Standstill has Willie Bloomquist disease

[morgan_coke]

hanni,

You'll be happy to know fiatlux tried your predict idea in some 2-mans, said he straight up just switched out standstills for them, and was really impressed with it. Also said he used predict to destroy some peoples' SDT's, and E. tutors and counterbalance top cards. And one Doomsday pile as well. So, some definite uses to the card beyond just straight top/draw interactions.

[Hanni]

hanni,

You'll be happy to know fiatlux tried your predict idea in some 2-mans, said he straight up just switched out standstills for them, and was really impressed with it. Also said he used predict to destroy some peoples' SDT's, and E. tutors and counterbalance top cards. And one Doomsday pile as well. So, some definite uses to the card beyond just straight top/draw interactions.

I'm not sure who fiatlux is, but I'm glad he liked them. I was very unsatisfied with Standstill for such a long time in my Landstill deck, which was continuing to evolve away from the classic principles of Landstill. I made the switch to Predict only a few months ago, but I swear by it now. It requires the proper shell, of course, Sensei's Divining Top primarily, but they are extremely powerful.

It was even stronger for alternate purposes like what you are mentioning when Mystical Tutor was a format defining card. It's unfortunate that it was banned, because that would make the Top + Predict draw engine that much stronger. It's still an animal regardless, though.

What deck did your friend try them in? Classic Landstill, or something more evolved like the list I posted?

I finally cut the Mishra's Factories out of my list, adding a singleton Kor Haven, another Island, and 2 more duals. Without Standstill, the Factories just really suck. It's funny how Standstill required the deck (Landstill) to play so many underpowered cards in today's format to be viable (Decree of Justice, Mishra's Factory). I don't think a conditional 2 mana draw 3 is worth playing bad cards anymore.

I truly and honestly believe that the control deck I've engineered is the new face of blue-based control, I just wonder if it will ever catch on with the rest of the community. Being a strong deck doesn't mean it's going to make any Top 8's if it doesn't get played.

As far as Standstill as a card goes, I still think it's a strong card in a shell like Merfolk. Alot of Merfolk lists have been dropping it lately, though, in favor of more Lords and other cards that improve their bad matchups like Zoo.

In control decks, I see Top + Predict becoming the new draw engine of choice, if people ever catch on to it. It's that good.

EDIT: I didn't mean to hijack your thread to discuss my control deck. Sorry.

[jazzykat]

With the slowing down of the format, I'm starting to think we should be running AK's again. Especially with a few intuitions (obviously in a deck that can abuse them). But yeah, Standstill requires you to make concessions and it is junk when you are losing.

[Hanni]

AK will never be good in Legacy.

The first AK cast is worse than every viable 1cc cantrip in the format. The second AK is a draw 2 for 2, which is solid. However, if you have casted two, you have to average them. So you can either look at it as paying 1U to draw 1.5 cards, or paying 2UU for +1 CA. Horrible. AK is only decent in games where you can cast 3 or more, where at 3, it averages each AK to being a 2 mana draw 2.

If you run Intuition -> AK, you're paying 5 mana for a draw 3. Aside from being able to split the cost difference between two turns, it's still a Jace's Ingenuity. Intuition -> Loam draws 3 cards too, except it sets up a recurring draw engine. I still think Intuition/Loam is a strong draw engine in the format, but it's slow and requires the deck to be properly built around it:

U/G/w Bant Loam

Lands (22)
4 Misty Rainforest
2 Flooded Strand
2 Windswept Heath
2 Tropical Island
2 Tundra
1 Savannah
1 Island
1 Forest
1 Academy Ruins
2 Lonely Sandbar
4 Wasteland

Creatures (12)
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Knight of the Reliquary

Spells (26)
1 Worm Harvest
1 Life from the Loam
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
3 Intuition
4 Daze
4 Force of Will
4 Swords to Plowshares
1 Engineered Explosives


So in conclusion, AK is bad. Intuition/Loam is still viable.

Top + Predict is much easier to fit into other decks, much less mana dependant, and Top itself is one of the strongest cards for control decks in the entire game.

EDIT: Oops. Jace's Ingenuity is a new card from M11 so it's not showing up yet. It's a 3UU draw 3.

[Aggro_zombies]

I'm pretty sure the only real reason a good player would play Standstill is because it draws 3 cards for 2 mana. And for that effect, it is quite good and there is no other legal card that can do that for so cheap.

Yes, but would you play Browbeat if that were your only option for card draw?

Standstill gives your opponent a choice of when to give you cards, and it's well-known that playing a card that gives your opponent a choice is terrible. If your opponent breaks your Standstill, it means you're playing some weird deck that has Standstill plus tons of pressure, or he just doesn't give a shit about giving you three cards because he has enough gas to power through whatever you draw. I mean, Standstill was bad even in the days (years ago) when it was kind of good; now that the format has evolved to the point where there are many decks capable of regularly pressuring you from turn one, why are you playing a draw three that only works the way you want it to when you're winning?

Furthermore, most of the decks that play Standstill would also be interested in Jace. Jace draws you three no matter who's winning, while still allowing you to affect the board using real cards instead of jank like Factory. That strikes me as being much better than a card that prevents you from playing your own spells lest you give your opponent enough gas to kill you.

I mean, if you're playing a deck with Jace, why do you need another draw engine? Just run Top and Brainstorm and call it a day.

EDIT: @Hanni: Ingenuity is probably worse than FoF in this format, and FoF is not played anymore. That aside, LftL plus cycling lands is not exactly a Jace's Ingenuity since it has a rate-determining step (sorcery-speed LftL) and LftL requires much more setup to get going. Also, playing Loam just to draw cards is really, really underwhelming these days (thanks, Zoo).

[Hanni]

I mean, if you're playing a deck with Jace, why do you need another draw engine? Just run Top and Brainstorm and call it a day.

Jace is a versatile card, but shouldn't be considered strictly as a draw engine, or be a replacement draw engine in the decks that run him. He often functions as a draw engine, but he's just as situational as Standstill when it comes to drawing cards.

I typically look at Jace as a win condition first, draw engine second. Maybe it's just my playstyle or the way the decks I play him in operate, but I start ramping counters and fatesealing the turn I drop him into play almost always. I only tend to use the Brainstorm effect if the opponent casts a bomb through the fatesealing and I need to dig for an answer. I very rarely use the bounce effect, which has been strictly when I have a CounterTop lock in place and enough mana to cast Jace and still spin Top (5+ mana).

[Aggro_zombies]

Jace is a versatile card, but shouldn't be considered strictly as a draw engine, or be a replacement draw engine in the decks that run him. He often functions as a draw engine, but he's just as situational as Standstill when it comes to drawing cards.

I typically look at Jace as a win condition first, draw engine second. Maybe it's just my playstyle or the way the decks I play him in operate, but I start ramping counters and fatesealing the turn I drop him into play almost always. I only tend to use the Brainstorm effect if the opponent casts a bomb through the fatesealing and I need to dig for an answer. I very rarely use the bounce effect, which has been strictly when I have a CounterTop lock in place and enough mana to cast Jace and still spin Top (5+ mana).

That's true, but it's worth noting that Jace is a draw engine if you need him to be one.

I mean, draw engines are basically irrelevant in this format, and getting card advantage through drawing more cards is super overrated. Legacy is all about having the most powerful plays per unit of resources expended, so card quality is much more important. That's why a deck like Thopterbalance does so well even without a draw engine: it doesn't care if it has no cards in hand if it gets either Foundry or Counter-Top going. It's also why Zoo just crushes people who dick around with drawing cards instead of actually doing something to affect the board. If you're considering something that just draws you cards, it had better be damn good, because otherwise it's a waste of slots in your deck.

[Hanni]

Raw card advantage is still a very powerful concept for control decks to utilize. I agree that cards like Counterbalance (with Top) can generate raw card advantage, but I still value card drawing in control decks. Obviously you don't want to be dicking around drawing cards and not doing anything else against a deck like Zoo, but you don't want to be empty handed and in a topdeck war with a deck that can just burn you out, either. That's also looking at a matchup where I tend to board out my Force of Wills. Against other decks, especially midrange decks, card drawing is very good.

I'm not a big fan of the Thopter combo, but that's a different discussion altogether.

EDIT:

EDIT: @Hanni: Ingenuity is probably worse than FoF in this format, and FoF is not played anymore. That aside, LftL plus cycling lands is not exactly a Jace's Ingenuity since it has a rate-determining step (sorcery-speed LftL) and LftL requires much more setup to get going. Also, playing Loam just to draw cards is really, really underwhelming these days (thanks, Zoo).

I wasn't comparing Ingenuity to Intuition/Loam, I was comparing it to Intuition/AK. I also agree that it's worse than Fact or Fiction, that wasn't why I mentioned it. I only mentioned it because it costs the same total mana as Intuition/AK for the same amount of cards drawn, to show how weak Intuition/AK is. Clearly, Ingenuity is a bad card in Legacy, that's why I made the comparison. Compare Jace's Ingenuity with Ad Nauseam, for example.

Playing Loam just to draw cards isn't bad, as long as the deck is capable of handling Zoo's aggressive early game. If you can stabilize and then push Zoo into topdeck mode, drawing cards is a good thing. I agree that the Loam engine itself is bad against a hyper aggressive deck like Zoo, but it's great against midrange decks, and superb against other control decks.

One good thing about a deck playing a Loam engine is that it is typically going to be playing a playset of Wastelands. Sometimes, a few Wastelands early is enough to cripple a deck with a vulnerable manabase, like Zoo, and a Waste-lock during the midgame can often be the gamewinner.

[Rico Suave]

It's certainly interesting to see other people's opinions on the matter.

A completely other consideration, could be to just rely on the raw power of Jace/Thopter and use cantrips to "accelerate" into a position where either the combo or the planewalker will seal the game, rather than the traditional school of control through card advantage.

It's funny you should mention the idea of playing cheap search to set up Jace/Thopter ASAP. This is what dedicated combo decks have been built on for years. Decks like Necro-Trix and ANT revolve around the idea of playing a bunch of cheap search in an effort to get a powerful engine online. Then, with that engine in place, it would result in such a powerful game-winning effect that the deck could ride it to victory even when running other cards that are only there to facilitate the engine (Illusions/Donate in Trix, cards like Chrome Mox in ANT, etc).

While Jace is pretty good, it's not powerful enough to justify that style of play. Thopter/Sword isn't anywhere close to that level. The problem is that if the Jace doesn't hit play and stick there, the rest of the deck falls apart quickly because it's a bunch of cheap search with no substance.

This is why I feel it's important to supplement cards like Jace with additional draw. If my opponent happens to answer Jace, I don't want to be stuck in the water because I put all my eggs in one basket.

[Infinitium]

Intuition/AK is better than you're giving it credit for Hanni. Not only does the breakup mana cost mean you can play it earlier than inguinety or FoF in an attempt to draw into low-cc answers (which isn't trivial with all the cheap fat in the format), but you've also forgotten to mention the possibility of having an AK in the graveyard or on hand when casting the intuition. 5-mana draw 4's or 7-mana draw 7's mashed out over a few turns is decidedly more unfair than inguinety.

I'm not saying it's good enough, but it should at least be a consideration.

[Hanni]

Intuition/AK is better than you're giving it credit for Hanni. Not only does the breakup mana cost mean you can play it earlier than inguinety or FoF in an attempt to draw into low-cc answers (which isn't trivial with all the cheap fat in the format), but you've also forgotten to mention the possibility of having an AK in the graveyard or on hand when casting the intuition. 5-mana draw 4's or 7-mana draw 7's mashed out over a few turns is decidedly more unfair than inguinety.

I'm not saying it's good enough, but it should at least be a consideration.

So you're going to run 4 AK's, and some amount of Intuitions, just so that you can pay 2U for Intuition, to cast 1 Accumulated Knowledge for 1U, that may draw you 4 cards instead of 3. Even if you do get 4 cards from it, investing 5 mana to do so is still very slow, and it's only a 1-shot effect, unlike Intuition/Loam.

What do you do with the rest of your Intuitions after the first one grabs 3 AK's?

Your best case scenario is having an AK in hand when you cast Intuition for 3 AK's, so that you can pay 4UUU (and 2 cards) to draw 7 (+5 CA). But do you realize how slow this is? It doesn't matter that the costs can be split up over turns, you still have to invest a very large sum of mana.

What about scenarios where you don't draw Intuition at all? Paying 1U to draw a single card is awful.

The fact is, Intuition/AK is a very bad draw engine. Why would you want to dedicate so many spaces in your deck for such a slow, 1-shot draw engine?

Even the Intuition/Loam engine is slow. Intuition/Loam is only justifiable because it is extremely powerful. Intuition itself can be considered card advantage when Loam makes the graveyard an extension of ones hand, and Loam itself is a recurrable 2 mana draw 3.

Intuition/AK is not extremely powerful.

Take your control deck, play with an Intuition/AK draw engine, and then replace it with a Top/Predict draw engine. Draw your own conclusions from the results (no pun intended).

[Infinitium]

It's not an engine as much as an added perk. Sometimes setting up an engine proper with intuition is just too slow in the face of beatdown or whatever and you need to draw into an immediate answer, at which time the synergy comes in handy.

[MattH]

Man all this talk about AK makes me want to put Psychatog back together. :<

[routlaw]

What about using Standstill in a threshold/tempo style deck? I played Tempo Thresh for a good while and the problem was never the first few turns where you roar out of the gates, but that the deck ran out of cards and had no quality finishers, and was reliant on effectively keeping the game in the early stages for as long as possible. Standstill looks like it gives those decks a way of translating their early tempo gains into a better late game (where the builds tend to fall apart).

I've seen European UGR tempo lists with stifle/waste and Standstill in them, with higher quality finishers in them like Jace, The Mind Sculptor. Is that a better approach to applying Standstill in Legacy? As a tool to help decks that come out fast with lots of disruption (and usually better board position, certainly better than a dedicated control deck) keep from fizzling out?

Or even then is something like a couple of Sylvan Libraries+Predict a better draw engine (kind of like the Team America build that won at Jupiter a few weeks ago), given that you have four Ponders and Brainstorms already?

Edit: I left out New Horizons here because I feel like the deck may not be in a great metagame position with less ANT and Reanimator to chew on. It's got a decent game vs. Zoo, for sure, but it's weak against Vial aggro and has serious issues against more dedicated control decks packing a lot of removal.