Doomstill

[AngryBacon]

Doomstill





https://magiccards.info/scans/en/od/102.jpghttps://magiccards.info/scans/en/wl/8.jpghttps://magiccards.info/scans/en/ju/103.jpg




The List





// 23 Lands
3 Island
1 Swamp
1 Mountain
1 Underground Sea
1 Volcanic Island
1 Badlands
3 Polluted Delta
3 Scalding Tarn
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Mishra's Factory
3 Wasteland

// 19 Instants
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
2 Spell Pierce
1 Spell Snare
2 Diabolic Edict
1 Fatal Push
2 Lightning Bolt
1 Echoing Truth
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Thought Scour

// 5 Creatures
1 Tasigur, the Golden Fang
1 Worldgorger Dragon
1 Laboratory Maniac
2 Snapcaster Mage

// 3 Sorceries
2 Doomsday
1 Toxic Deluge

// 10 Others
4 Standstill
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 Crucible of Worlds
2 Engineered Explosives
1 Animate Dead

// 15 Sideboard
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Shelldock Isle
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
1 Cloud of Faeries
2 Trinket Mage
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Pithing Needle
1 Innocent Blood
2 Propaganda
1 Massacre
2 Pyroblast






The Deck




The following is not intended to be a primer of any sort -- not yet that is, I'm actually looking for help towards fine-tuning my brew.

So, it looks scary and very spicy (it is) but it plays very similarly to a standard UB Landstill list. Basic idea is to play the control deck until a kill shows up, exactly my kind of Magic.

How do I get there? There are counter-magic, removal and board-swipes. The best board state is where we untap on an empty board and play a Standstill.
What do I do there? Factory beat-down, or one of the 2 Doomsday kills:

Make a pile that looks like Thought Scour, Dragon, Tasigur, Animate Dead, Bolt. Make infinite mana and Bolt them over and over.
Make a pile that includes LabMan and Standstill (or just be creative) as well as whatever protection you think you'll need. Play both and wait it out.


The deck works, outside the mana screws I'm often doing what the deck was built for. I'm aware variance is a part of Magic and that I definitely had wins where the opponents themselves had aforementioned mana screws.
The deck works or rather can work but is not aimed to rate amongst other established tier 1 and 2 archetypes.
The deck merely is a pile of cardboard that I like to play innocently at small FNMs.

In case you haven't noticed, the deck is just a Landstill list with a few slots taken for the combos. And I tried to make those combo slots as live as possible outside the combo. For instance, Tasigur, the Golden Fang is a good replacement for Oona, Queen of the Fae. Sure it requires another card to kill but Doomsday tutors for 5 cards anyway and I've literally won a third of my games thanks to Tasigur alone.





Improvements




Now to the reason of my very post here: I need help to improve the concept. I have too many ideas and cannot focus.
In no particular order, each point can and often synergizes well with one another:

Straight UB for a sturdier mana base. That requires a replacement for Lightning Bolt. A replacement that is also Legacy-playable, ie. no Piranha Marsh.
Add green for Deathrite Shaman, Pernicious Deed, Abrupt Decay, Liliana of the Veil + Life from the Loam. Would also be a fourth color for Engineered Explosives.
LtfL makes it more graveyard-based, so, Academy Ruins, Intuition, Fact or Fiction? Makes Snapcaster Mage an even better card that it is.
Add Mox Diamond. In conjunction with LftL it allowed T1 Standstill, Search for Azcanta, Chalice of the Void, Diabolic Edict. It also helps fixing colors in a now 4 colors deck. It basically makes the deck faster and makes it easier to keep up with the Legacy fair threats.
Inclusion of CotV and moxen made me think about a Tezzerator shell. However Standstill is nombo with Ensnaring Bridge. But recursive Engineered Explosives with Academy Ruins, Baleful Strix and maybe even the Thopter combo fit well in how the deck wants to play.


All those points call for heavy deck-building constraints but it's doable, just not all at once.

The first choice to make I think is permanent-based (Tezzerator) versus instant-based (Snapcaster Mage). I think the latter fits much better with Standstill as a card.





Credits




Was playing DDFT for a few weeks when I stumbled upon one implementation of the Dragon there http://teamstormboards.proboards.com/thread/599/dddc-doomsday-dragon-combo (contains a small report I wrote after my second weekly at a small local). Many thanks to Doishy for numerous ideas to improve my adding of Standstill.









Update 2017.12.29
Green also gives Veteran Explorer to accelerate and has some synergies with a Dredged Cabal Therapy.

[pettdan]

Looks interesting, but I have a hard time figuring out how you win with the Worldgorger combo. There is no win condition, right? It's just used with Tasigur to create a lot of value?

[AngryBacon]

Looks interesting, but I have a hard time figuring out how you win with the Worldgorger combo. There is no win condition, right? It's just used with Tasigur to create a lot of value?

I'll edit OP with more details on that sorry.

Make a pile that looks like:


Thought Scour
Worldgorger Dragon
Tasigur, the Golden Fang
Animate Dead
Lightning Bolt


Basically you make infinite mana with Worldgorger Dragon + Animate Dead by tapping your lands for mana in response to the triggers. Then you change the target to Tasigur, the Golden Fang and get all your cards back in hand, including the Lightning Bolt that you can play over and over.

[Doishy]

Early iterations that do not play R had either Misery Charm or Ebony Charm as win conditions. The former allows interactions with killing things like Mother of Runes, Canonist and Containment Priest / Sanctum prelate whilst the latter gives some level of GY hate. Neither are optimal but hey, is all fun yo. Also explored was using things like cunning wish for Blue Sun's Zenith etc etc to also have a controllish wish package available however the deck is messy enough as it is....

[NiRVeS]

How about Collective Brutality?
- Doesn't require red mana
- Doubles as Duress and hatebear destroyer (incl. Deathrite Shaman) pre-combo, and can be used as a win-condition later.
- Escalate allows to discard WGD/Tasigur in case it is stuck in your hand when you are ready to Doomsday.

The idea of using WGD in Doomsday looks really cool!
I am way less convinced about the Standstill / Jace / Crucible / Factory part of the deck though.

[AngryBacon]

How about Collective Brutality?
- Doesn't require red mana
- Doubles as Duress and hatebear destroyer (incl. Deathrite Shaman) pre-combo, and can be used as a win-condition later.
- Escalate allows to discard WGD/Tasigur in case it is stuck in your hand when you are ready to Doomsday.


I've thought about CoBru but haven't actually tested it. A concern about it is that I won't be able to reliably escalate, and I never wished my Bolt was a CoBru. I've found Bolt to be very good early game, so much that I added a third one as I got back home yesterday night after the weekly. On the other hand it's not so disgusting to 2 for 2 and sometimes 1 for 2 with Collective Brutality.
Another problem with it is that it's a sorcery.
CoBru is the card that actually made me think about a LftL aproach rather than Crucible. LftL calls for graveyard synergies where CoBru will shine best IMO (that's still 3 colors though).

I'll see if I can borrow one for tonight's FNM, thanks for the suggestion!



The idea of using WGD in Doomsday looks really cool!
I am way less convinced about the Standstill / Jace / Crucible / Factory part of the deck though.


More often than not, I actually win games with the good old Landstill approach. It may not look like it but the combo pieces don't mess too much with that plan. Also the name is cool :p Crucible is good when you draw it naturally, awful in the starting hand and completely dead when you Tasigur it away.
As for JTMS, it's a good alternative won condition, lets me start consuming a pile post Doomsday for no mana, bounce a Sanctum Prelate before going off, amongst other Jace things. The main problem with the deck I feel is to maintain a board as empty as possible.
The LabMan part is somewhat sketchy to say the least but it takes only one (expensive) slot.

[Fox]

The main thing I'm wondering when I read your list is how are you winning more games by casting Doomsday in the U/B Standstill shell. There's definitely a combo-kill, but I think you'd close out games just as easily by using Search for Azcanta or having a more focused reason to do something like casting Lim-Dul's Vault. You could also probably save slots with some sort of bomberman plan, which at least cuts the creatures you need down to 2x Mentor and 1x Auriok Salvager (both are better to draw than either part of the Worldgorger combo); all you'd need is 1x LED and a mana sink of some sort in a Doomsday Pile. Other ways to keep the combo kill but keep it from interfering with the maindeck plan might be Burning Wish or Research // Development? The wincon your deck is missing, particularly if playing online (lots of miracles) is Nephalia Drownyard.

[Mastikor]

Now that's what I'd call a sexy deck. DD+Dragon+Standstill are exactly my cup of magic tea. I will dig into it right after this holiday madhouse...

[Weapon X]

I'm not sure of the doomsday plan. When I had recently rebuilt dragon it was just a pile of redundancy. It made it easy to draw a win by turn 3 especially when my lands allowed me to win. BBB seems brutal without ritual here.

[AngryBacon]

The main thing I'm wondering when I read your list is how are you winning more games by casting Doomsday in the U/B Standstill Shell. There's definitely a combo-kill, but I think you'd close out games just as easily by using Search for Azcanta or having a more focused Reason to do something like casting Lim-Dul's Vault..


I'm not sure I understand this point correctly. I'm not aiming at deserving a spot in the "Deck to Beat" section. The thing here to play the Dragon combo even though it has some number of flaws :p



You could also probably save slots with some sort of bomberman plan, which at least cuts the creatures you need down to 2x Mentor and 1x Auriok Salvager (both are better to draw than either part of the Worldgorger combo); all you'd need is 1x LED and a mana sink of some sort in a Doomsday Pile.[/cards].


The 8 combo slots currently are: 1 Dragon, 1 Tasigur, 1 Bolt, 1 Thought Scour, 1 Animate Dead, 1 Maniac, 2 Doomsday. Only the Dragon is an entirely dead card. The Maniac can block and pitch to FoW. The rest of the 8 are actual cards that I like to see in my hand. There are several routes though like you said, Bomberman could work too, Painter as well but those requires cards that are not really playable in a control shell (not that I've tried them that being said). The combo used to play Oona, Queen of the Fae which would make an additional dead draw.



Other ways to keep the combo kill but keep it from interfering with the maindeck plan might be Burning Wish or Research // Development? The wincon your deck is missing, particularly if playing online (lots of miracles) is Nephalia Drownyard.


Ah, I did not think about that. I'll have to see how that plays out. Only 1 truly dead draw but lets me play better cards in the 8 previous slots. Weaker sideboard though.

[AngryBacon]

I'm not sure of the doomsday plan. When I had recently rebuilt dragon it was just a pile of redundancy. It made it easy to draw a win by turn 3 especially when my lands allowed me to win.


Yeah this is a completely different approach where you play heavily control. But have also access to a inifinite damage combo that requires 6 mana that you can split over 2 turns if needed. I think there are better choices for a T2-3 kill deck in Legacy while still being relatively fringe :D



BBB seems brutal without ritual here.


You don't actually want to cast Doomsday on T3! But much later where you've drawn into an Urborg for instance (I've actually removed the third one). In some games you may find it best to cast it on T3 but even then it's still doable, not ideal but perfectly doable.

[Fatal]

I don't understand strategy - you want fast game ending combo in heavy control shell, right?
So why using such a clunky elements like dragon?
This combo can be disrupted by too many things like: Abrupt Decay, any gy hate, even cards like chalice can give a lot off trouble.
I would rather use walkers win on along with some stalker/TNN.
As for combo elements better would by entomb/reanimate +griselbrand. Same week spots, but can be cast turn 2.

[Mastikor]

As said, this deck isn't designed to be a tier1, it is designed to be enjoyed by players who love these specific cards: Doomsday, Dragon and Standstill. Sure it would be better to just remove the combo altogether and go for pure control approach, but that's not what this discussion is about. The goal is to create a playable deck that can win in this unique crazy fashion.

That said, I think I found a playable wincon for the straight U/B version: Dimir Charm. Let me explain:

1) Resolve DD, make a dragon pile and draw into Thought Scour. Top to bottom: TS, Dragon, Tasigur, Animate Dead, Charm.
2) Make infinite U/B mana with Dragon, then switch AD to Tasigur.
3) Get your Dimir Charm and use it to mill your opp. Unfortunately they will still have one card on top. We can't cast T.Scour yet, because we have no cards in library.
4) Recast Doomsday that you got back with Tasigur, and make a pile that consists only of Dimir Charm, which we left in the grave after step 3.
5) Now we will be able to cast TS to mill opp for the last card and pass the turn to win.

I think it should work. Dimir Charm is also very playable. I think the straight U/B approach is better, because having stable manabase is very important for both Landstill and Doomsday. Cheers :)

[AngryBacon]

I don't understand strategy - you want fast game ending combo in heavy control shell, right?
So why using such a clunky elements like dragon?
This combo can be disrupted by too many things like: Abrupt Decay, any gy hate, even cards like chalice can give a lot off trouble.
I would rather use walkers win on along with some stalker/TNN.
As for combo elements better would by entomb/reanimate +griselbrand. Same week spots, but can be cast turn 2.

You are absolutely right the combo is not foolproof. The reason I'm playing the deck at all is the card Doomsday and I'm trying a more control version (coming from DDFT). I don't want to play the combo in a Reanimator shell, all I want is a control deck with a "Whoops I win". As others might have said Doomsday basically reads tutor for 5 cards so there are plenty of other more resilient combos. Dragon + Animate Dead however gives a lot less dead draws than others I know.

[AngryBacon]

I think it should work. Dimir Charm is also very playable. I think the straight U/B approach is better, because having stable manabase is very important for both Landstill and Doomsday. Cheers :)


Yup looks like that works, good find! I'll see what changes I need to make to the manabase.

[DireLemming]

https://i.imgur.com/vnLLWXs.png
This just made UB somewhat more tempting still. Note that since it doesn't exile itself (unlike other wishes), it can safely be used before going off even as a singleton .