvan Library
1x Toxic Deluge
1x Vendilion Clique

Although, with a list like this I feel like you are going to have an incredibly difficult time vs. combo (mainly storm) since they have all the time in the world to set up a hand that beats a counter wall both pre and post board.

[cdnza]

I think you need to play some games with the deck. There's lots of different ways to build it and there's no arbitrary way to say which is "better" so I recommend just playing some games and seeing how you like things. That's what I did - after one evening of playing a blacker list I realised that MD Thoughtseize was actually not doing much for me but Spell Snare would have been insane, so switched things around to arrive at my list from earlier on this page.

My general advice would be that 8 fetches is probably enough and I think 3 DtTs will probably not be especially castable.

[theBloody]

Played my list (no standstills) in local 5 rounder to not impressive 3:2 finish. Managed to beat GWb Maverick (2:0), Ubrg Stiflenaught (2:0), DnT (2:0). Lost to ANT(0:2) and Miracles (0:1).
Ad ANT: G1 was nearly autolose. G2 I have sided in 3 DRS, 2 Snapcaster (among other things) as some kind of pressure. Was not enough.
Ad Miracles: I should have scooped G1. I have played out a game where I get rid of his two Entreats, but got eventually killed by his third Snapcaster. Game lasted about 40 minuted. G2 I have surgicaled his Tops and Snapcasters. Landed my own Snapcaster and game looked good but yeah, we ran out of time.

Conslusions: Matchup vs creature decks was good as it should be. Need more ways to attack ANT. As I don't own Goyfs, Cliques, and Flusterstorms I will probably try out playset of Delvers in sb. Miracles are ok as long as I scoop when I should do so.

My current meta: 2-3: DnT, ANT; 1: Miracles, Goblins, Midrange BUG, Elves; 0-1: SnT, Dredge, Burn, Reanimator, RUG Thresh, Enchantress, Mono R Moon/Sneak, Ur Delver.

[LarsLeif]

@Chaam: I like your list pretty much, as cdnza says you have to tinker around and play a lot with it, control decks especially are pretty meta-dependent so it's a bit hard to comment on individual card-choices but it looks solid. These decks are also pretty skill intensive as you don't have any super trumps as Entreat and have to rely more on small incremental advantages (and Jace + Standstill which will dominate most clear boards).

Regarding the Storm matchup there are some ways you can approach it but goyfs in the board was very good for me as you can put one down and then slam standstill which puts them in really awkward positions. Flusterstorm and SB discard spells are also nice.

[FoolofaTook]

Conslusions: Matchup vs creature decks was good as it should be. Need more ways to attack ANT. As I don't own Goyfs, Cliques, and Flusterstorms I will probably try out playset of Delvers in sb. Miracles are ok as long as I scoop when I should do so.

.

Miracles is a fairly bad matchup for any slow control list. They can do more off of the top of their library than we can and other than Null Rod and Pithing Needle there's no real way to get around that. You need a clock or a lock to beat Miracles in my experience. The manlands not being as good against them as they are against most lists really hurts. Having your manland put on the bottom of the library or exiled really sucks.

[LarsLeif]

Miracles is a fairly bad matchup for any slow control list. They can do more off of the top of their library than we can and other than Null Rod and Pithing Needle there's no real way to get around that. You need a clock or a lock to beat Miracles in my experience. The manlands not being as good against them as they are against most lists really hurts. Having your manland put on the bottom of the library or exiled really sucks.

Yeah, Game 1 Miracles is a rough matchup I think, although I feel (at least with goyfs, clique Needle and Null Rod in the board) that the matchup improves more for us post board than for them as we can play sort of a shardless game with excessive card draw and quick goyf-beats.

[Chaam]

This is the list I will be playing tonight:

Sorcery (3)
2 Innocent Blood
1 Toxic Deluge

Instant (26)
2 Disfigure
3 Spell Pierce
2 Spell Snare
4 Brainstorm
4 Counterspell
4 Abrupt Decay
4 Force of Will
3 Dig Through Time

Enchantment (4)
4 Standstill

Planeswalker (3)
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

Lands (24)
4 Polluted Delta
4 Verdant Catacombs
2 Misty Rainforest
3 Underground Sea
3 Tropical Island
1 Bayou
2 Creeping Tar Pit
4 Mishra's Factory
1 Wasteland

Sideboard (15)
1 Disfigure
3 Flusterstorm
1 Golgari Charm
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Innocent Blood
1 Krosan Grip
1 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Pithing Needle
1 Sylvan Library
1 Toxic Deluge
3 Vendilion Clique

Will give my thoughts on the deck afterwards.

[LarsLeif]

Nice, I'm playing a very similar version tomorrow actually. I like the innocent bloods, might try those.

[pandaman]

No Deed and no Liliana in these lists give immunity from Abrupt Decay and a really nice control feel. Let us know how you go. Particularly, if you feel you need another sweeper apart from the single Deluge.

[Chaam]

Ended up going 2-2 vs. Maverick (Win), Doomsday (Win), D&T (Loss) and 12-Post (Loss).

The matches vs. Maverick and Doomsday were easy 2-0 wins that were nearly impossible for me to lose.

Both the D&T and 12-Post matches came down to 3 incredibly close games.

The deck felt powerful and played out beautifully, honestly my lack of experience with the deck was a major contributor to me losing the D&T and 12-Post matches. I lost a game to D&T where I had a full grip and my opponent only had 2 cards in hand where I decided to tap out for Jace and he played Cataclysm. I had a counterspell in hand and could of just played the Jace next turn with CS backup but thought I could just bounce anything he played with Jace if need be so I wasn't afraid of anythign resolving. I obviously forgot about Cataclysm. The other game I lost to D&T were due to two Aether Vials giving me fits where I used my needle on SoFaI instead of holding it for vials and I should of realized what the real problem card was in the matchup, I also misplayed Jace by trying to FS quickly to end the game and just having it get reset by Flickerwisp (I should of just kept BSing) and I should of just buried him under CA instead. Even with Vials giving me fits, it was incredibly close and def in reach.

I also made a similar mistake vs. 12-Post where I decided to put my opponent on a 2 turn clock with clique, tarpit and factory after I had cliqued him and knew his hand while having a counterspell in hand. He topdecked Show and Tell and that was game.

I think the deck is great and I will def be playing it from now on. As for changes I would make, I want a 2nd Wasteland as a 25th land (removing either the 3rd Jace, 4th Counterspell, 4th Abrupt Decay or 3rd Spell Pierce), a 2nd Needle in the SB and Spellbomb should probably just be a 2nd Cage. I probably should also shave a clique and a flusterstorm for other pieces of anti combo/control hate. As an aside, Deed wouldn't have been good in any of my matchups and I don't think we should be playing it.

[LarsLeif]

Nice to hear that you like the deck, Standstill is such a powerhouse. How did you board against D&T? I'm considering adding Dread of Night to my board because I feel that that deck, and the card Lingering Souls, might actually be troublesome enough to warrant specific hate.

Interesting to hear that you didn't like/miss Deed, don't you think swarm can be problematic without it? I'm testing 2 Deed and 1 Night of Souls' Betrayal MD right now.

[Chaam]

Nice to hear that you like the deck, Standstill is such a powerhouse. How did you board against D&T? I'm considering adding Dread of Night to my board because I feel that that deck, and the card Lingering Souls, might actually be troublesome enough to warrant specific hate.

Interesting to hear that you didn't like/miss Deed, don't you think swarm can be problematic without it? I'm testing 2 Deed and 1 Night of Souls' Betrayal MD right now.

-3 Spell Pierce, -2 Force of Will, +1 Disfigure, +1 Golgari Charm, +1 Innocent Blood, +1 Toxic Deluge, +1 Pithing Needle. Although I think cutting the FoWs were a mistake (Cataclysm) and I should of just cut a Counterspell and Jace or something. A 2nd Pithing Needle would be really useful in this matchup.

I don't think you need to go to those extremes for narrow SB slots. I think you should keep your SB as generic as possible and just bring in counters and take out removal vs. control/combo, take out counters for removal vs. aggro and have some grindy cards to bring in for matchups like miracles and shardless.

Deed is just too mana intensive and isn't needed vs fair matchups and is just dead vs combo. Deed is too slow vs swarm anyways but you just leave in a few cheap removal spells and you'll be fine (kind of like ANT vs. Miracles, Miracles just leaves in 2-4 Terminus and/or Swords). Our removal/interaction should be cheap (nothing above 2 mana) since our man lands are mana intensive and Jace is already a 4 mana sorcery plus we always want to have mana up (I feel in total control with 4 mana up).

[pandaman]

Misplays were the reason for losses, it seems, from what you wrote it seems that you would have definitely gone 4-0 with more practice. Well done!

[FoolofaTook]

4 Counterspells and no basic islands seem very dicey. It's going to take a loooong time before we can tap mana on our turn and still guarantee having 2 blue up on the opponents turn. Seems like it would make playing Standstill and beating with Mishra's difficult.

I like the archetype and I understand the need in some matches for the Bayou but I think it is better to have a basic Island in that slot. We're far more likely to face Wastelands than to see the opponent Surgically Extracting our USeas or Trops.

I'm also wondering a bit about the Creeping Tarpits over Faerie Conclave. 4 mana to attack is a lot and Creeping Tarpits can't answer an Insectile Aberration late the way the conclaves can. The black mana the tarpits provide is an important factor but the cost of actually using them is pretty high, particularly with the no basic island build.

[LarsLeif]

I agree that 4 counterspells is pushing it a bit, but it's also meta-dependant. It's a very good card versus most deck that doesn't attack our manabase, while it's worse against tempo etc.

Yeah, I personally play the Bayou, but it sort of is the worst land, but sometimes necessary anyways.

I think that while its true that conclave is more efficient mana-wise, 3 power unblockable is lot better than 2 power with flying. I also really think that the possibility to tap CTP for UB is a huge upside that definitely decides it for me.

[FoolofaTook]

Has anybody tried a miser's Tasigur, the Golden Fang in one of the Jace slots? It's a beater that's bigger than the average bear and hard to remove and it would land for 1 mana in the mid-game. It also would let us shrink Goyfs, particularly in terms of pulling Standstill out of the GY when we need too. It seems like a decent alternate win-con for the list, especially in game 2 and 3 if they didn't see it in game 1.

[LarsLeif]

Is it really wise to activate people's removal Game 1? I think a major draw to playing this list is that it doesn't play any creatures MD. :P

Sideboard-wise I play 4 goyf already so i don't think I need another creature. It also conflicts a bit with DTT.

That being said, this deck might be one of the best tasigur decks around as we have a lot of mana and play mostly powerful non-creature spells, most of which are live troughout a long game.

[FoolofaTook]

Is it really wise to activate people's removal Game 1? I think a major draw to playing this list is that it doesn't play any creatures MD. :P

Sideboard-wise I play 4 goyf already so i don't think I need another creature. It also conflicts a bit with DTT.

That being said, this deck might be one of the best tasigur decks around as we have a lot of mana and play mostly powerful non-creature spells, most of which are live troughout a long game.

That is the argument against, although Abrupt Decay is still turned off and trading Tasigur for 2 burn is probably a good move. I was just wondering if anybody had tried it and found it to be a positive addition. The low castng cost of Tasigur allows it to be put out with enough mana up to protect it in the mid-game when we're frequently trying to turn overwhelming card advantage into a win because our threat matrix is light and can go missing when we need it.

I was thinking about Tasigur when Chaam mentioned tapping out for Jace and then getting Cataclysmed and losing vs D&T. That probably doesn't happen if Tasigur is the threat at that point. The worst case there is probably getting 4 life if you choose not to counter Swords to Plowshares or potentially getting 2 plows out of their hands before you start the factory or pit beats.

On a broader scale the one thing that really bothers me about this blend of Landstill is the length of games. It's not like the Ur version where you can get the opponent down into the low teens and then suddenly resolve things with a flurry of red damage fueled by Snapcaster Mages. Jace doesn't resolve time issues in my experience. He's great in the control mirror but if you lose a 50/50 game 1 he becomes a mixed blessing thereafter because he's not going to win fast for you most of the time. Tasigur would give the list a possible win with counter backup where going to time is the likely result otherwise.

[FoolofaTook]

This seems to be working well in the current meta:

Creatures

2x Vendilion Clique
1x Tasigur, The Golden Fang

Draw/Selection

4x Brainstorm
3x Standstill
2x Dig Through Time

Counters/Removal

3x Innocent Blood
3x Abrupt Decay
1x Toxic Deluge
1x Dimir Charm
4x Force of Will
3x Daze
3x Spell Snare
3x Counterspell
3x Stifle

Lands

4x Mishra's Factory
3x Wasteland
2x Creeping Tar Pit
2x Polluted Delta
2x Flooded Strand
2x Scalding Tarn
2x Misty Rainforest
3x Underground Sea
3x Tropical Island
1x Island

SB (in progress)

4x Tarmogoyf
1x Abrupt Decay
1x Innocent Blood
1x Dread of Night
1x Engineered Plague
1x Golgari Charm
1x Flusterstorm
1x Krosan Grip
2x Surgical Extraction
2x Grafdigger's Cage

Played this 4 rounds Friday night to 7-2 overall and 1st place in our small 12 man pod. Beat Burn 2-0, Storm 2-0, Shardless BUG 2-0 and then lost 1-2 to a paired up Uwb Stoneblade playing Cabal Therapy, Monastery Mentor and Lingering Souls.

The loss was totally on me as I sided poorly and then made 2 play errors in game 3 to hand the game away. The poor siding was taking FoW and Standstill out for a total attrition plan. I should have kept both in and taken Daze out instead and gone with less attrition from the sideboard. I had him over matched on counters and was even on card advantage once I sided Grafdigger's Cage and Dread of Night in. I lost the counter edge without the Forces, since he kept his in and I lost the card advantage once I took the Standstills out.

The 2 play errors were in resolving a promptly removed Tasigur mid-game and not making him put a Spell Pierce on the bottom of his pile when I resolved a Vendilion Clique later on. The clique got him down to 4 life but he pierced my Toxic Deluge after I had to tap 4 land and delve 4 to find it due to Tasigur emptying my graveyard a few turns earlier. This should have been a 2-1 in my favor and instead it turned into a loss.

[theBloody]

Well played. What were the key moments in burn and storm matchups? I my experience they are pretty tough if the pilots are good enough. Also how do you evaluate daze and stifle in the deck?

[FoolofaTook]

Well played. What were the key moments in burn and storm matchups? I my experience they are pretty tough if the pilots are good enough.

The key plays against Burn in both games were Spell Snares and Dazes on Eidolon of the Great Revel and Price of Progress. A Standstill at the end of game 2 was the clincher when it drew me a Brainstorm to pitch to a Force and let me keep a Counterspell and Spell Snare in hand with mana open. I tuned in the 4 Goyfs against him game 2 but killed him with Mishra's and Cliques in the end.

I was on the draw vs Storm game 1 and he wasn't able to spy my hand before he went off turn 3 and I Spell Snared an Infernal Tutor with 2 LED's on the board, leaving him hellbent and dead. He'd done the usual durdling the first 2 turns and just didn't draw the nut during that. I dropped Tasigur and killed him after that. Game 2 he got a bad draw and wound up mulling to 6. He dropped an Underground Sea turn 1 and Pondered. I wasted the USea on my turn 1 and the game went over fairly quickly from there. Again it was a Mishra's Factory and a Vendilion Clique hitting for 5 a turn that closed the match out. I think I tuned in the Goyfs against him as well but didn't play one.

I don't think I actually played a Goyf all night. I didn't want them in vs Shardless BUG or Stoneblade and I didn't draw them in the Burn and Storm matches.

Edit: didn't see the questions about Daze and Stifle.

The point of the list is to have counter superiority over the opponent, to have strong varied removal options and to specifically not be over matched by Miracles, Omnitell, Delver and Blade. The list never wants to tap out on my turn. The 3cc options are either flash or desperation and so I'll never tap out on my turn unless the alternative is losing in short order. Daze is necessary to manage the Omnitell and Delver matchups. Stifle is needed for Miracles and Blade. On top of that there are 10 hard counters in the list in Force, Counterspell and Spell Snare. Then there's Wasteland, which works really well with Stifle and Daze.

I made an error in not tuning out the Dazes against the Blade list. I had enough options already to play the attrition game against him, which is how I beat Blade generally, and Daze was just bad compared to Force of Will in this matchup. After tuning in a Flusterstorm and tuning out 3 Dazes I would have had 11 counters + Dimir Charm, which is all I needed to win that game handily. Instead I died with 2 Dazes in my hand when he Spell Pierced my Toxic Deluge to sweep the board with both a Creeping Tar Pit and a Mishra's Factory on the board for me and him at 4 life.

[LarsLeif]

Nice list, I like the low curve with Waste + Stifle. Are you sure there are not better alternatives to Daze though? Like maybe the 4th Stifle, 4th Standstill etc? I don't like 3-ofs of game-plan critical cards really :p

How was the Bloods? Are you sure Disfigure isn't better overall since it's instant (which is a big deal) and has less of an anti-synergy with your creatures, especially if you board in goyfs?

Also, wouldn't Life from the Loam be a consideration since you are already pretty deep into the mana-denial game?

[FoolofaTook]

Nice list, I like the low curve with Waste + Stifle. Are you sure there are not better alternatives to Daze though? Like maybe the 4th Stifle, 4th Standstill etc? I don't like 3-ofs of game-plan critical cards really :p

How was the Bloods? Are you sure Disfigure isn't better overall since it's instant (which is a big deal) and has less of an anti-synergy with your creatures, especially if you board in goyfs?

Also, wouldn't Life from the Loam be a consideration since you are already pretty deep into the mana-denial game?

I think Daze as an option is necessary in this meta. I don't like Spell Pierce at this point because it's dead in the hand too often early on. It's very strong against the right lists but then you get somebody trying to resolve a Delver or Goyf or SFM to get under the list and it fails and requires another card in hand to avoid having that be a critical failure. Spell Snare can also be dead in the hand but the plays that it stops are game-altering plays and it handles a nice mix of threats.

Stifle is necessary for Miracles, to avoid the miracles triggers and gain control of the stack at the end of your turn. It's also really good against Blade with SFM triggers and Prowess triggers and Batterskull triggers and Sword triggers all dealt with. It also handles a ton of problematic interactions for the list, the primary being opposing Wastelands trying to cripple the mana base at an inopportune time. It can be dead but that's the reason there are only 3 in the list.

Every card in the list that is a 3-of is a card that is key to the overall strategy but that I don't want 2 of in the opening hand because they flatten the list out when they show up in multiples early on.

Innocent Blood is why I went back to BUG from Ur. It's for creatures that can't be targeted and it's excellent early removal overall in a list that has only 3 creatures and that will never put out a creature until turn 3 at the earliest. I was having real issues dealing with a UW vanilla control list at the local shop that was playing 4 True-Name Nemesis. Issue solved. It's a 50/50 card against Emrakul but there are very few main-listable cards that can handle him and so that's a bonus. It's also an excellent card against Delver lists, although those seem to be submerging again as Omnitell rises.

Life from the Loam is too slow and it is the definition of a tapout card early on. I could see a benefit in putting a loam into the list for some matchups but it doesn't do anything against Miracles or much against Blade and it's a highly doubtful resource against things like Omnitell, Burn, Dredge, Merfolk, etc.

The main emphasis of the list is to have a fistful of counters and removal and enough draw and selection to sort them well. In this meta I think you either have to be trying to kill people very fast or to say no to everything they try to do that will kill you. I thought about going with threats that were really hard to deal with so I could save the counters for things that were important. The problem is that threats that are really hard to deal with either require a tapout or they are just not as good at killing people as the ones in the list. Even the really fragile assets in the list, the cliques and Tasigur, all give some really strong secondary benefit that is optionally available when they are played.

I misplayed Tasigur on Friday night a couple of times. He should never come down until the end-game against anything that is playing draw-go-parry.

[FoolofaTook]

Double post.

[Nastaboi]

Okay guys. I have been testing the deck for GP Lille and mostly against top decks I find most difficult: RUG Delver, Omnitell and Miracles. Mostly boarded games and trying to find a good SB strategy. Against Omnitell, I can bring in so much anti-combo stuff to turn an unfavorable preboard match to favorable postboard. I added Innocent Bloods to board to be able to kill any RUG threat even with low mana, but sometimes they have it all and still win. I don't think any deck will ever be that much favored against RUG Delver, but I can live with the MU being 50-50.

That brings us to Miracles: I have yet to find a winning SB plan. Postboard games are always decided on who gets Jace active first, and they are better equipped for that. I have Cliques but so do they, and while I have Thoughtseizes they have red blasts, which can also answer resolved Jace - and even kill my Clique or Tar Pit if try to attack his resolved Jace with them. I don't feel like boarding in all my creatures accomplishes much unless they happen to board out all their removal. Also Shaman feels underwhelming in the matchup.

Good suggestions how to sideboard against Miracles are more than welcome. If someone has a killer SB tech card against the deck, please share your wisdom. My latest list for reference:

4/2/2 fetch
2/2/2 dual
1 island
1 swamp
2 mishra
2 tar pit
3 waste

4 shaman
3 lily
3 jace

2 seize
2 pierce
2 disfigure
3 decay
3 deed
4 force

4 bs
2 ponder
3 standstill
2 dig
0 loam

SB:
2 tarmo
1 tasigur
2 BEB / surgical (meta call)
1 seize
2 flusterstorm
3 clique
3 innocent blood
1 krosan grip

[btm10]

Good suggestions how to sideboard against Miracles are more than welcome. If someone has a killer SB tech card against the deck, please share your wisdom. My latest list for reference:


Zur's Weirding almost invariably just beats them when it resolves.

[FoolofaTook]

Main list cliques are really good right now. They give so many different options against so many lists and if they're not expected they can be a real back-breaker. Miracles, Omnitell and Blade all hate to see clique at the wrong time.

[LarsLeif]

I don't know exactly how to solve your problems against all these decks but I can give some general advise I suppose. I will be pretty promoting of my own list, which might result in me giving pretty drastic advise so keep that in mind, maybe there is a middle line here. :)

Firstly, I don't like playing cards like DRS in this deck as you open yourself up to removal much more than usual. I would cut them and some of the more clunky stuff like the lilianas, 3rd deed, 3rd jace for perhaps innocent bloods and more Counterspells. Playing less targets for bolts, less expensive cards and more cheap removal for the threats out of RUG Delver should put you in an advantaged spot in that MU.

Talking about Counterspell, it is such a card in standstill decks, and the same goes for spell snare. Pierce is pretty bad in any deck that isn't a delver deck and you shouldn't run any if you want to have a good chance of fighting miracles and combo game 1, as you have no clock and pierce becomes terrible late-game. My personal counter-suite is 4 FoW, 3 CS, 3 Snare and it has served me well. Avoiding taxing counters is generally a good thing if you don't run the stifle build.

Regarding post board cards against miracles yes, Zur's Wierding is good if it resolves, but it of course wont (and even if it does they have REBs). I would play a number of cliques and thoughtseize in the board to bring in, which together with the suggested counter-suite should make you the master of the stack, which is where a control-mirror is decided. Other than that Null Rod or Needle are pretty good in the matchup, but they are bad with deed so I personally don't run them.

I also very much recommend the full set of mishras (together with your CTPs) over wastelands. If you want to run wasteland you should run loam, otherwise it feels poor. Trading land-drops isn't very useful for us outside matchups like lands and 12post (less coloured lands are useful vs delver as well). Mishra's also trades with Nimble Mongoose (hint hint).

And of course 4 standstill is better than 3 because running 4 ancestral is better than 3 (and if you don't like to draw multiples/draw them when they are bad you luckily play blue and have access to FoW and Brainstorm).

I run the full 4 goyfs SB so that I get a clock vs combo. Bringing in 4 goys + discard + cliques instead of removal will give you a very good post-board game vs combo which is the best the deck can do I think, it's hard to hedge enough against fair decks MD and still beat combo.

You can also potentially use goyfs in the SB vs miracles and become a sort of shardless deck post board. Winning on the stack is better I think however if you win game 1.


This is how I think of these matchups and of course these advise put you very close to my current list, which is definitely not the only way to build it, but I think that wanting to beat miracles and combo leads towards a more reactive game-plan that abuses standstill more (more reactive cards basically).

If you are at all interested my current list looks like this:

CREATURES (1)
1 Pearl Lake Ancient (this is a lol-slot, could be a snapcaster/3rd jace/4th counterspell etc

ENCHANTMENTS (7)
4 Standstill
2 Pernicious Deed
1 Night of Souls’ Betrayal

SORCERIES (1)
1 Life from the Loam

INSTANTS (24)
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
4 Abrupt Decay
3 Spell Snare
3 Counterspell
3 Disfigure (I go back and forth between bloods and disfig, bloods might be a bit better, but I really like being able to kill a 1-drop and drop standstill turn 2 OtP. It's also nice to be able to keep up snare and disfig t1 OtD.
2 Dig Through Time
1 Go for the Throat

PLANESWALKERS (2)
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

LANDS (25)
4 Underground Sea
2 Tropical Island
1 Bayou
1 Forest
1 Swamp
2 Polluted Delta
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Verdant Catacombs
2 Creeping Tar Pit
4 Mishra’s Factory

SIDEBOARD (15) (Flusterstorm is a consideration)
4 Tarmogoyf
3 Thoughtseize
2 Toxic Deluge
1 Night of Souls’ Betrayal
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Krosan Grip
1 Leyline of the Void
1 Vendilion Clique (would like to play more of these, maybe cut 1-2 goyfs)

[FoolofaTook]

In this meta I think the biggest challenge for a Control list is figuring out how to avoid getting caught in the switches in the early and mid-games. The late game is usually going to be ours, the question is how to get there reliably. We also need a plan to switch gears in a hurry when we're actually the beat down because we can't let the opponent have multiple bites at the apple or we're likely to lose.

My process at the moment is to avoid tapping out on my turn except when the payoff is likely to be dramatically in my favor. That means that the only card I will tap out for on my turn under normal circumstances is Standstill when I have a good board to play it on. I'm also unwilling to cede the opponent a play at 3 mana on their turn 3 so I'm using 3 Daze in the main list so that even if I tap out for Standstill on the draw I have enough options if the opponent chooses to then play Intuition or Show and Tell or True-Name Nemesis. The Dazes also give me overkill on counters in the early game when I'm at my most vulnerable after the first flurry and before we've settled into the mid-game. They're basically second wave counters and very good in that role in this meta.

I'm trying to give the list internal consistency by not playing a mix of tap out and draw-go cards. This lets me read my opening hand and the opponent's first couple of plays and know where things are headed and when the inflection point is likely to be, usually at the end of the opponent's turn 4 or 5. Liliana is a stronger option in many cases than Innocent Blood but she's a tap out option in the mid-game and she has hidden costs associated with that. Jace is a stronger option than Vendilion Clique but he's a tap out option and again the hidden costs mount.

[LarsLeif]

Yeah, I agree with mostly everything. I very strongly prefer the draw-go version nowadays as well. If I want to play a tap-out deck Shardless or TA are better at doing that I feel.

[Nastaboi]

Firstly, I don't like playing cards like DRS in this deck as you open yourself up to removal much more than usual. I would cut them and some of the more clunky stuff like the lilianas, 3rd deed, 3rd jace for perhaps innocent bloods and more Counterspells. Playing less targets for bolts, less expensive cards and more cheap removal for the threats out of RUG Delver should put you in an advantaged spot in that MU.


I have been less impressed with shamans that i've been in the past. I could try shamanless build with no lilianas and less need for different colored mana, or at least consider siding out shamans in some matchups. However I feel that lack of shamans leaves me more vulnerable to blood moon, so I have to test it out. I like your unorthodox swamp+forest as a choise of basics, I might try that one too.



Talking about Counterspell, it is such a card in standstill decks, and the same goes for spell snare. Pierce is pretty bad in any deck that isn't a delver deck and you shouldn't run any if you want to have a good chance of fighting miracles and combo game 1, as you have no clock and pierce becomes terrible late-game. My personal counter-suite is 4 FoW, 3 CS, 3 Snare and it has served me well. Avoiding taxing counters is generally a good thing if you don't run the stifle build.


I used to run a couple of counterspells and could see their return in Lilianaless build. Earlier I felt the same about Pierce and Snare, but I have changed my mind. I used to play Snare when Hymn+goyf was a thing, but I feel it doesn't hold its weight any more. Against Delver, the only card it hits is Goyf (well Pierce is equally awful). While it's great against storm combo, it does nothing against Show and Tell, Dredge or Reanimator (well Reanimator has some targets, but still worse than Pierce). Even against Miracles where it hits CSpell, Balance and Snapcaster, Pierce hits the cards you care the most: Top, Jace and Entreat. Pierce just does so much more to me than Snare and is less of the time dead.



Regarding post board cards against miracles yes, Zur's Wierding is good if it resolves, but it of course wont (and even if it does they have REBs). I would play a number of cliques and thoughtseize in the board to bring in, which together with the suggested counter-suite should make you the master of the stack, which is where a control-mirror is decided. Other than that Null Rod or Needle are pretty good in the matchup, but they are bad with deed so I personally don't run them.


Yea, boarding in Zur's Weirding is like boarding in another Jace, except that with Jace you at least get some value out if they happen to have an answer in their hand. I already have Seizes and Cliques but feel that it's not enough.



I also very much recommend the full set of mishras (together with your CTPs) over wastelands. If you want to run wasteland you should run loam, otherwise it feels poor. Trading land-drops isn't very useful for us outside matchups like lands and 12post (less coloured lands are useful vs delver as well). Mishra's also trades with Nimble Mongoose (hint hint).

And of course 4 standstill is better than 3 because running 4 ancestral is better than 3 (and if you don't like to draw multiples/draw them when they are bad you luckily play blue and have access to FoW and Brainstorm).


Okay, now we are into something. I remember playing Miracles matchup in the past by attacking aggressively with Mishras. I am nowadays more conserned attacking into Swords or Terminus, but with full sets of Standstills and Factories I should be able to utilize both better in the matchup.

The problem with cutting Wastes is that they are essential in some matcups like Lands, 12-post and Infect. I don't feel like giving up against them, but then again you can't win against everything.



You can also potentially use goyfs in the SB vs miracles and become a sort of shardless deck post board. Winning on the stack is better I think however if you win game 1.


Yea, what I really wanted was opinions on which approach is better. So you lean on staying in control role if possible and using creatures as plan be if needed. I tend to think the same, but is good to have an option to vary how you side.

[LarsLeif]

I have been less impressed with shamans that i've been in the past. I could try shamanless build with no lilianas and less need for different colored mana, or at least consider siding out shamans in some matchups. However I feel that lack of shamans leaves me more vulnerable to blood moon, so I have to test it out. I like your unorthodox swamp+forest as a choise of basics, I might try that one too.

Yeah, my manabase is adapted to be able to cast decay through blood moon, and also to cast decay, disfig and goyf using basics against mana-denial strategies. While I never fetch basics otherwise I feel that it's a decent trade for not having to play creatures. As I feel, a lot of the decks parts are connected in a sense: Cutting DRS makes Liliana worse, Liliana makes answers like counterspell worse and cutting lilianas makes DRS worse. So either I feel that you keep both DRS + Lili or cut both. My love of counterspell made me cut liliana + drs :p



I used to run a couple of counterspells and could see their return in Lilianaless build. Earlier I felt the same about Pierce and Snare, but I have changed my mind. I used to play Snare when Hymn+goyf was a thing, but I feel it doesn't hold its weight any more. Against Delver, the only card it hits is Goyf (well Pierce is equally awful). While it's great against storm combo, it does nothing against Show and Tell, Dredge or Reanimator (well Reanimator has some targets, but still worse than Pierce). Even against Miracles where it hits CSpell, Balance and Snapcaster, Pierce hits the cards you care the most: Top, Jace and Entreat. Pierce just does so much more to me than Snare and is less of the time dead.

I won't talk about dredge since that deck isn't anything I tune to beat, but I think that saying that Pierce hit's Jace is only partially true as no good miracles pilot will play into pierce with jace anyways against a deck with no pressure. It only hits Top on the play as well so that's also pretty unreliable. The same goes for entreat. If they know you play pierce they can easily play around it. Snare does the exact opposite: Being a hard counter for some of their best cards no matter how long the game progresses. Snare is also very good vs blade, storm, burn and a slew of other decks/cards. It just hit's so many great cards for so little mana.



Yea, boarding in Zur's Weirding is like boarding in another Jace, except that with Jace you at least get some value out if they happen to have an answer in their hand. I already have Seizes and Cliques but feel that it's not enough.
I like Jaces more than Weirding for the reasons you give. I think that you will find it easier to play on the stack with a more counterspell-heavy version generally though, combined with the card-advantage generated by them having to kill man-lands through standstill.



Okay, now we are into something. I remember playing Miracles matchup in the past by attacking aggressively with Mishras. I am nowadays more conserned attacking into Swords or Terminus, but with full sets of Standstills and Factories I should be able to utilize both better in the matchup.
Yes, especially since they have few ways of generating card advantage compared to you getting to deploy standstill + manlands (CB will get decayed most of the time, snapcaster snared (?) and Jace attacked by manlands). They will also struggle post-board as they have to keep "bad" card like swords and maybe terminus in to deal with your lands, while you can cut most of your removal since our creatures are part of your manabase :)



The problem with cutting Wastes is that they are essential in some matcups like Lands, 12-post and Infect. I don't feel like giving up against them, but then again you can't win against everything.
Disfigure + NoSB MD (+1 more SB) has been very good for me vs Infect, I feel favoured overall vs them. But yes, 12post and Lands will be problematic. I wouldn't worry against 12p though, if folding against that deck was enough to make a deck bad miracles wouldn't exist. But Lands is a concern. I run Surgicals and Leyline especially for that matchup (and Reanimator), but it's a difficult matchup for sure.



Yea, what I really wanted was opinions on which approach is better. So you lean on staying in control role if possible and using creatures as plan be if needed. I tend to think the same, but is good to have an option to vary how you side. I think that with more counters main + cliques and discard the matchup should probably be slightly in your favour post board if you go the control-route. But if you lose g1 then time will be a factor and in that case a goyf-plan might be a better choice.

[FoolofaTook]

The list I posted above has 3 weeklies in now to mixed results. It's owning Burn over multiple opponents, it's beaten Storm combo, Shardless Bug and Esper Control. It's also lost to Esper Blade and it's drawn and lost too UW Control and D&T and it lost a long one game match to Miracles.

Basically with the exception of Miracles it seems to do well against unfair blue lists and not so well against blue lists trying to do the same thing it is doing. D&T feels like it should be a 50/50 matchup but it hasn't been so far. Directed lists trying to kill it fast, like Burn and ANT have gotten tripped up counting to 20 and lost in the 4 matches so far. 8-0 in the matches, no game losses.

My feel after playing it for a bit is that it is too slow and passive to be a strong list in the meta right now. The Miracles loss was aggravating because I thought I had it won twice and both times he squirmed out from under and Entreat ended things after an hour of play. The match loss to UW Control was Jace in one game and a lone TNN going the distance with me not finding the 7 solutions in the list before he did me. I had Tasigur keeping the TNN pinned for a few turns but he eventually got plowed and I couldn't get any of 4x Innocent Blood, 1 Toxic Deluge, 1x Golgari Charm or 1x Engineered Plague to stop the bleeding.

I'm going to reconfigure slightly and go with 4 Delvers and 4 Ponders in the list, removing the 3 Spell Snares, Dimir Charm, 2 Dig Through Time and Toxic Deluge along with a Tropical Island. Too often I am finding myself with multiple Spell Snares in hand in the mid-game and no action and games that should be mine are going away in the similar mirrors.

[theBloody]

I'm going to reconfigure slightly and go with 4 Delvers and 4 Ponders in the list, removing the 3 Spell Snares, Dimir Charm, 2 Dig Through Time and Toxic Deluge along with a Tropical Island. Too often I am finding myself with multiple Spell Snares in hand in the mid-game and no action and games that should be mine are going away in the similar mirrors.

I'm pondering with Delvers too, but only in sb because they don't combo with Innocent Bloods. My logic is that matchups where I want them is the one where I don't need Innocent Bloods.

The creature I want to try out in mb as 2 or 3 of is Pack Rat. I want cheap beater that is able to survive stp/Decay and my own Innocent Blood and can close game in few turns if not answered. In lategame it's ability let me recycle irrelevant cards like Spell Pierce/Thoughtseize into kind of actual win condition. Also combos with Loam. While I'm not too fond of it, there is also possibility to replace Mishra's with Mutavaults to get some form of synergy.