[Deck] UBGx Landstill

[GGoober]

Also, since I'm not PV/LSV, you should just ignore the post I made above. Clearly, only the best of pros know what is best in the format/game. They are usually right, but that doesn't mean that people who have been playing the deck for years don't know what the hell they're doing (I'm not talking about me because I don't think I'm a good player, but I know a lot more veterans on the Source community who know more about the debate of Visions v.s. STandstill than I do).

Also, the pros should be playing Aluren. It's actually extremely well positioned in the meta now than it used to be.


EDIT: WOW, I accidentally deleted/typed over my original post on the Standstill/Visions debate... Too lazy to type, but I'll chime in later when I have time.

[Shawn]

Just wanted to point it out since it seems taht nobody said it, though is pretty obvious, not only the stifle, CB, Lackey... make Visions worse, in the mirror if my visions will be completely dead if my opponent is playing Standstill.

Greetings,

Iñaki.-

Not that I prefer Vision over Standstill, but if my opponent has Standstill in play I'd much rather have AV in my hand over Standstill; if he plays Standstill it means he is probably ahead on board and my Standstill is a blank as opposed to Vision eventually drawing me cards.

[metamet]

My thoughts on the Standstill/Visions debate:

When Standstill is good, it is really really good. When it is pitted against an opponent who works around it or is misplayed, it's really really bad.

So we have to consider how prevalent vial/wasteland/factory decks are in any given meta. Once we understand that, we know how effective Standstill may be.

And I'd say it's fairly obvious that there are quite a few decks that are okay with playing around a Standstill out there right now...

Visions puts you on a four turn edge-of-a-cliff hope fest. If you cast a turn 1 visions and your opponent sneaks a few creatures in AND you don't have deed, removal, or counters... well, you're in rough shape. But can the deck reliably stall the game until the visions resolves with (essentially) a 6 card opening hand? It's true that quite a few decks can have you dead by then...

Another thought I've had is siding in Dark Confidant over Standstills in matchups where Standstills are pretty poor. Anyone considered or tested this? So far seems to work pretty well here.

[TheElvishPiper]

My thoughts on the Standstill/Visions debate:

When Standstill is good, it is really really good. When it is pitted against an opponent who works around it or is misplayed, it's really really bad.

So we have to consider how prevalent vial/wasteland/factory decks are in any given meta. Once we understand that, we know how effective Standstill may be.

And I'd say it's fairly obvious that there are quite a few decks that are okay with playing around a Standstill out there right now...

Visions puts you on a four turn edge-of-a-cliff hope fest. If you cast a turn 1 visions and your opponent sneaks a few creatures in AND you don't have deed, removal, or counters... well, you're in rough shape. But can the deck reliably stall the game until the visions resolves with (essentially) a 6 card opening hand? It's true that quite a few decks can have you dead by then...

Another thought I've had is siding in Dark Confidant over Standstills in matchups where Standstills are pretty poor. Anyone considered or tested this? So far seems to work pretty well here.

I couldn't agree with you more!

I also like the idea of siding in Confidants in place of the Standstills in the few matchups where the Standstills seem bad. Im currently running Vendilion Cliques instead of Dark Confidants since I dont own any.

[Goddik]

CatinaHat: Nice post

Visions is actually much better in the mirror. Playing standstill is awfull if you don't have quite the advantage on board, whereas visions is always awesome. Suspending a visions into their standstill isn't even that bad. I can certainly think of worse ways to trigger a counterwar.

That being said standstill tends to be more awesome when it is awesome then visions.

I have been running the confidant sideboard plan and it is very very good in the matchups where you want it.

[ScatmanX]

Visions puts you on a four turn edge-of-a-cliff hope fest. If you cast a turn 1 visions and your opponent sneaks a few creatures in AND you don't have deed, removal, or counters... well, you're in rough shape. But can the deck reliably stall the game until the visions resolves with (essentially) a 6 card opening hand? It's true that quite a few decks can have you dead by then...

I'm sorry, but how can a hand do not have neither Deed, Removal OR Counters?
That looks like a mulligan to me...

[GGoober]

CatinaHat: Nice post

Visions is actually much better in the mirror. Playing standstill is awfull if you don't have quite the advantage on board, whereas visions is always awesome. Suspending a visions into their standstill isn't even that bad. I can certainly think of worse ways to trigger a counterwar.

That being said standstill tends to be more awesome when it is awesome then visions.

I have been running the confidant sideboard plan and it is very very good in the matchups where you want it.

It's not really what's 'awesome' when both cards draw 3. In both situations when draw spells draw 3, both are awesome (added bonus to Standstill allowing you to develop a board position if they do not crack it as soon as you cast it). The comparison is really the conditions on casting Visions v.s. Standstill.

Standstill suffers from being 'bad' against vial or aggressive decks. The truth is Standsill isn't the bad card here. It's the archetype control that has problems against Vials. If you don't solve Vial, you can't win. The only bonus here that Visions have is the ability to draw when Vial is in play, to dig for answers but Standstill cannot. However, against such an aggressive start such as Lackey/Vial/Steppe Lynx, Visions is also weak. Visions was a good suggestion by the pros because the meta at the time was very mid-range and fundamentally slow (Junk/TA/Merfolks/Bant). If the meta picks up speed again, you guys know how awfully slow Visions is against fast aggressive decks right? In this situation, if you can plow/MM a turn 1 threat, the Standstill is going to draw you cards whereas if you plow/MM a turn 1 threat, you won't get to draw with Visions until 3 turns later, which gives huge room for aggressive decks to steal some wins.

For most parts, Standstill is just unsituationally good, with the only exception being Vial.decks. My conclusion recently (since a few months ago) was to force myself to stop dismissing Standstill as being a terrible card against Vial. Rather, it's the archetype/deck that is weak against Vial. If you have ways to deal with Vial, then Standstill/Vision/the entire deck functions again.

Also consider a scenario here which exemplifies the OPTIONS that you can play with Standstill that isn't available with Visions. Say you're paired up against Bant NO. Your opponent opens with Hierarch and Arbor. You have a Standstill in hand with no Force/Counterspell/Removal (maybe some MM/Snares and Brainstorm). Your opponent has the potential to go either Natural Order or drop Knight which would really put you far behind the game given your hand. Do you drop the Standstill (assuming you play 2-3 Wastelands, 4 Factories)?

From my experiences, I almost definitely drop the Standstill and take 2 damage from exalted Arbors. The reason is simple. My hand is just not prepared to have the board state advance to a KotR/NO. I would rather take anywhere from 2-10 damage during thsi time, while prepare my hand against a matchup that can be won in the mid-game with 1-1'ing spells and possibly playing a sweeper later. In this situation, the worst scenario is you never draw a Wasteland/Factory, to which you'll possibly drop down to 10, but even in such a situation, you would have built up a manabase and break even on 7 cards each on both side (cracking Standstill EOT their turn), and untap with a full grip to play the remaining part of the game where initially your hand was terrible (it's a good hand, just not good in this situation). Now the best scenario you can get is to draw Wastelands/Factories, and they would have to crack Standstill in short. The medium scenario is if they decide to run out NO into your standstill when you're tapped. In this scenario, you would still have benefited from the Standstill since your initial hand pre Standstill had nothing relevant.

My example with this is just a case study. There are countless other situations where I run into that I actually power out a Standstill in a slightly less favorable position just because having the ability to build a hand and manabase while sacrificing life totals is totally worth slowing an opponent's gameplay down. This is something Standstill does that Visions will never do. Standstill can function more than just drawing 3 cards. The card is as defining as the archetype itself, being able to give control player options, and yet retain the powerful draw effects when you do resolve a Standstill.

(Now take this case study to Visions, which will draw you 3 cards after you're dead. We can keep coming up with a million case study to counterattack our views on Standstillv.s.Visions, but my point with the above case study wasn't to say STandstill is better than Visions, but was merely trying to point out that Standstill isn't simply a draw spell, it's much more than that).

[Goddik]

a nice reply, in my defense my post was mostly pertaining to the control mirror. God knows i have won my fair share of games by blindly putting a standstill on the table with a hand that was completely useless otherwise. Also there are alot of matchups in which i really want to board out standstill where i wouldn't board out visions. Standstill is the deck's engine, so the fact that you want to board it out in so many matchups is problematic though not insurmountable. This is of course solvable by having a secondary engine in the board like confidant or perhaps leaning on jace and deed to carry you through.

Am i wrong in not wanting standstill against merfolk and the mirror?

Also i think you underestimate how easy it is to keep yourself alive for the 4 turns it takes visions to resolve. I have gamed alot with it (Edit: in other decks) and it has rarely been a huge problem against anything else then spell based combo (i.e. storm). Stalling the game against both merfolk and goblins isn'¨t actually that hard. Winning the game when it does go long however is not always automatic.

I currently favour standstill, but i would like to experiment with visions in the deck.

[honestabe]

I tried Ancestral Vision in the deck a while ago; way before all the "cool kids" were playing it. It just seemed too slow for my taste. The deck is just better equipt to run Standstill

[DragoFireheart]

Let me make this simple.

Visions is ass compared to Standstill. It's too slow and in situations where it would be "better" than Standstill, said deck is too fast and will kill you.

[metamet]

I'm sorry, but how can a hand do not have neither Deed, Removal OR Counters?
That looks like a mulligan to me...

I suppose the key there should have been "a few".

There are plenty of hands where you have a snare, a removal spell, a brainstorm, a standstill/visions, and two lands. Not many would mulligan it.

But if your opponent is playing zoo or a creature deck with counters, it's not always possible that your spells will resolve and you'll get there. This is kind of obvious, though...

I've been testing it and I actually REALLY like Visions in this deck. It's good against zoo and merfolk and amazing against U/W. They took out Standstill for Visions and I see why.

A few play notes if you want to try Visions: If I'm on the draw and I have a misstep, snare, and visions my opening hand, I wont suspend it until turn 2 in order to be able to cast the snare. This should be obvious, but the possibility of countering their spell is worth more than the 1 turn earlier Visions you'd end up getting.

Visions is great in this deck because you can continue to remove their creatures and even land a jace while letting the Visions go off.

Since I've switched out the Standstills for Visions--as I believe Visions is far better in this deck right now than Standstills--I have also removed the Bobs from the side, as those spots eventually become my control/long game matchup slots.

And the sick sideboard tech? A janky +2 Raven's Crime, +1 Life from the Loam.

Establishing this in the long matchup can squeeze you out ahead and force your opponent to play from the top of their deck, which is quite alright with you as you'd only need one answer per turn.

[IsThisACatInAHat?]

Wait, what? You took a reasonable suggestion based on solid evidence and others' testing, tried it earnestly for yourself and then found that Vision is actually a decent alternative to Standstill in the current meta?

Without first posting some long-winded diatribe or short, unequivocal cynical quip? Bravo. Even if you had found Standstill was still better (which at some point it will be again I'm sure), no amount of internet posting can replace actual experience; which, for me as well, has shown Vision is a more than fine replacement for the time being.

[metamet]

Wait, what? You took a reasonable suggestion based on solid evidence and others' testing, tried it earnestly for yourself and then found that Vision is actually a decent alternative to Standstill in the current meta?

I'm still not sure if this was meant as a sarcastic dismissal of my testing... because the second paragraph makes me feel like we're on the same page. :) haha.

I took top 4 (splitting prizes there) in some Legacy tournaments (one was smaller, about 20 people, and the other closer to 50) twice this week with Deedstill. Vision is, overall, a much more flexible card in allowing you to actually draw those three cards.

A lot of people play two drops, such as Bob, Stoneforge, and Goyf. On the draw, Standstill becomes terribly awkward without the most precise answers always available. There's a reason this deck runs Deed: so we can easily sweep up whatever managed to get around our reactive spells.

While running Standstill, if we began to fall behind in the board position race we'd be unable to cast Standstill. What's more is that the board would already have to be in our favor and/or cleared in order to confidently cast it. Sure, you can play Deed on turn 3 and then on turn 4 pop deed for 2 (not always catching everything) and cast your opening hand's Standstill. Then your opponent would likely break it on their turn. You're essentially getting the same value as suspending a Vision on turn 1 in this case, except you've been tapping out in order to keep up.

And many people have realized that the best way to beat control decks is to do it as quick as possible, before Jace even has a chance to resolve. That strategy is incredibly impressive if you're able to overwhelm the board before the control player can play a Standstill in order to get a bunch of cheap cards.

Now we can suspend a Vision one turn, with mana still open, and stick a Deed the next. Sure, they're still able to play spells, but so are we. And let's be honest: most people have begun to realize that the best way to respond to a turn two Standstill is to just crack it right away instead of hoping to play an instant at their discard phase in order to get some form of "advantage".

Once we reset the board, we'll likely only have two more turns before drawing three extra cards. Not only that, we can play Jace while waiting if we have to.

No longer do we NEED a Mishra's Factory in order to make the Standstill worth it while on the draw against Zoo. This adds a lot of match-by-match consistency by not having to worry about whether or not Standstill is going to work against us.

Another change I've made and been happy with is going -1 Mishra's Factory, -1 Wasteland in favor of 1 basic Swamp and 1 basic Forest.

The deck play(s/ed) 8 fetches, 6 duals, 2 basics, and 8 colorless sources. Since we no longer need Factory until later in the game, we no longer need it in our opening hand. My manabase looks like this now:

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

And I've been pretty happy with it. This stops us from getting wasted out, Mooned, or cut off all our green. Having a solid source of black is great for removal and green is wonderful for ALWAYS being able to Loam. Not only that, 4 basics ensures us that we'll always be able to play Jace.

I've been happy with it. Anyone else toying with basics?

[useL]

Metamet, can you post your entire list? Id like to start playing a landstill deck. If you can, please include your sideboard aswell.

[metamet]

Sure thing:



CORE cards: 16
4 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
4 Ancestral Vision
4 Pernicious Deed
4 Brainstorm

COUNTER suite: 13
4 Mental Misstep
3 Spell Snare
2 Counterspell
4 Force of Will

REMOVAL suite: 5
1 Go for the Throat
1 Innocent Blood
1 Smother
1 Diabolic Edict
1 Maelstrom Pulse

RECURSION suite: 2
2 Life from the Loam

LANDS: 24
2 Island
1 Forest
1 Swamp
3 Undergound Sea
3 Tropical Island
3 Mishra's Factory
3 Wasteland
4 Polluted Delta
4 Misty Rainforest

60 Total
Current Sideboard

1 Damnation
1 Dismember
1 Ghastly Demise
1 Spell Pierce
2 Vendilion Clique
1 Vedalken Shackles
2 Thoughtsieze
1 Inquisition of Kozilek
1 Misdirection
1 Perish
2 Raven's Crime
1 Life from the Loam

15 Total


Toying around with the sideboard yet. Dredge is a rough matchup and if you would like to sideboard against it, consider taking out all or some combination of Perish, Misdirection, Pierce, and Dismember in favor of your favorite GY hate tools. I prefer putting in the discard, clique, misdirection (which is good against Vindicate and Hymn and counter battles otherwise), and perhaps the damnation, and just crossing my fingers for now. You can always animate your factory and waste it if their bridges are going to overwhelm you, and you can counter/misdirect their dread return otherwise. Still, not the most favorable...

Since we're running a basic Swamp here, the Dismember loses a bit of it's super appeal (as it can kill a resolved Magus of the Moon). I've moved it to the side in favor of the wonderful Maelstrom Pulse. Pulse can kill nearly anything, including a resolved Jace. It's sad when our only way to battle an opponent's Jace is with our own or with a Factory.

The Raven's Crimes and additional Loam come in for the attrition matches and against the control matchups/mirror. When games go long, being able to keep your opponent top decking while you sculpt your hand ensures keep the upper hand. Not only that, Crime essentially makes your opponent's counterspells absolutely worthless. Always Retrace away their card before attempting to play anything. Either they'll counter it or have to discard their counter. Either way, you'll be in the clear. It seems like a trashy miser's strategy, but it won me a game against U/W and against a midranged Bob/Stoneforge/Vindicate (+red for Grim and Pyroblast) matchup on the bubble.

I like it.

But, of course, tweak it according to your liking and your meta.

Be sure to keep us updated on your thoughts!

[metamet]

Oh, also: You never pass priority with Crime in the graveyard while Retracing it. So you can retrace their hand away on your turn without them being able to Extripate/Extract it on your turn.

Why someone would wait until you were able to cast a sorcery in order to remove your Crime from your graveyard is beyond me, but that information may be good to know in the case of your opponent not knowing how Retrace works.

[Marke]

I don't understand how people can think visions to be better or as good as standstill really. Visions is horribly slow and needs to be played early as a result, which conflicts alot with being able to have counters up. Visions must be played on turn 1 or 2 for good effects whereas standstill shines on any turn when your opponent has a non threatening board state.
Because of this standstill just works way better with the control shell, you drop it after dealing with their threats and doesn't need to be drawn early, visions however has to be played early meaning you have to pay 1 mana BEFORE dealing with their stuff, this greatly weakens the power of any spell pierce, spell snare and counter that you are playing.
Visions is never good enough imo, if standstill is good enough is a question of the metagame. On one hand mental misstep made standstill much stronger because it is much easier to obtain a good position for standstill by countering their crucial 1 drop, on the other hand mental misstep slowed down the format and more decks with a similar land count and land setup are being played now.
I don't know why this deck would even consider visions, if you just want blunt draw that doesn't need to be quick why don't you consider something like gifts or fact or fiction instead then? Gifts is actually pretty sweet with life of the loam and a package of 5 different removal spells.

Overall I'd say standstill definately belongs in the 75 now, against the decks where it is good it is fantastic now because of mental misstep. On the other hand matchups where standstill sucks happen more often now so they will need to be sided out more often now. As a result I'd say playing 2 standstill maindeck and 1 or 2 in the board is very good now. Standstill has always had a slight diminishing returns on it, ie. drawing 2 in hand is often bad because it conflicts with setting up a good board for standstill, which makes 2 or 3 a good number imo. Playing 4 of such a card is only worth it when the card is THAT important that you care less about seeing more then 1 occasionally, something which is not the case for standstill at the moment imo.

[metamet]

Marke,

While not the benchmark for goodness, here are the decks from SCG's Indianapolis top 16 that would run either Standstill or Vision:

6th Place, U/W Control (with Vision):
http://sales.starcitygames.com//deck...p?DeckID=38857

8th Place, U/W Standstill (with Standstill & Mystics):
http://sales.starcitygames.com//deck...p?DeckID=38861

9th Place, U/W Stone-Blade (with Vision & Mystics):
http://sales.starcitygames.com//deck...p?DeckID=38862

The most traditionally "Standstill" deck would be the 6th place deck. 8th and 9th both ran maindeck Stoneforge Mystics.

The pilot of the 9th place deck said he wouldn't change a single card in the main, especially the Vision.
(note: the site reports that he ran Spell Pierce, but they were actually Snares.)

While I know that you don't think Vision can be better than Standstill, I'd encourage you to either test it or play against me in the semi-mirror. :)

[TheElvishPiper]

I finally decided to test Visions in the deck, replacing the Standstills. After a few hours of playing deck with the Visions, I'm not really impressed.

The Visions do what you essentially want the Standstills to accomplish, but I would say that they are not necessarily better. They are only really great when in your opening hand, otherwise they are very slow. There have been several times where I drew an Ancestral Vision in the middle of the game, and wished that it was a Standstill. I can honestly say that I have never been better off in any of my matches playing Vision over Standstill.

My thoughts on the argument is that those who firmly stand by there Standstills are looking at how good they are against the entire meta, and those arguing for Vision are thinking about the mirror and Vial based decks. I believe that Vision is a better card in the mirror because your opponent can fight with his or her own man lands and wastelands, but Standstill is much better against just about anything else. In the matchups where Standstills seem bad, I believe that Dark Confidants or Vendilion Cliques can be boarded in, and the Standstills can be boarded out.

For reference, Ive been testing against GWB Rock and Bant.

[GGoober]

Like I said, there's nothing bad with Visions for most parts. It's a draw spell that's less situational, slower, and doesn't give you the options Standstill does (developing board position or abusing board position). If the meta picks up into faster decks rather than these sling of slower decks played in the recent metagames, Visions will be a very weak card against more aggressive decks. Visions is perfectly viable in today's meta, but as I've mentioned above, it is lacking in the other aspects beyond drawing 3 cards which STandstill can provide. and Marke hit my point there: Visions is much stronger than Standstill if you go turn 1-2 into Visions. When you are at the point on Top-decking with your opponents, STandstill is going to be a huge boost while Visions only draws you the cards turns later, and potentially your opponents could have well won under the time it was suspended.

There's a price for playing Standstill and price for playing Visions. I'm not sold on Visions because it is only truly better in control mirrors, or in a heavily mid-range meta. If the meta picks up just a little speed/aggressiveness, Visions will start showing the same issues it's shown in the past, being a card draw that does not draw you cards in the timeframe you are concerned with if it's not suspended on turns 1-2.