[Deck] UW(x) Landstill [Archive] - Page 20

kiblast

05-14-2011, 10:32 AM

A second problem arises : I may or may not be able to play with Jace the Mindsculptor. I own exactly NONE. A friend said he will be able to lend me one. What are my options? Since I am already playing Enlightened tutor, is it safe to add a few more and play the Thopter+sword combo?
ty

I would not play Landstill without 2/3 Jaces. Thopter Sword is cool, but gets disrupted way more often even pre-sb (just think about Pithing, EE, E plague, Pernicious etc...) and is a more fragile wincon than Jace.
As for Affinity, Serenity / Energy Flux come to mind. If you are already running E Tutors maindeck or sb, try 1-2 of those in your side. They served me nicely. In Stiflenought/Dreadstill, where you don't have mass removals, I play both as 1 of in my sb. In Landstill probably just one is enough.

@Metal: Thanks for your feedback.Your reasonment regarding Wasteland works and I'll try just one when I'll sleeve UWx again.This leads me towards the inclusion of Tolaria West again, though. It gets you your Wasteland, your Factories ( under Standstill TW works effectively as your 5th manland) , your Academy Ruins, and furthermore is a shuffle effect w/ Top. Might be playable (and I used to play it) but I just hate the fact that I'll see it in my opening hand I'll have to mull.Regarding Dust Bowl, I tested it and was either win more or useless.

Mark Sun

05-15-2011, 06:41 PM

The Treefolk Master

05-15-2011, 07:18 PM

Looks more like MUC/w. It's looks quite fun, albeit a bit weak vs. aggro. I'll test it a bit and post some results.

Super happy to see a control deck like that top 8.

Master Shake

05-15-2011, 08:05 PM

There are 2 "UW Standstill" decks in the Top 8 of SCG Orlando.

List is here: http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/standard/21874_Deck_Tech_UW_Standstill_with_Gerry_Thompson.html

Not quite Landstill-ish, but definitely does a good impression. Thoughts?

The number of cards off Landstill this is, is like 9. this deck has lands as the win condition + Standstill. It's Landstill.

Royal Ass.

05-15-2011, 08:15 PM

It's an interesting list. It doesn't run any board sweepers main. Also 4 Jaces seems pretty high.

Llawan, Cephalid Empress is pretty tech against merfolk. I wonder how many games that won him.

I'm happy to see that Landstill is getting some mainstream attention. The deck has a lot of old school charm to it. And Mental Misstep is a great addition.

Royal Ass.

05-15-2011, 08:15 PM

Double Post

GGoober

05-15-2011, 10:10 PM

Not a huge fan of his list but definitely something fresh to learn from with his approach and philosophy. In all honesty, I feel that if GerryT cut 2-3 maindeck slots for 2-3 Cunning Wish and took out the 1 Crucible and 2 more slots in the SB for a Wish/ETutor package, the deck will gain a lot more flexibility. His maindeck list is superbly strong in the early game (Which most landstill lists lack since most landstill lists have their philosophy base on dominating mid-games), and could really leverage the power of Cunning Wish.

If I am correct on my analysis on his list, it's the stability of his manabase, the super-dense early game answers to aggro decks (Repeal, Snare, Misstep, FoW) that allows him to drop a bomb like Jace/Shackles and win the aggro matchups, while having a super high density of counterspells against non-aggro matchups e.g. Stax/Control/combo. I don't see any big weaknesses in his build at all, aside from the slight lack of flexibility in the mid-game. And I definitely like how he's kept Spell Snares in despite the Mental Misstep Hysteria hype. I've tested Misstep in Landstill. It was great, but it was no longer great when I cut slots like Counterspells/Spell Snares.

This is a nice list, but without some mid-game flexibility, it requires a more focused piloting skill level which GT is fully capable of bringing across the table. I'm interested he opted for Llawan in the SB, rather than Peacekeeper. I think both Llawan and Peacekeeper spell the same result for Merfolks, (since the only way out they have against both anti-merfolk duds is to bounce/remove them). Peacekeeper is much more flexible against a ton more matchups (Emrakul/Progenitus). My friend texted me that Landstill was doing well, piloted by GT, and I just got home to check his list. I have no big vibes and it's definitely an interesting approach on "stomping early game, land shackles/jace GG" compared to the more common approach taken by most landstill players "have great diversity in the MD, enough protection in early game and dominate the mid-game". GT's list really focuses on winning the early game which has its merits, but could prove to be weaker in other matchups e.g. Counterbalance and Junk/Discard matchups (he has enough counters, but sometimes when you don't have enough mid-game flexibility, this will be a weakness in control decks). Without EEs, he has to fight Vials/Enchantress/Stax almost with just counterspells (repeals help but they never solve the problem, it only buys time and for Landstill, buying time is usually not winning games, but rather stabilizing).

ivanpei

05-16-2011, 04:26 AM

I dislike Repeal, feels slow and clunky IMO. It needs more STP/Paths. 4 Jaces feels too much as well. Deck also needs 3 Shackles, card is a bomb. You can dodge vial by just killing everything that comes down and stealing dudes with Shackles. Imma gonna test:

-1 Jace, -4 Repeak, + 1 Shackles, + 1 STP, + 1 Path, + 2 EE (No reason not to run this IMO, Deals with Vial permanently and sweeps zoo's kitties).

@ Llawan vs Peacekeeper, I think its because he has no basic plains. With just tundras, a wasteland on your sole white source will let folk run all over you. This happened to me quite abit and was annoying as hell.

GGoober

05-16-2011, 08:54 AM

I understand his reasons for Repeal, although I don't fully agree with it. Most landstill lists these days worry about having enough business spells to win mid-game, or worrying about difficult situations you need to get out of if your opponents slip past your counterspell. GT approached Landstill differently with his list. The Repeals make sense in his approach that: "Nothing is getting through in the early game, whether it's spells/creatures, and when I drop Jace/Shackles against non-aggro/aggro decks, I win. All I need is nothing in the early game that stops me".

With all his counterspell and 4 Repeals, he is approaching Landstill from this angle (the added fact that his manabase is stable means that it remains unmolested).

I think this is an interesting approach that many Landstill players don't think about these days. However, I'm not sold on it. This is because I've played lists (speedstill for example) that are focused with this philosophy. Granted there were no MMs back then to supplement Speedstill strategies, the main weakness I feel with playing Landstill as a tight control deck in the early game is that you are not really leveraging anything with this method. You are still not winning games if you don't beat them fast with a Goyf/Jace. Landstill's win conditions are tremendously slow, and for most parts, decklist builders have decided that Landstill needs x-1 cards to reach critical maass in the mid-game. The traditional approach of Landstill is really have counterspells that counter neceesarily spells, let some things slip through and answer those with sweepers or x-1 spells (Fact or Fiction/Jace etc). GT approached Landstill by really what's a Speedstill strategy.

As I've said Repeal isn't ideal in a deck like Landstill. In CB lists, REpeal is still great because bouncing a permanent means that you can counter it with CB. In Landstill without CB, you are still not netting much advantage except for buying a few turns, but as I've mentioned earlier, buying a few turns in Landstill doesn't translate into winning, it translates into surviving for more turns. Regardless, I think GT build good decks for metagames he's anticipating, and looking at his maindeck/SB configuration, it seems that he was well prepared for the matchups he was expecting (Merfolks/combo/aggro).

Like what Mastershake said, it's about 9 cards off from most lists (most lists are 9 cards off themselves anyways), with 4 Standstills + manlands i.e. exactly Landstill. However, his approach with 9 cards off has been a different one. We'll wait for Klaus and Konsultant to chime in here on UW Speedstill when they get the chance :P

dsck

05-16-2011, 09:48 AM

EOT bounce something relevant with repeal and then proceed to drop standstill must be as good as counterbalance, right? The extra card from repeal is nice and it cant be countered with misstep unlike E.E. @ 1.

GGoober

05-16-2011, 10:03 AM

A good landstill player can play EE@2 around Counterbalance, or EE@1 against Mental Misstep (e.g. tapping UU for EE@1 setting it at 2cmc on the stack, or tapping UWUW for EE@2 setting it at 4cmc on the stack).

No, it's definitely not bad to EOT Repeal setting up for Standstill, but what do you truly gain? You only truly gain +2 card (Standstill/Repeal cycle themselves). Your opponent still has the very same spell in his hand that probably needs to be answered so you're now only up by +1 card if it demands a counter. Now the situation will be different if GT played more x-1 spells e.g. EE. I don't think his lists needs to because dropping something like Jace/Shackles is essentially playing an x-1 spell.

Contrast this to Repeal in Counterbalance decks. You're not going to be up on cards, but they're now down on one card (i.e. threat is answered assuming Counterbalance can counter it), so a -1 card on their end is about equivalent to +1 on your end. I'm not here to argue details, but I hope you see that Repeal EOT into STandstill is a good play, but doesn't really strikes me as offering a whole ton compared to other decks where bounce is more meaningful (tempo decks, CBTop decks). In landstill, it's simply to buy a turn, and a turn in Landstill seldom translates to winning, but rather it is mostly to get a stable position.

The Treefolk Master

05-16-2011, 06:28 PM

I've tested a bit, and for those saying that the mid-game was weak, I beat Junk, the midrange deck by excellence, over and over again, maybe 10 games, and it wasn't even close.

On Repeal:

It's obviously not a definite answer, but many times the time + extra card is enough to find an answer for the threat. Plus, it's really versatile. Although I'm on the fence of replacing it with 2 EE + 1 Something (PTE or an extra Shackles). Note: I did go -1 Repeal +1 Swords in testing, as I can't get myself to play a deck with 3 Swords, its either 4 or 0, the same goes for Brainstorm and Fow.

Oh, and I found Repeal => Standstill to be utterly devastating, I found an answer for the bounced threat 99% of the times.

On Cunning Wish:

It's versatile, but it's slow and clunky, so it doesn't seem a very good idea imo.

On Jace:

On my testing, 4 proved to be the correct number, I ALWAYS want to see a Jace, save for the first 2-3 turns. If they kill one, you can just drop another, or pitch extras to fow.

On extra Shackles & EE:

It looks like a good idea, specially for an aggro metagame (my case), but it deserves further testing.

Thoughts?

PS: For those who watched the coverage, what do you think about Gerry's Choice to drop Standstill on games 2 & 3 (with grindstone on the table), it seems a misplay to me, I mean, it costed him g2, and nearly costed him g3, specially when he didn't have Mishra on the board (G3). Does anyone know where I can find the vids, cause I missed the last 5 minutes of G3 :frown:

spedn7

05-16-2011, 07:08 PM

if your are looking for the vids of coverage they are all posted here http://www.ggslive.com/ the only thing is that they take about a week to be posted

Moosedog

05-16-2011, 10:22 PM

@ Treefolk
I watched Gerry play the standstills games 2-3. i personally would not have cast them in that situation either, but i couldnt see what was in his hands when they were cast. I also have not playtested this deck yet either, ive only played ubgstill. this new list has caught my eye though and i do plan on testing it.

after looking over the new list i feel like 2 tolaria west could be considered. add 2 tolaria 1 EE and 1 academy? this allows you to search for factory under still find EE or Single Academy. again i havnt tested anything nor do i have time ATM. If someone else wants to take the sugestion for a spin and let us know how it plays i would appreciate it.

kiblast

05-17-2011, 06:55 AM

Probably if you want to run 4 Repeal purely as a Standstill enabler,then you should probably be running Pernicious Deed and play UBG, or play Wog/ DoJ again.

Repeal is good in:
-situations where you face only one creature
-situations where you face two/three creatures and you have the possibility to: set up a Vedalken Shackles, or a Jace bounce, or playing Stp into Standstill/next turn Standstill.

-in any other situation is almost a dead card, since bouncing one of their 2-3 creatures while having others beating is not so good in prevision of a future Standstill, and buying a turn while cantripping seems not so good if you don't have another bomb ready in hand, like Jace to bounce the other creature or Shackles.
-As others said, Repeal+ Stp + Standstill is a 2 card advantage due to Repeal cantripping.
-Please note that Repeal'ing a Kotr coosts 4 as a Doj / WoG. Sure it's instant speed, but does that really count in a deck tuned to survive early game and play at its peak in the mid-late game,when you have lots of mana to work with? Wog into Standstill is a turn 6 play, it's not so impossible and actually is a very strong play that UWx can/has to do.

Deed, or Wog, or Disk:
- Let you blow away almost everything, and facing 1-2+ creatures at the same time is not a problem.
- Are slower. That's probably the biggest issue, but if you are playing already 4 Misstep, 4 Spell Snare, 3 Counterspell, 4 Fow, your build is tuned to survive easily the first 4 turns, and you should be able to reach 4-5 mana and stabilize pretty easily.
- Deed / Wog or Disk into Standstill is 2 card advantage too, but actually you wasted one less resource (you just played 2 spells; instead of 3 with one actually blind-cantripping in a possible blank draw)
- All these spells, minus Disk, have multiple different specific mana in their mana costs, though.

I don't know what to think. I probably prefer a Wog / Doj approach to Standstill instead of a 1 on 1 bounce plan.Anyway,if he had a good result, and he had it, then it's probably right and it works.

Royal Ass.

05-17-2011, 01:35 PM

[QUOTE=

PS: For those who watched the coverage, what do you think about Gerry's Choice to drop Standstill on games 2 & 3 (with grindstone on the table), it seems a misplay to me, I mean, it costed him g2, and nearly costed him g3, specially when he didn't have Mishra on the board (G3). Does anyone know where I can find the vids, cause I missed the last 5 minutes of G3 :frown:[/QUOTE]

I was surprised he played Standstill under those scenarios. I don't think I would have. It was pretty risky and basically cost him game 2 like you said. I was a bit shocked when he made the same play game 3. I guess he figured he could take some milling why he sculpted his hand in order to deal with the other threats.

In general I found Gerry T's list interesting. It finally convinced me that 2 color standstill is probably the way to go as it gives you a really solid mana base. However I think White has more to offer than just STP and I like the ability to have sweepers like WOG. Also, I think humility is still really good and would have been great in his match up against PainterStone. I also think that 4 Jaces it too much. I am still playing a 2Jace/2Elspeth split.

Basically Mental Misstep drastically increases the potency of Standstill because it allows us to counter the turn 1 threat and drop standstill. I think the card is going to start getting a lot more attention with MMS printed. I'm looking forward the the rise of Stanstill and straight up control decks that don't involve counterbalance.

nayon

05-18-2011, 02:07 AM

I was surprised he played Standstill under those scenarios. I don't think I would have. It was pretty risky and basically cost him game 2 like you said. I was a bit shocked when he made the same play game 3. I guess he figured he could take some milling why he sculpted his hand in order to deal with the other threats.

In general I found Gerry T's list interesting. It finally convinced me that 2 color standstill is probably the way to go as it gives you a really solid mana base. However I think White has more to offer than just STP and I like the ability to have sweepers like WOG. Also, I think humility is still really good and would have been great in his match up against PainterStone. I also think that 4 Jaces it too much. I am still playing a 2Jace/2Elspeth split.

Basically Mental Misstep drastically increases the potency of Standstill because it allows us to counter the turn 1 threat and drop standstill. I think the card is going to start getting a lot more attention with MMS printed. I'm looking forward the the rise of Stanstill and straight up control decks that don't involve counterbalance.

Humility doesn't stop Painter's Servant. Layers.

mosaic

05-18-2011, 05:24 AM

Humility doesn't stop Painter's Servant. Layers.

That's true, however you shut down Welder and Trinket Mage.

ivanpei

05-18-2011, 05:40 AM

Royal Ass.

05-18-2011, 11:36 AM

I have altered my list after watching the Gerry T matches. I have not yet been sold on Shackles. I still want to run 2 WOGs and 1 Humility as well as 2 Elspeth and 4 Swords. I have a Peacekeeper in the board. I am running 2 basic Plains to support all this.

I also run 4 Factories. I always want to see that card. Gerry T only runs 23 lands. That seems way too low to me. I know most decks run 24. I actually run 25. With brainstorm and Top you can shuffle them away.

I think Gerry T should have at least run 24 by adding an extra Factory. Obviously he still won so perhaps it didn't matter, but there were some times in his semi finals match where he was wanting for a factory. Especially when he had Standstill out with a grindstone in play.

I actually have cut down to 1 Top from 2. It's one less MMS target, plus I needed to make room in the deck for 4 MMS.

I didn't realize that Humility didn't shut off Painter's Servant. I don't understand why it doesn't shut that off but it does trinket mage. Could someone briefly explain that to me? Thanks.

Moosedog

05-18-2011, 01:28 PM

612.1a Layer 1: Copy effects are applied. See rule 706, “Copying Objects.”
612.1b Layer 2: Control-changing effects are applied.
612.1c Layer 3: Text-changing effects are applied. See rule 611, “Text-Changing Effects.”
612.1d Layer 4: Type-changing effects are applied. This includes effects that change an object’s card type, subtype, and/or supertype.
612.1e Layer 5: Color-changing effects are applied.
612.1f Layer 6: Ability-adding and ability-removing effects are applied.
612.1g Layer 7: Power- and/or toughness-changing effects are applied.

612.3a Layer 7a: Effects from characteristic-defining abilities are applied. See rule 604.3.
612.3b Layer 7b: Effects that set power and/or toughness to a specific number or value are applied.
612.3c Layer 7c: Effects that modify power and/or toughness (but don’t set power and/or toughness to a specific number or value) are applied.
612.3d Layer 7d: Power and/or toughness changes from counters are applied. See rule 120.
612.3e Layer 7e: Effects that switch a creature’s power and toughness are applied. Such effects take the value of power and apply it to the creature’s toughness, and take the value of toughness and apply it to the creature’s power.

Painter applies in layer 5 (see above). then humility apples in layer 6 so the changing effect applied by painter has already happened.

also there is an entire thread on how humility works for further instruction

ivanpei

05-18-2011, 07:51 PM

Since we see alot of pridemage, I think that the manland, plains and humility may be equally effective too. You'd need to trim jace's to 3 though. I wouldn't run elspeth too because that's too many 4 drops. I'm not sure about the wastes, why not just play vaults? Vaults + factories + humility seems pretty strong.

It seems that the only reason for wastes is to compete with fish's lands under a still. Mutavaults serves the same purpose and is just ridiculous with humility.

GGoober

05-18-2011, 08:00 PM

I think that Gerry t's emphasis on basics is pretty important. Getting double white is gonna be tough. If you guys go for the double white plan, you're gonna need basic plains and that messes up the shackles plan. I still prefer shackles over humility though. I've died to 1/1s too many times. You've got to up the manland count so that humility is the most effective too.

Getting double white isn't tough in UWx splash-x builds. But of course getting just U in Uw builds is easier, but WW spells do offer a ton more power avaialble.

UWx builds do support Shackles weakly for the reasons you mentioned, but they opt for other x-1 spells such as Humilty/WoG/Elspeth. To be fair, I've died to more 8/8 knights and Progenitus/Emrakul etc. Shackles v.s. Humility v.s. WoG are metagame calls. The consensus is that Humility/WoG is an answer all for any aggro deck out there and has proven well where Shackles was weaker. However, Gerry T is known to come up with innovative lists (e.g. his BUG Tempo deck which many mistake to be Team America which he piloted in the past that was built with a metagame of TA in mind) that work well for his top finishes, and given that he has plenty of byes, he can really focus on metagaming to what he expects are in the final few rounds of the circuits. This is highly important.

Shackles is the glue in MUC, and in some sense, GerryT's list resembles MUC but within a Landstill shell (manlands + Standstill).

ivanpei

05-18-2011, 09:53 PM

I agree, byes have alot to do with it. His decks are extremely metarized. He doesn't have to fight through a couple of rounds of random first. The benefit of repeal at the top tables is that it's blue and pitches to force in the jace vs jace slugfest. More spot removal/sweepers probably aren't as important at the top tables where blue mirrors are king.

mossivo1986

05-19-2011, 08:49 AM

When I tested against it it felt like he was playing supreme blue. No real interaction minus one card you have to play around carefully. Once the situation has been voided, the game is over.

conboy31

05-22-2011, 10:20 PM

What was the sb card that GerryT and friends had that was the trump to Thrun?

troopatroop

05-23-2011, 12:53 AM

I really like Landstill with Mental Misstep, but I fear Merfolks in this meta. Peacekeeper and StP seem like a fine plan, but has anyone tried U/w/r for Firespout? 3cc Sweep is ideal, as it follows Standstill and sets up Jace nicely. I think it shores up Aggro matchups, has anyone tried red?

Neuad

05-23-2011, 02:22 AM

What was the sb card that GerryT and friends had that was the trump to Thrun?

I believe it was their lovely 'Take Possession' they had in their tutor package board. They also discovered how good Decree of Justice is in the deck finally and took out those terrible Repeals. They still don't run Cunning Wish which is a giant mistake. Not a fan of their build. Gerry and Drew ID'd in round 8, our best guess is to avoid top 16 and their deck list being posted but I was standing there through their 'match' and saw most of their list. Was unimpressed compared to a Master Shake special but I'm biased.

klaus

05-23-2011, 05:13 AM

It has probably dawned on most LS players already, but with STP being the formats' #1 creature removal spell: Peacekeeper + Mental Misstep = win. I feel so safe when dropping that guy with a Misstep in hand and drawing more, while the game draggs on.

GGoober

05-23-2011, 11:17 AM

Uxr builds these days don't beat Merfolks. You beat Merfolks only if you solve:

1) Vial (if you can't solve this, you just don't beat it at all)
2) Having a clock/win/lock.

Number 2) is becoming pressingly important observation to this matchup. There is no point to sweep and pinpoint remove their creatures over and over again. Merfolks will always rebuild and match your 1-1 answer (they run card advantage cards and can utilize manlands as free creatures). It's very important when you understand 2) being the bottleneck to beating Merfolks. You can achieve 2) in a number of ways: Peacekeeper/Moat/Ensnaring Bridge. It is this reason why WoG/Firespout/EE/Disk is unimpressive agaisnt Merfolks but recurring EE/Peaceekeper/Moat/Ensnaring Bridge/Scepter+StP/Shackles are good answers to Merfolks.

However, the most challenging barrier for this matchup is 1). Unlike Goblins and other vial decks, Merfolk plays a TON of counters to force Vial through.

Serbitar

05-23-2011, 12:07 PM

I believe it was their lovely 'Take Possession' they had in their tutor package board. They also discovered how good Decree of Justice is in the deck finally and took out those terrible Repeals. They still don't run Cunning Wish which is a giant mistake. Not a fan of their build. Gerry and Drew ID'd in round 8, our best guess is to avoid top 16 and their deck list being posted but I was standing there through their 'match' and saw most of their list. Was unimpressed compared to a Master Shake special but I'm biased.

How is Take Possession an answer to Thrun? My guess would rather be something that also answers Progenitus etc, like Phyrexian Metamorph or Tariff or the aforementioned Peacekeeper.

Mark Sun

05-23-2011, 12:16 PM

How is Take Possession an answer to Thrun? My guess would rather be something that also answers Progenitus etc, like Phyrexian Metamorph or Tariff or the aforementioned Peacekeeper.

It isn't, as Take Possession has to target.

I talked with Drew before the event, but I'll respect the fact that they wanted to keep the decklist hidden.

GGoober

05-23-2011, 12:28 PM

How is Take Possession an answer to Thrun? My guess would rather be something that also answers Progenitus etc, like Phyrexian Metamorph or Tariff or the aforementioned Peacekeeper.

Don't forget that GT and Drew aren't really building good control decks (as opposed to many other Landstill players who have been in the archetype for years, take Master Shake for example). All they need to do is to build a metagame'd control deck that does well in the last few rounds of the SCG circuit. This is a huge factor to consider and for most parts, people should not be netdecking their lists to other tourneys without carefully considering the strategies they were employing when designing their variants.

This is obviously not trolling, but rather to let others be aware that the 'unique' lists that you see floating around in the SCG circuits ranging from UW Repealstill, Ugr Misernought (lol slight troll here :P), are all metagamed decks that exemplify good deckbuilding skills and anticipation on a metagame. However, sadly, Top 32 SCG metagame isn't going to be representative of a Legacy metagame where you are intending to play out all or most of the rounds.

OurSerratedDust

05-23-2011, 12:43 PM

I've been experimenting with this deck lately. What is this deck's worst matchup, besides merfolk? It sounds to me like if you can solidify the fish matchup, you are in a position to do decent against almost anything (although, the mirror looks a little weird.)

I'm probably wrong about that though.

Neuad

05-23-2011, 02:45 PM

I guess I skipped the Thrun part sorr, I had just driven for 6 hours, but I tried my best to get a look as Gerry and Drew were playing. I guess I didn't see the super secret tech they had, because I have no qualms spoiling it to the rest of you.

I know their list included

Dust Bowl
Celestial Colonnade
Decree of Justice - About time

No more repeals.

I saw Drew was rocking a Moat, but no Elspeth or Humility that I saw

Their Enlightened Tutor package included

Take Possession
Wheel of Sun and Moon
Seal of Cleansing
Pithing Needle
Crucible
Energy Flux
Oblivion Ring
Threads of Disloyalty

conboy31

05-23-2011, 02:50 PM

It isn't, as Take Possession has to target.

I talked with Drew before the event, but I'll respect the fact that they wanted to keep the decklist hidden.

As mentioned, Tariff makes sense as it has been in and out of the vintage metagame to answer tinker bots. Essentially thrun would be the decks hard casted "robot".

And, the new kid on the block, phyrexian metamorph which is like a cheaper duplicant at answering show and tell/natural order and thrun.

I would admit a little surprise if they had an answer that was clearly better than either of these choices. Though I have not put too much thought into coming up with ideas.

Neuad

05-23-2011, 03:06 PM

I'm going to laugh when their 'super secret techy answer' is something real Landstill players have known about the whole time, like Humility, or Decree.

GGoober

05-26-2011, 05:59 PM

Take Possession is cute, but is in everyway a huge narrow card against a deck with Jace. If you can hit the mana to play Take Possession on an opposing Jace that has been spending tons of turns to generate advantage, I think you must be in a overly winning position or your opponents suck. I mean sure you get their Jace but they have a ton of cards/advantage while you spend over 10 mana to gain a Jace. Seems pretty bad, but I mean Drew and Crew are the ones full of tech right? From Repeals to the newest tech Decree..

I know we've done this a few years back playing Bob in the SB, but I've tested it again in the SB and he's been pretty amazing. The initiation came from The BoM5 1st place BUG Jacestill list. I don't agree with 8 creatures in the SB but I'm sure the main creature he was intending to board in was Bob (not Goyf).

Regardless, I've tested over 20 postboard games (not enough but limited time) with my buddies and Bob is pretty amazing against non-aggro based decks and/or decks with very little creatures e.g. Team America/Tempo. For most parts, my opponents mentioned that they will board out all removal for control-hate cards, leaving only removal if they can no longer board anything. The list with MM allows for Bob to ride some games to easy victory. Once he has drawn 2 cards, the game is usually over soon.

Here's the list that I've tweaked over the past 2-3 months that's been doing very well for me.

Lands: 23 (+1Edragon could be 8th fetchland instead)
1 EDragon
4 Strand
2 Delta
1 Marsh Flat
3 Tundra
2 Sea
1 Scrub
2 Plains
2 Island
4 Factory
1 Wasteland
1 Ruins

Cantrips/Draws: 11
4 Brainstorm
3 Top
4 Standstill

Permission: 12
4 Mental Misstep
4 Counterspell
4 FoW

Removal: 9
3 EE
4 StP
1 Disk
1 Humility (Moat could be here but Humility is stronger these days, against TA)

Win: 5
2 Jace
2 Elspeth
1 Crucible

SB: 15
1 Misdirection/Relic/Negate/BEB (flex slot)
3 Counterbalance
3 Dark Confidant
2 Extirpate
1 Relic
2 Perish
3 Peacekeeper

Notes:
3 Top:
2 Top is usually the right call, but there were games in the past where I will usually ETutor for a Top instead of Standstill (due to board position) and Top will win games. Top is backbreaking against mid-range/control decks and is still powerful against aggro decks. With 7 fetches, you can usually avoid ever drawing multiples. In a format with Misstep, the 3rd Top ain't too bad either to force itself through. 3 Tops allow for a powerful SB of Counterbalance + Dark Confidant against mid-range/control/Junk/discard decks. 3 Top is also inherently my answer to 2cmc Hymns and other attrition decks since I've cut my Spell Snares (since Top beats discard strategies very well).

4 MM: I'm not a huge fan of MM. But I've come to the conclusion that MM helps power out turn 2 Standstills strongly. I originally ran 13 permission suite of 3/3/3/4 MM/Snare/CS/FoW which was incredible but I've decided on this configuration. It involves shifting gears in playing the deck i.e. I have to handle 2cmc drops with StP/EE/FoW/Counterspell, but the trade-off is that I get a stronger setup to STandstill, and postboard stronger setup with Bob/Countertop when needed. Testing will show if I go back to the 3/3/3/4 split. I do enjoy having 4 Counterspells.

The only bad matchups that I currently face are:
- Turbodrazi (fuck this deck)
- Merfolks (I have a 50-50 or better matchup postboard now. I board in Bobs + Peacekeeper to win the permission war resolving Peacekeeper. I am pretty confident in this matchup but Merfolk has so far drawn super-above-average hands v.s. me that it's annoying the shit out of me).
- Burn (fuck this deck too, CB helps a bit postboard)

I used to play Meddling Mage over Bob, since Mage is incredible against NOShow and Spiral Tide. However, I realized that the card advantage of Bob over these 2 matches are what decides games, for NOShow the maindeck of Humility/Disk/Jace/Peacekeeper and permission with postboard Perish is surprisingly strong, so the only other bad matchup is Spiral Tide. Bob is slightly weaker than Mage in this matchup, but I think for every other control/mid-range matchup, Bob is going to win you the game easily. It's almost like playing Vintage when your opponents board out removals.

I really would love a 3rd Jace but in general Crucible is much more powerful than the 3rd Jace, troll on, control players would know how invaluable Crucible is to an eventual winning game plan. I can't seem to cut any ratio of Counter/Draw/Removal though. The other most likely cut is -4th Standstill for the 3rd Jace.
In game 3, they can board back removal, but you just cut down to 2 Bobs or no Bobs, and you have a superior deck fighting against their deck with dead cards.

If someone wants to chime in on why the fuck do I just not play Uwb Dreadstill, then my answer is: It's much harder to hate against Landstill's maindeck/strategy than it is to hate against Dreadstill. Landstill is a much more resilient deck, whereas the benefit of Dreadstill is being able to have very strong matchups while weaker ones in game 1. I personally feel that cards like Counterbalance/Bob are incredibly more powerful in the SB against the right matchup. For most of the time, Counterbalance these days no longer serve as a hard lock (except against relevant matchups e.g. mid-range, control mirrors, combo). I tend to view Counterbalance as being a SB card for my list to significantly beat my weaker matchups, otherwise the maindeck currently handles a ton of other matchup where Dreadstill is weaker to (e.g. Bant/Junk/TA/control-mirrors).

Also can someone remind me not to ever cut that 3rd EE? Everytime I cut it to make space for something, I tend to do worse. EE is so fucking unbelievably good. Too bad we can't run Deed in UWx landstill without splashing 4 colors, so EE is like the best thing we can have when not playing Deed. Also, the lone Disk has been very impressive that I'm tempted to up to 2 Disk dropping the Humility. It's essentially a deed, but a turn slower and a little weaker against Pierce.

Erdvermampfa

05-29-2011, 03:10 AM

I wonder if you really want to prefer Counterspell over Spell Snare. Sure, Counterspell is way more flexible, but i've encountered situations in which I was unable to cast it due to too many offcolor Lands ( Mishra, Plains ) and otd it seems kind of slow in general. What do you guys think about this?

Thanks in advance

Neuad

05-29-2011, 04:02 AM

Gerry wrote an article about his U/W list in Louisville. His tech against Thrun was Decree and Humility.

Way to be 6 years late on that boat, sirs.

hyc8028

05-30-2011, 02:52 PM

Long time countertop player here and I decided to give landstill a try since I love playing control so much and countertop is not as good as before. I tried the BUG version and I don't like it. I decided to go with a traditional UWB list and took it to a 18 man event yesterday and got 5th after swiss. There were ton of control in the room and 0 merfolk, which seem kinda odd.

Spell: 36
4x Brainstorm
4x Sword to Plowshares
4x Force of Will
3x Standstill
3x Spell Snare
3x Counterspell
3x Engineered Explosive
3x Mental Misstep
2x Sensei’s Divining Top
2x Wrath of God
2x Elspeth, Knight Errant
2x Jace the Mind Sculptor
1x Crucible of World

Land: 24
4x Mishra’s Factory
4x Flooded Strand
1x Polluted Delta
1x Marsh Flat
3x Underground Sea
3x Tundra
2x Plain
4x Island
1x Academy Ruin
1x Wasteland

SB: 15
3x Dark Confidant
2x Llawan, Cephalid Empress
2x Peacekeeper
2x Extirpate
2x Perish
1x Enlightened Tutor
1x Humility
1x Energy Flux
1x Nihil's Spellbomb

Round 1: BW Homebrew w/MM 2-0
-3 Standstill, +3 Bob

Round 2: UW Landstill w/Mystic and Batterskull 0-2
-1 Elspeth, -2 WoG, +3 Bob

Round 3: Elves 2-0
-2 Elspeth, -1 EE, -1 Crucible, -3 Standstill, +2 Perish, +2 Peacekeeper, +3 Bob

Round 4: Burn ID
I felt like this is worse match up I could see and I was actually getting paired up, so I asked for an ID and he accepted.

Round 5: Bant 2-0
-3 Standstill, -2 WoG, +3 Bob, +2 Perish

I love swapping bob for standstill in game 2. It is just so good. People usually side out some removal and I try to not to fetch black mana in game 1 to give false info to opponent that I have black splash.

1 of Crucible is really good. Every time I drew it, I wasn't disappointed. I actually wasteland lock my Bant opponent in round 5 game 2.

One of the cards in the main that I always dispute is Elspeth. On one hand, she is really good at defense and offense. On the other hand, Elspeth doesn't put someone away immediately. It ll take couple turns and longer to do that unlike Jace. It also doesn't stop Jace across me.

I would make the following changes:

Main:
-1 Elspeth, +1 Jace TMS

SB:
No Changes

Shawn

05-31-2011, 03:56 AM

I piloted UW Landstill to a 113th place finish at the GP. No Wish, no duals for EE at 3. Day two was very disappointing; I had a couple of close games where I had poor draws in pretty good matchups and my play began to diminish after those losses. The list felt fine, but I'd adjust the sideboard from what I ran. I am very comfortable with the Team America/BUG matchup at the Fish matchup with this list, I went 3-0 vs BUG and 2-1 vs Fish. (I mulled to five g1 vs the Fish deck I lost to and he Misstepp'd my Misstep on Vial g2, I missed some land drops and he crushed me) At the moment I am undecided if I will right a report or post the list; a bunch of the matches blurred together and only one or two matches were interesting.

GGoober

05-31-2011, 11:18 AM

hyc8028

05-31-2011, 12:20 PM

Would still love to see a list :)

Anyway, I think there's no reason to not go 3-colors. You get a more stable manabase with UW, but a lot of times, it's fetching correctly (high fetchlands = stable manabase even with 3 colors) against Wastelands. I mean look at PV's BUGstill list. It runs 4 Waste + 4 Factories and is 3-color heavy compared to most UWx builds. He still went by fine except with a couple of manascrews in the Top 8. I think UW maybe overly stable (which is a plus) but you lose out on EE@3 and a multitude of SB slots (primarily black for Perish, and other cards that people don't usually play but are decent in the current metagame e.g. Extirpate/Bob)

@Hyc8028: Nice list dude, I run almost the same with probably -3 cards off from yours. I think I'm going back to the 3/3/3 MM/Snare/CS split instead of the 4/4 MM/CS split. I think with 3 EE, you can afford to go down on MMs. MMs main function is to act like a FoW 5-8 on turn 1 against 1cmc spells. It's pretty bad when you draw it mid-late game. Snare is always going to be amazing (more amazing now as people shift to higher cmcs to get around MM)

How did the Bobs turn out for you? They were promising from my testing. I love them but I need to play them a little longer to make a verdict. They only come in against relevant matchups, which might be win-more considering that we have favorable control matchups (a little weaeker on the combo matchup but combo is on a low these days). Also, why Llawans? Peacekeeper is just everything better. Merfolks with Vials still beat Llawan. Llawan doesn't stop Emrakul/Dredge/Elves but Peacekeeper just says NO to too many aggro decks that don't pack real-removal.

Thanks. Bob has been just good all day and that is one of my reason to splash black. Against stuff like Merfolk and Elves, it is just a beating for them once I land it. Against other Landstill/Merfolk deck, They pack 4x wasteland and 4x man lands. I don't think I can beat them under standstill, so bob will come in. Bob can also act as a clock since decks will take out removal to side in anti-control stuff.

MM was aright on Sunday, nothing amazing happen except I counter couple brainstorm. Most of the time I just pitch to FoW. Snare on the other hand is just amazing, but it get hit by MM, which happen to me in round 2.

With 3 EE and 3 MM, i don't feel vial is much of a problem. The good thing about Llawan is that even if they have vial out, it temporary reset their board, which is huge. It has a decent body, which I can use to beat as well.

Peacekeeper on the other hand is good also, but the problem now is merfolk pack dismember and echoing truth. I have lost game like I resolve a peacekeeper from counter war, only then he get bounced during the merfolk player main phrase. We have to keep in mind that peacekeeper is not
a win con, but more like buy more time, so we can take out their dudes or land a Jace and fateseal away. People in my area never scoop to peacekeeper even if they have no answer to it becuase they know it will still take a while to kill them. Another issue is time. Let say you lose game 1, peacekeeper might have keep you alive in game 2. The only win con we have when peacekeeper in play is Jace. Let say you win game 2. I don't think you going to have enough time to finish game 3. A draw in the swiss is almost equal to a loss IMO. I have play against merfolk using peacekeeper in the top 4 local tourney in the past and beside game 1 where I usually die quickly, any game involving peacekeeper just take a long time.

Mark Sun

06-01-2011, 03:41 PM

DragoFireheart

06-01-2011, 04:01 PM

Why would I play UW/x over BUG Landstill? BUG Landstill has deed, which is amazing for sweeping fishes and other another permanents. What do I gain by staying two colors (other than saving money that I would need to blow on getting Underground Seas).

Sea R Hill

06-01-2011, 07:09 PM

why would i play uw/x over bug landstill? Bug landstill has deed, which is amazing for sweeping fishes and other another permanents. What do i gain by staying two colors (other than saving money that i would need to blow on getting underground seas).

enlightened tutor

The Treefolk Master

06-01-2011, 08:15 PM

DragoFireheart

06-01-2011, 09:10 PM

Moat, Humility, stronger mana base, STP, Peacekeeper. It's pretty much a matter of tastes and you personal opinion about power vs. consistency though.

Sea R Hill is right about Enlightened Tutor too.

I prefer consistency and a stronger mana base. I have a odd habit of being color screwed if there is even a small dent in my mana base. Maybe I'm just pessimistic, but to me having a stable mana base is important.

I have a few questions in regards to making the deck list:

1- I don't have a single wasteland to my name. Traded them awhile ago for Jaces. It's a decision I sorta regret, thought at the time it was a good trade. Anyways, my options for land destruction are somewhat limited. Is Dust Bowl the only good option I have for killing problem lands?

2- What is with some lists running Repeal? How has it been? It's an interesting card to say the least: you can bounce Vials that are already down or other annoying creatures, allowing you to counter them later.

3- Now that many merfolk decks are adopting Dismember, what should we do now that Peacekeeper is going to be less of a hard lock?

Azdraël

06-01-2011, 09:18 PM

And, the new kid on the block, phyrexian metamorph which is like a cheaper duplicant at answering show and tell/natural order and thrun.

doesnt work with s&t.
Humility/Moat/WoG are efficient enough not to bring this shitty 7ccm Take Possession. Thrun should not be feared and metagamed at all.

Shawn

06-01-2011, 11:48 PM

Sorry, I was barely around Day 2 and we were pretty much gone by the afternoon. Congrats on getting to Day 2. Would love to see a report as well.

I wouldn't worry about it, a lot of matches day two went really long into the 50 minutes so I didn't have much time to talk between rounds anyway. I'm very busy with class and work this week, so it won't be until at least next week if I do write a report. Right now I only want to write one if I can get it published online. I can get it published almost guaranteed, but I don't want to write for that site again at least for a while, or until my article doesn't get butchered in the editing process. :/

3- Now that many merfolk decks are adopting Dismember, what should we do now that Peacekeeper is going to be less of a hard lock?

Sort of, but if you don't draw into Peacekeeper Dismember is straight awful against you. They also run 0 manipulation and only 4 cantrips (Adept) so the chance of them finding one is not that high if they don't have it. (most lists generally only play a pair) Jace sort of protects Peacekeeper in a way, I had a match where he Dismembered my first Peacekeeper, I cast Jace and Jacestormed into a second, then began fatesealing, leaving blue cards and lands on top of his library. Also, if they don't have Dismember they have to topdeck into it, giving you at least a few turns to try to find a counter for it. There will be times that they blow you out with Dismember, but even with decks having a couple answers to it she is still very good.

Thrun should not be feared and metagamed at all.
This. People cast that card against me in Zoo and Team America all day and I didn't care about it, you have so many ways to deal with him. The only game I lost when Thrun hit the board was when I died with Humility in play at 11 life against Big Zoo. If you are that concerned about him, there are many good options to fight him: more Wraths/4cc enchantments, Innocent Blood/Edict, Perish, Phyrexian Metamorph (or whatever the Phyrexian mana clone is called).

Is Dust Bowl the only good option I have for killing problem lands? I run one in addition to a pair of Wastelands and it has performed well. It's a huge trump in the control/midrange matchup.

On the topic of UGB/x vs UW: I've been playing Ugbw for a while leading up to the GP. I like it a lot, but I am not cutting white- Plow is just that good. After making that decision I ended up going to just UW, the manabase in 4 color is much more ambitious than UW and I expected boatloads of Team America/BUG and Merfolk. The current setup I've been running has been amazing against Wastelands, and good against Blood Moon/Back to Basics. (which don't come up that often, but it is nice) Choke is a problem I am working on, but sometimes you can play out of it depending on what lands you draw (this is with the particular setup I am running currently, most lists are hurt even more by it). One of my matches my opponent cast Choke when I had 14 lands in play, three were tapped Islands/Tundras and one was a Scalding Tarn. I was still able to activate Colonnade and smash for four, then activate Colonnade and double Factory and swing for lethal with my 10 non-Islands. I'm still looking for a card that answers it; bringing in a Disenchant/Seal of Cleansing is pretty awful against decks like Zoo or BGW.

Mon,Goblin Chief

06-02-2011, 08:00 AM

For the Choke issue, I've been running Oblivion Ring to good effect in a non-Landstill UW list though you have to be careful against Pridemage. Otherwise Nevinyrral's Disk might be something to consider.

DragoFireheart

06-02-2011, 10:21 AM

What does a light green splash (UWg) offer this deck? Would Life from the Loam be worth running?

Koby

06-02-2011, 11:26 AM

What about Vindicate as a 1-2 of against green decks? It can act as removal for their dorks, and also remove Choke, Jace, Elspeths, etc. I remember UW/b Landstill (or was it Walker-still?) that used to run a couple to answer random permanents. Is it still a valid inclusion in the post-MM meta?

GGoober

06-02-2011, 11:45 AM

Vindicate is always a good option, but for most reasons it's dropped because it's a 3 mana solution that is 1-1. EE@3 is costly but has the chance to pick off a couple more permanents along the way, for just 1 mana more, WoG/Humilty/Moat/Disk do a lot more. If I need outs against green decks, it'll be a black splash for Perish (which at the time was not popular when Ultimate Walker and Landstill variants were a little more popular). Perish costs the same as Vindicate but is enormous against Green matchups.

If you're considering the flexibility of Vindicate across matchups e.g. against TA/Planeswalker/Countertop etc, I still won't be playing Vindicate anytime soon. Playing with Vindicate is more than just playing with Vindicate, it involves changing quite a few more cards in the list to support it. Essentially, Landstill can't easily tap out to remove a threat with Vindicate the way other decks e.g. Junk can. You are playing a deck with Counterspell and while Junk has the initial knowledge from discard to know when to correctly time and maximize Vindicates, Landstill tapping out without knowledge or FoW in hand and playing Vindicate could be a costly decision, if not it would put you in the same situation again when your opponents drop another threat after you tapped out for Vindicate.

It's a little hard to explain this in words, but that had been my experience playing spells like Oring/Vindicate. They're great cards, but basically if I am making a risk to tap out to answer threats, they better be good answers e.g. Planeswalkers/Humility/Moat/Disk/WoG

@Shawn, I've been very satisfed with UWb with 8 fetch and 2/2 Island/Plains basics + 2 Top + 2 Disk maindeck. I play with my Imperial Painter buddy quite frequently and Disk makes the deck a whole lot resilient to Moons. I've never really played against Chokes, but I know that having 2 Plains and 8 fetches would allow for much easier EEs against Choke. For most parts, Choke is something that you have to primarily deal with from counterspells (if lists pack less than 3-4 Counterspells, then they deserved to be Choked!) But I'm sure you know all this, I think your challenge is figuring out answers for just a UW configuration. I've just been very satisfied with Disk. It functions like Deed for UW/UWx builds, and is much superior when you passed the turn v.s. passing the turn with Deed. It does not require a shaky manabase, which is usually how Landstill loses games against Wasteland+clocks. Also, I've changed my playstyle a little bit when playing with Deed. Basically I let things that don't tend to kill me or molest my manabase go past my counterspell, delay the onslaught till about turn 5-6, and Cast Disk with Counterspell/Snare/FoW backup (Snare aganst Pridemages), and then pop the Disk next turn if they have not dealt with it, I have countermagic up for their next threat.

@Drago: Loam is only good if you play Wasteland heavy builds, which I'm personally not a fan of. It works better in BUGstill because of 4 maindeck Deed giving the deck huge power against aggro decks, so they can afford to play with Wastelocks. In a deck like UWx, Wastelocking is a win-more strategy (if you're in the position to spend 1G a turn and a land drop to wastelock your opponents, it means that they have barely any threat in play to pressure you, which means that anything at this point could win games i.e. Planeswalkers/Factories/Standstills). For most parts, I vastly prefer Crucible anyways (if you played 1 Academy Ruins MD). When you get the two cards out naturally, it not only provides huge card advantage, but it is infinitely efficient on mana, and very resilient and deadly. Crucible gives you an out to situations where Planeswalkers sometimes cannot provide for this deck. You can choose to play Loam over Crucible, but there is a cost to both:

Loam: requires 1G every dredge, dredges precious 3 cards that would matter in the late game, requires you to play a green splash which doesn't offer much past Beast Within and Grips

Crucible: can be removed unlike Loam but other than that it's almost in every way superior from a mana-efficiency standpoint, not requiring to splash green.

TheInfamousBearAssassin

06-02-2011, 04:54 PM

What does a light green splash (UWg) offer this deck? Would Life from the Loam be worth running?

Knightstill is pretty sweet. Getting the best cheap creatures in the game is nice, especially when you can Repeal/Jace them to your hand prior to dropping a Wrath. Also LfTL and Stirring Wildwood are good cards. Maybe Vitu-Ghazi, the City-Tree or Nantuko Monastery?

Depending on the build you could also run Eternal Witness which is an amazingly good control creature.

Oh, and Gigapede pretty much destroys the mirror.

And also Krosan Grip out of the board.

GGoober

06-02-2011, 05:08 PM

Knightstill is pretty sweet. Getting the best cheap creatures in the game is nice, especially when you can Repeal/Jace them to your hand prior to dropping a Wrath. Also LfTL and Stirring Wildwood are good cards. Maybe Vitu-Ghazi, the City-Tree or Nantuko Monastery?

Depending on the build you could also run Eternal Witness which is an amazingly good control creature.

Oh, and Gigapede pretty much destroys the mirror.

And also Krosan Grip out of the board.

I would play with 4 Beast Within too, not because it hits opposing Jace, but when you have a combination of 4 KotR, 4 Wasteland, 4 Beast Within, your opponents can never get to cast their Jace. If they start topdecking lands like a champ, you might want to consider some Plow Unders to keep them setback while you draw more Beast Withins.

DragoFireheart

06-02-2011, 06:40 PM

Oh, and Gigapede pretty much destroys the mirror.

Holy shit, have I finally found a home for Gigapede!? Granted, he gets chump blocked like there is no tommorow, but he recurs nearly forever...

He doesn't play well with Humility though.

Koby

06-02-2011, 06:48 PM

he gets chump blocked like there is no tommorow

Pretty much correct, especially against builds with Crucible of Worlds.

DragoFireheart

06-02-2011, 08:51 PM

Some UW/x lists are running the Mystic with Batterskull.

So... is it bad? Good? mediocre? Seems like there would be issues if the Mystic got killed, never mind the fact that we turn on all of our opponents removal when we run creatures. On the other hand, the mystic can vial in the batterskull...

Also, how decent of a substitute is Ratchet Bomb for EE?

TheInfamousBearAssassin

06-03-2011, 05:22 PM

StP their factories. Look, infinite chump blocking solved.

I mean it's been a while since the Landstill mirror was relevant but Gigapede pretty much used to run roughshod over it.

I would play with 4 Beast Within too, not because it hits opposing Jace, but when you have a combination of 4 KotR, 4 Wasteland, 4 Beast Within, your opponents can never get to cast their Jace. If they start topdecking lands like a champ, you might want to consider some Plow Unders to keep them setback while you draw more Beast Withins.

Also you are already dead because they have killed you with 3/3s.

Master Shake

06-03-2011, 06:25 PM

StP their factories. Look, infinite chump blocking solved.

I mean it's been a while since the Landstill mirror was relevant but Gigapede pretty much used to run roughshod over it.
Also you are already dead because they have killed you with 3/3s.

I know you love Gigapede, I'm pretty fond of it as well, but why would you elect to play such a narrow card just becuase its uncounterable? Elspeth is better in the mirror and while it can be countered, it is better against far more than just the mirror.

On Ratchet Bomb - That card is far too slow, it's no replacement for EE

On Stoneforge - It's still a control strategy, but it is a different approach to the idea of Landstill. It's good, in a control mirror and gives you some new options, but the cost is obviously that you won't be able to have the same control suite.

On Beast Within - a 3/3 is nothing to scoff at, even if you do get to kill a Jace in the process. To play even one, I'd want to have at least 3 Jace in the maindeck so you can be sure to bounce it immediately. But even then, Beast Within is a contingency plan for your opponent resolving a Jace, which really should be avoided at all costs.

On Knights - Really, you want to play 3-4 creatures in a deck with 0 creatures? That seems like your enabling what are otherwise dead cards for what isn't even that great of a utility card or finisher.

On Krosan Grip - What do you find yourself wanting to Grip?

nodahero

06-03-2011, 11:31 PM

What about boarding out the Mystic package post board so as to minimize the impact of Krosan Grip and their ilk and then switch it to a more classic control suite depending on the match up?

TheInfamousBearAssassin

06-04-2011, 12:58 PM

Batterskull already turns on their creature removal. If one is to run creatures in Landstill, green for Goyf and Knight is definitely the way to go. Also, Repeal is great at saving Goyfs and to a lesser extent Knights from removal.

Personally, I recommend a list not too far removed from this;

4 Flooded Strand
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Island
1 Savannah
4 Tundra
4 Tropical Island
4 Stirring Wildwood
1 Wasteland
1 Dust Bowl
1 Maze of Ith

4 Tarmogoyf
4 Knight of the Reliquary

4 Brainstorm
4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Force of Will
3 Mental Misstep
3 Counterspell
3 Repeal
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
3 Standstill
1 Life from the Loam

Sideboard:
1 Bojuka Bog
1 Karakas
1 Yavimaya Hollow
4 Spell Pierce
2 Pithing Needle
3 Krosan Grip
3 Wrath of God

The mainboard is, spellwise, I think one or two card tweaks away from perfection. The manabase is where I've fluctuated the most. Utility and mana fixing have made me switch up the number of Stirring Wildwoods, Wastelands, Mishra's Factories, and Celestial Colonnades several times.

Yavimaya Hollow, before anyone asks, is a KoTR target to hose Deed-based decks.

I know you love Gigapede, I'm pretty fond of it as well, but why would you elect to play such a narrow card just becuase its uncounterable? Elspeth is better in the mirror and while it can be countered, it is better against far more than just the mirror.

Well if I'm only dedicating a couple slots to a kill condition, I would prefer not to have to worry about protecting it, would be the general argument.

On Stoneforge - It's still a control strategy, but it is a different approach to the idea of Landstill. It's good, in a control mirror and gives you some new options, but the cost is obviously that you won't be able to have the same control suite.

I think it's a strict upgrade on what was just fundamentally a weak strategy, which was Angel Control. Only Batterskull seems infinitely worse against a competent Goblins players than either Angel.

On Krosan Grip - What do you find yourself wanting to Grip?

Artifacts and enchantments, mostly.

In seriousness, any numbers of things; Crucible/Factories in the mirror, Divining Tops, Deeds, equipment.

O-Ring might be better for the ability to snag Jaces though.

GGoober

06-04-2011, 01:13 PM

I know you love Gigapede, I'm pretty fond of it as well, but why would you elect to play such a narrow card just becuase its uncounterable? Elspeth is better in the mirror and while it can be countered, it is better against far more than just the mirror.

On Ratchet Bomb - That card is far too slow, it's no replacement for EE

On Stoneforge - It's still a control strategy, but it is a different approach to the idea of Landstill. It's good, in a control mirror and gives you some new options, but the cost is obviously that you won't be able to have the same control suite.

On Beast Within - a 3/3 is nothing to scoff at, even if you do get to kill a Jace in the process. To play even one, I'd want to have at least 3 Jace in the maindeck so you can be sure to bounce it immediately. But even then, Beast Within is a contingency plan for your opponent resolving a Jace, which really should be avoided at all costs.

On Knights - Really, you want to play 3-4 creatures in a deck with 0 creatures? That seems like your enabling what are otherwise dead cards for what isn't even that great of a utility card or finisher.

On Krosan Grip - What do you find yourself wanting to Grip?

Okay Shake, I thought IBA was fucking trolling with his Knightstill list so I commented playing 4 Beast Within as a joke. He mentions (seriously) that I lose to 3/3.

I guess sometimes I can't tell sarcasm and people can't tell if I'm sarcastic.

Just to clarify before I lose my mind, IBA are you serious with your Knightstill list or are you jokingly posting it?

Also, taking this list for today's tournament. Wish me luck! I hope 4 Bob + 3 Peacekeeper + SB Path + Humility has some chance against the Fishies:

61 UWb Landstill

24 Lands (+1 Edragon)
4 Flooded Strand
3 Misty Rainforest
1 Eternal Dragon
2 Island
2 Plains
3 Tundra
2 Underground Sea
1 Scrubland
4 Mishra's Factory
1 Wasteland
1 Academy Ruins

4 Brainstorm
2 Sensei's Divining Top
3 Standstill
1 Enlightened Tutor

3 Engineered Explosives
4 Swords to Plowshares
1 Nevinrryal's Disk
1 Humility (Need a fucking Moat although it's not so hot against Cliques and Tombstalkers which seem to be very popular and the main problems for Landstill so I'll go with Humility :))

1 Crucible of Worlds
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor (would love a third, let me know if you cut a Snare for the 3rd Jace, I'm still mixed on this due to playtesting results)
2 Elspeth, Knight-Errant

3 Mental Misstep
3 Spell Snare
3 Counterspell
4 Force of Will

15 Sideboard
4 Dark Confidant (MD countersuite is fairly dense, ~13 counterspells, with 2 Negate + 2 Extirpate in the SB, Bob will try his best to outdraw and push the opponents out of the game against non-aggro decks)
2 Negate
2 Extirpate
1 Relic of Progenitus
3 Peacekeeper
2 Perish
1 Path to Exile

TheInfamousBearAssassin

06-05-2011, 07:56 AM

Why wouldn't I be serious?

Master Shake

06-07-2011, 02:49 PM

Metalwalker, I think you're approaching the problem of beating Merfolk in entirely in the wrong way. I like some of what your board is doing but the Peacekeeper plan is not supplemented by Dark Confidant, that I can see. I think you want Misdirection in the sideboard if you're going to play Peacekeepers.

I'm going to be doing a bottom-down reworking of Landstill over the next couple of weeks. This Merfolk problem needs to be figured out for good/real. Stoneforge Mystic may be a step in the right direction, but I'm not sold on it after this weekend.

Koby

06-07-2011, 02:57 PM

Circle of Protection: Blue? Seems really loose, but it provides a reliable way to stop them from attacking and essentially turns all your lands into Maze of Ith. It also answers Progenitus. Follow up with a Wrath or EE to provide card advantage. Ensnaring Bridge to answer Pro/Emrakul decks and Lord-pumping decks. Not sure if these options have already been dismissed, but it seems like dealing with Merfolk is the biggest issue, than dedicating solid answers (that don't die to Dismember) is the key to the strategy.

GGoober

06-07-2011, 05:44 PM

CoP: U is not a good answer. The problem with Merfolks is really: let's assume you do get the best hate cards like Bridge/Peacekeeper/Moat/Humility down, the deck can still win you once they bounce it. The main problem with Merfolks is aside from them kililng you way too fast due to a perfect curve (Adept is really scary and is the key reason the deck can just keep imploding), is you need to have a win-strategy against Merfolks. If your goal is just to sit behind CoP/Humility/Moat/Peacekeeper, the deck will run you over. These days, we're lucky to have Jace sitting behind such locks to win games, but a Merfolk player is going to ensure you won't be able to play a combination of both Jace + lock easily, and if you don't happen to have a backup plan outside of the Jace + lock strategy, you are likely to lose to them just naturally stomping you over in the combat phase.

Metalwalker, I think you're approaching the problem of beating Merfolk in entirely in the wrong way. I like some of what your board is doing but the Peacekeeper plan is not supplemented by Dark Confidant, that I can see. I think you want Misdirection in the sideboard if you're going to play Peacekeepers.

I'm going to be doing a bottom-down reworking of Landstill over the next couple of weeks. This Merfolk problem needs to be figured out for good/real. Stoneforge Mystic may be a step in the right direction, but I'm not sold on it after this weekend.

I did terrible last week with the list I posted, for most parts just the syndrome of drawing wrong cards at the wrong time (like MM turn 2, snare turn 3, FoW after they land a bomb lol).

I didn't get to play with Bobs, and probably don't intend to do so in the future. He's only really good at the cheesy moments when opponents play no removal, and for most parts that's not doing enough.

From my experience, there's only two ways to actually combat Merfolks that I've had success in the past:
1) Run 3 Peacekeeper and really let Merfolks Fow/daze everything you got that you pretend to be desperately throwing it out at them and then resolve your Peacekeeper and protect it. This strategy may not be as strong as it used to be since Merfolks are packing Dismember maindeck (which is a strong card to begin with in folks).

2) Play enough 1-1 removal early game and land something like Moat/Humility. WoG/Disk/Planeswalkers do not win this battle. You need to get Moat/Humility down before you can do anything and then protect it while getting any win condition (at this point most win-conditions work).

I played 2) in an unconventional way (using 2 Isochron Scepters with 3 additional 1-1 removal on top of 4 StP) but it has worked for me 60% of the time. My matchups against Merfolks at that time in game 1 was a strong 55-45 and 60-40 sometimes. When you resolve a Scepter, they cannot win through Scepter unless they draw multiple Mutavault fast with a Vial in play.

I would be interested to seeing how you approach UWx Landstill bottom up against Merfolks. I know that Ubg Landstill fairs pretty well because they usually play around 6 maindeck 1-1 removal and then land a Deed. I think most UWx lists these days only play 4 StP and a couple of EE, maybe it's time to up the 1-1 removal up to 6-7 and drop some costlier cards to support an early game.

Do we really nneed to play SFM+Batterskull?? :( I can see the attraction because outside of Merfolks and certain aggro decks, Landstill-ish decks are pretty well positioned to take on a variety of matchups without having heavily disfavored matchups.

DragoFireheart

06-09-2011, 09:59 AM

Master Shake

06-09-2011, 03:18 PM

Here is one neat solution to the Merfolk problem:

Vedalken Shackles combined with either High Market or Miren, the Moaning Well . Grab a merfolk with the shackles, then sacrifice!

Yes, a list did play this little combo in a Landstill deck:

http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/deck.php?id=6235&iddeck=45181

I was just going to respond with the word "Wasteland" but that would be a waste of a post. However, I hope you keep that in mind while I type the rest of this out. These lands produce colorless, Shakcles doesn't come on-line until at least turn 4, but probably not until after you're dead because of what Merfolk does. High Market clearly isn't an island, nor are your factories, Wastelands or Plains. If you're ever going to really try to pull this off you'd need 3 High Markets, bringing the colorless count of most decks to 11, which is just under half the lands and well over half the mana producing lands. Also, this deck plays Karn, Liberated, another great 7 mana answer to Merfolk, all you need to do is have total board control, be able to resolve a card on turn 13 after tapping out and then have them do literally nothing for two turns, then you can restart the game and lose like you were supposed to the first time around. Perhaps we can talk about how this deck placed in an 18 player event. Top 4 at an 18 player event isn't too hard, especially considering that most of the decks were probably cold aforementioned Karn Liberated. Using this logic, I guess the singleton Pulse of the Fields is a pretty good answer to Merfolk as well, you just need to get some white sources.

Redbalde, the deck that won that event and came in 2nd at the most recent SCG event is actually fairly interesting, though.

DragoFireheart

06-10-2011, 10:27 PM

GGoober

06-11-2011, 12:00 AM

@Master Shake.

With your logic, I could dismiss the deck that got first saying it;s easy to top eight in a small tournament.

Hanni has tested Shackles against merfolk in his countertop lists extensively. They work when used in conjunction with counters/removal.

Shackles works only if you run a high Island count, which in Hanni's list does so. If you start adding 4 Manlands, and some Wastelands, Shackles becomes bad. Trust me, it's a trade off. Hanni likes Shackles and basics more than manlands, but some of us prefer to have win conditions that don't take the slots of non-lands which also happens to have synergy with the control archetype and Standstill.

The list you posted is what is normally called 'win-more'. Why would I ever need Miren as a sac outlet just to fuel Shackles? It's the mentality you get from playing EDH, not really playing Legacy. You're always looking for the worst scenarios as a control deck in Legacy, not trying to beat the scenarios where you are already winning at.

GGoober

06-11-2011, 12:00 AM

kiblast

06-11-2011, 06:13 AM

While almost unplayable in Legacy, sac lands + Schackles is good enough for my Hanna EDH, thanks for suggestion.
Anyway, what's the point of running Karn above the 4th Jace? Anybody tested that slot?

Edit: actually some sort of UWG Creature-still could be interesting. No Tarmogoyfs though. I'd rather play 4 Kotr and 2 Cliques. Stirring Wildwood is a solid non-graveyard based 5th manland, while Loam + Jace is obviously very good.

DragoFireheart

06-11-2011, 10:56 AM

Shackles works only if you run a high Island count, which in Hanni's list does so. If you start adding 4 Manlands, and some Wastelands, Shackles becomes bad. Trust me, it's a trade off. Hanni likes Shackles and basics more than manlands, but some of us prefer to have win conditions that don't take the slots of non-lands which also happens to have synergy with the control archetype and Standstill.

The list you posted is what is normally called 'win-more'. Why would I ever need Miren as a sac outlet just to fuel Shackles? It's the mentality you get from playing EDH, not really playing Legacy. You're always looking for the worst scenarios as a control deck in Legacy, not trying to beat the scenarios where you are already winning at.

There have been Landstill decks with many basics and being able to fully run Shackles that placed in the Top 8.

Tacosnape

06-11-2011, 12:43 PM

Merfolk hasn't been a huge problem for me, although my list is very streamlined and light on sweepers. I've broken about even with it on the whole, and strangely my biggest problem in the matchup has been dealing with Kira.

Here's my list at current, for reference.

4 Flooded Strand
3 Polluted Delta
4 Tundra
2 Island
1 Plains
4 Mishra's Factory
2 Wasteland
1 Faerie Conclave
1 Mutavault
1 Celestial Colonnade

4 Brainstorm
4 Standstill
3 Jace, The Mind Sculptor

4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Path to Exile
3 Oblivion Ring
3 Engineered Explosives

3 Mental Misstep
3 Spell Snare
4 Force of Will
4 Counterspell

SB:
4 Meddling Mage
1 Mental Misstep
1 Spell Snare
1 Crucible of Worlds
3 Surgical Extraction
2 Pithing Needle
1 Vendilion Clique
1 Wrath of God
1 Nevinyrral's Disk

klaus

06-11-2011, 03:41 PM

SB:
4 Meddling Mage
1 Mental Misstep
1 Spell Snare
1 Crucible of Worlds
3 Surgical Extraction
2 Pithing Needle
1 Vendilion Clique
1 Wrath of God
1 Nevinyrral's Disk

Apparently there hardly any gy-based decks in your meta. Good for you.
Crucible is an interesting SB card that I haven't considered yet for some reason.
I could easily see a singleton Enlightened Tutor pimping your SB tremendously, modifying it along these lines:
1 E.T.
1 Canonist (fetchable)
1 Disk
1 Needle
1 Relic
1 Crucible of Worlds
3 Meddling Mage
1 Mental Misstep
1 Spell Snare
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Wrath
1 Clique

TheInfamousBearAssassin

06-11-2011, 04:52 PM

Edit: actually some sort of UWG Creature-still could be interesting. No Tarmogoyfs though. I'd rather play 4 Kotr and 2 Cliques. Stirring Wildwood is a solid non-graveyard based 5th manland, while Loam + Jace is obviously very good.

Clique is a terrible blocker. Tarmogoyf is an amazing blocker. He's also about the best defensive Repeal target.

DragoFireheart

06-11-2011, 05:21 PM

Merfolk hasn't been a huge problem for me, although my list is very streamlined and light on sweepers. I've broken about even with it on the whole, and strangely my biggest problem in the matchup has been dealing with Kira.

Strangely? They run Kira because control decks run spot removal. You need some kind of sweeper. Some have tested Disk, others have tested WoG. However, the best solution is usually a continuous one, like Humility or Moat.

Tacosnape

06-12-2011, 11:25 AM

@Kira: I'd rather just sneak an Underground Sea in my manabase so I can Explosives for 3. I've actually already done this. It also gives me a weird option to board Perish if Thrun, The Last Troll becomes a serious issue.

I've never felt like I needed a sweeper maindeck in Landstill beyond Engineered Explosives. Usually, through good choices as to when and where to spend removal and counters and through the deck's ludicrous card advantage, I've rarely found myself needing one. The times I want one are usually when I can't target something. Kira's a pain, as is Thrun, the Last Troll. Beyond this, I've been pretty much okay.

Also, @Klaus: I had an Enlightened Tutor board for awhile. I went away from it, though I keep the E-tutors nearby just in case. I switch back and forth depending on how often I feel the metagame warrants me needing to find a specific card versus trying to just win a resource war.

Also, I have the three Surgical Extractions in my board to help with yard hate, though I'm probably going to switch some combination of those out for Faerie Macabres, which are much better against Reanimator. And as for having a sweeper, the Disk and the Wrath in my board give me access to 2 in games 2 and 3. Combined with the Explosives, this is often enough.

DragoFireheart

06-14-2011, 08:34 PM

I've never felt like I needed a sweeper maindeck in Landstill beyond Engineered Explosives. Usually, through good choices as to when and where to spend removal and counters and through the deck's ludicrous card advantage, I've rarely found myself needing one. The times I want one are usually when I can't target something. Kira's a pain, as is Thrun, the Last Troll. Beyond this, I've been pretty much okay.

Humility answers both.

Tacosnape

06-17-2011, 12:03 PM

Humility answers both.

So it does. I may actually attempt this.

Anyway, I went undefeated last night in locals, though by no means was it a cakewalk and I dodged a lot of very close calls. Sideboard was different than my above list.

Round 1: Patrick with Merfolk. Yaaaay!

Game one he gets down Silvergill and a Wasteland, and I drop a Standstill, hoping to sneak it through a counter. I then proceed to drop three Mishra's Factories and a Conclave. He has to break it. It takes awhile, but after eating a free Merfolk by STP'ing Lord of Atlantis and then blocking with Factory, I stabilize. I stick a Jace and out card-advantage him.

Game two involves me hitting an insane number of Paths and Swords. Like, I hit 6 1CC white removal spells before I hit my fourth land. This game is a resource battle to the bitter end, but I eventually get there at 1 life.

Round 2: Josh with UGB Vengevine

Game 1 involves like, 300 Mental Misstep wars. He almost kills me with a Circular Logic on a removal spell aimed at Wild Mongrel, but I stabilize, land a Jace, and win. I never see a Vengevine.

I board wrong, due to sleep deprivation. For some reason I don't bring in Surgical Extraction, even though I still think he's running Vine. It doesn't make a difference, though. I also board out Wasteland like an idiot.

Game 2 involved three turns of resource wars, followed by Thrun, the Last Troll.

Game 3 I STILL don't bring in Surgicals (Seriously. One of my worst boarding days ever), but Mages come in as I haven't yet seen a removal spell from Josh. My Mage gets Circular Logic'd, but Standstill nets me some cards, Jace nets me some more, and he never sees Thrun.

So I escape bad boarding by him not seeing Vengevine for an entire three games. Neat.

Round 3: Carla with Belcher.

Game 1: Force of Will, Engineered Explosives, Counterspell, Jace, Manlands, Game 2.

Game 2: Sleepily, I don't fetch a basic on turn one. Magus of the Moon hits. I'm not very bright.

Game 3: She has a hand that somehow wins on turn one with Pyroblast backup, but forgets to Pyroblast my counter. Bizarre. My terrible play somehow continues to be rewarded by luck.

Round 4: Nick with BGW Rock/Junk/Whatever.

Playing Nick makes me a better player. I have to mulligan to 6, and the first four turns involve him throwing discard at me and me countering the discard. He somehow never hits a third mana producing land, and I manage to catch a Standstill off a Brainstorm, gain control of the attrition war, and stick a Jace. By the time he gets his next land, I've untapped and have Counterspells waiting for Vindicates.

Game 2 I board out Forces and load up on Paths, and my fourth Misstep and Snare. He gets a fast Knight, and I'm scared of him fetching Wastelands to keep me off Oblivion Ring, but he instead uses his mana to cast...something. Can't remember. Anyway, it lets me ring his Knight. He gets a second Knight and I get a Jace, yet somehow I can't seem to find an answer to Knight and have to keep bouncing him. I finally dig up a Path with Jace at one counter, and then Jace Brainstorms for about nine turns until I have the ground forces to overwhelm him.

Semis: Larry w/ Burn

Larry's a paradox. He's a very careful, thoughtful, skilled player who plays decks that attract players who are the complete opposite of him. Anyway, Game 1 and Game 2 both pretty much play the same. I somehow stop just enough burn to Jace ultimate him at one burn spell away from death. All I remember here was that Engineered Explosives was a complete monster against Guide/Lavamancer/Figure, and that Standstill is fun against suspended Rift Bolts. Also, both games involve me activating and Swordsing a Factory in response to Price of Progress.

And I split the finals with Nick, as we're both deliriously tired at this point.

Anyway, here's what I decided:

1. I absolutely love having 4 Path to Exiles between Maindeck and Sideboard. I had 2 main and 2 board, and they were fantastic against Merfolk, Rock, and UGB Vengevine.

2. I need an answer to Thrun, the Last Troll. Vendilion Clique comes to mind. As do Wrath and Humility, but Clique seems more versatile.

3. Nevinyrral's Disk, despite being a neat trick against Show and Tell, does not make nice with Oblivion Ring. I ran one in the sideboard and it was trash.

4. RG Belcher is weirdly and impressively good. The deck almost blanks Mental Misstep, and I had a lot of trouble stopping it.

DragoFireheart

06-17-2011, 12:32 PM

4. RG Belcher is weirdly and impressively good. The deck almost blanks Mental Misstep, and I had a lot of trouble stopping it.

..Seriously? Can't MMS hit their mana sources or Land Grant or something to disrupt them? What made that match up harder than one would think?

Koby

06-17-2011, 12:45 PM

..Seriously? Can't MMS hit their mana sources or Land Grant or something to disrupt them? What made that match up harder than one would think?

Belcher can fight through light blue disruption. Don't discount it altogether.

RogueMTG

06-17-2011, 12:47 PM

..Seriously? Can't MMS hit their mana sources or Land Grant or something to disrupt them? What made that match up harder than one would think?

Well Land Grant costs 1G... So misstep hits Rite of Flame and Tinder Wall and I guess Pyroblast post board. It's not horrible but it's not great.

lorddotm

06-18-2011, 04:32 AM

Knapp, I was wondering if you could post your latest list. Thank you.

crovakiet

06-18-2011, 04:18 PM

2. I need an answer to Thrun, the Last Troll. Vendilion Clique comes to mind. As do Wrath and Humility, but Clique seems more versatile.

Have you messed around a bit with phyrexian metamorph? I know that vendilion clique is very versatile especially with karakas in play as well as being a 7 turn win condition however for the same mana cost + 2 life, phyrexian metamorph hits problem legendaries like thrun or kira and in those cases acts as removal of stuff that can pretty much potentially win them the game. In other cases it can be used to stall/win such as copy reanimated huge targets, batterskull tricks, opponent's goyfs(while removing them afterwards with stp/path) etc.

dsck

06-19-2011, 04:27 PM

Played in a 5 round swiss tournament (17 players) today. I ended up going 3-1-1 losing to Burn and drawing against Zoo.

List:
3 Spell Snare
3 Counterspell
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
4 Mental Misstep
4 Swords to Plowshares

1 Decree of Justice
1 Day of Judgment
1 Wrath of God

1 Humility
1 Oblivion Ring
4 Standstill

1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

1 Crucible of Worlds
2 Sensei's Divining Top

1 Celestial Colonnade
3 Island
2 Plains
4 Flooded Strand
4 Mishra's Factory
2 Tundra
3 Wasteland
1 Polluted Delta
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Scalding Tarn

Sideboard:
3 Peacekeeper
2 Energy Flux
2 Faerie Macabre
2 Tariff
1 Cursed Totem
1 Dream Tides
2 Chill
2 Misdirection

VERY short report:

Round 1 Elves with Tangle Wires 2-0
G1 I misstep his turn 1 elf and drop standstill and reach 4 mana soon and wrath his board and drop Elspeth.
G2 I slow him down misstepping his first few elves (I let him have those insects that untap elves). He drops couple tangle wires but runs out of gas while hitting me with 3 1/1's. I finally get 2 mana open and drop Cursed Totem, soon followed by Dream Tides, followed by Jace....

Round 2 The Rack 2-0
G1 He resolves 1 hymn and dies to factories.
G2 I sword his 3 creatures and misdirect his hymn to himself, jace makes sure he draws nothing but lands and rituals.

Round 3 NO RUG 2-0
G1 Humility.
G2 Tariff.

Round 4 Burn 0-2
G1 I die.
G2 I die.

Round 5 "Small" Zoo 1-1-1
G1 I manage to almost stabilize @ 2 lifes with humility on the table and him having only Goyf. I dont see any factories whole game while topping and brainstorming only to see counters and die to 1/1 Tarmogoyf :frown:

G2 He has to break 2 Standstills, I lock the game down with Dream Tides, Humility and Jace. He doesnt scoop because he has active Sylvan Library (he for some reason didnt take damage and draw the bad cards away from his top, but instead sounded angry everytime he looked his top 3) and chance to draw Grips. He grips the humility but cant attack with his large knight because of Dream Tides would keep it tapped. I bounce his knight and run over him with factories and colonnade, I think I also had Elspeth at that point as well.

G3 He plays turn 2 Vexing Shusher and I have hand full of counters but no removal :cry:, shortly after he gets Teeg and cant attack because I have 2 Factories. I keep him off red land with Wastelands and play Crucible when time is called..

Slops
- Lack of preparation vs red/burn (I have to wonder how burn slipped through with 3-0 record though.. and finished 5-0!)
- People not knowing how humility works (why isnt that factory 1/1!?)

Props
+ Standstill
+ Dream Tides

klaus

06-19-2011, 05:27 PM

Here's my current list for those who're interested:

CA/CQ:
4 Standstill
4 Brainstorm
1 Ponder
3 Jace, TMS

REMOVAL:
4 STP
2 PtE
2 Shackles
2 EE

COUNTER SUITE:
4 FOW
4 MM
3 CS
3 Snare

WIN CON (beyond Jace, Shackles, Factory):
1 Elspeth
(--37--)

LAND:
4 Flooded Strand
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Arid Mesa
4 Tundra
2 Volcanic Island
3 Island
1 Plains
4 Mishra's Factory
1 Academy Ruins
1 Dustbowl
(--23--)

SB:
3 Vendilion Clique
3 Relic of Progenitus
3 Aura of Silence
2 Red Elemental Blast
1 Path to Exile
3 Firespout

I'm very happy with the current version, but am open to crits on the not so common choices.
Peace!

Tacosnape

06-20-2011, 01:28 AM

Neat suggestions.

I'mma try the Phyrexian Metamorph idea. I like there being an answer to Kira, Thrun, Progenitus, and Emrakul that's the same card, as well as something that lets me play more than four Meddling Mages. Not a whole lot of other things I'd need to copy, really, but the fact that he could randomly be an opponents' Divining Top or something could be pretty neat.

Dream Tides is pretty weird tech. I'd be afraid to rely on it to stop Thrun, as decks that run Thrun almost always have enchantment removal in some form. But it's a neat ability nonetheless.

mossivo1986

06-20-2011, 02:18 AM

TheInfamousBearAssassin

06-20-2011, 04:04 AM

It seems barely correct not to maindeck Wrath in Knightstill. It certainly doesn't make sense in U/w. Phyrexian Metamorph is an infinitely weaker and less versatile answer to Metamorph than Wrath. For all the memetic nonsense about how Wrath is bad, its main shortcomings are against Merfolk, and Metamorph is no better as an answer there, and far worse when you can stick it.

spedn7

06-21-2011, 11:53 AM

This might be a noob question but what is knightstill. Is it the new lists with stoneforge or did i miss something.

Felidae

06-22-2011, 05:22 PM

IBA is refering to the list he posted 1 or 2 pages back (featuring Knight of the Reliquary and Tarmogoyf).

GGoober

06-22-2011, 06:30 PM

I believe the Hatfields piloted a variant of UWg control list packing KotR as a resource/win condition fetching Mazes/Wastes etc.

klaus

06-22-2011, 06:51 PM

Klaus your missing stoneforge mystic. Cut the ponder, and the shackles and run that card. It's clearly miles ahead of shackles, and it gives control a superior beater (Batterskull)

I feel that 4 Mistep is clearly too many.

tbh, I haven't tested Batter Skull + Mystic, but in theory it should be an extremly common scenario to go Mystic -> Skull and have Mystic removed the same turn, blanking the neat ability to cheat Skull into play.
I think I might give it a shot, but generally I clearly prefer to blank my opponents removal suite over rocking a combo that only works like 40% of the time. It's simply to fragile if you consider all you opponent's removal just stacks up over the game.
Thoughts?
-
4 Missteps is the correct numer if you rely on resolving STPs through opposing Missteps as much as I do.

spedn7

06-22-2011, 07:12 PM

tbh, I haven't tested Batter Skull + Mystic, but in theory it should be an extremly common scenario to go Mystic -> Skull and have Mystic removed the same turn, blanking the neat ability to cheat Skull into play.
I think I might give it a shot, but generally I clearly prefer to blank my opponents removal suite over rocking a combo that only works like 40% of the time. It's simply to fragile if you consider all you opponent's removal just stacks up over the game.
Thoughts?

Klaus i agree with you fully it did well at GP because it was unknown now people are running more cheap removal or artifact hate out of the board. I have been running a UWR list that did well at Bazzar of Mox 5 that i had add mental missteps to and been testing.

1 Academy Ruins
4 Brainstorm
2 Crucible of Worlds
3 Engineered Explosives
1 Eternal Dragon
4 Flooded Strand
4 Force of Will
1 Island
3 Lightning Bolt
4 Mishra's Factory
1 Plains
1 Plateau
2 Scalding Tarn
3 Spell Snare
4 Standstill
4 Tundra
2 Volcanic Island
2 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
2 Fact or Fiction
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Mental Misstep
4 Wasteland
SB: 2 Circle of Protection: Red
SB: 1 Disenchant
SB: 3 Ethersworn Canonist
SB: 2 Pyroclasm
SB: 2 Relic of Progenitus
SB: 2 Sower of Temptation
SB: 2 Tormod's Crypt
SB: 1 Divine Offering

the mental missteps were 3 spell pierces and 1 Nevinyrral's Disk disk. This list during testing has done well against a lot of the aggro decks and stoneforge decks but is a little weak to control. Any advice would be great

Ozymandias

06-27-2011, 04:28 PM

Just picked up some Jaces, want to try a fairly classic list out. Any glaring oversights in this one?

2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Elspeth, Knight Errant
1 Decree of Justice
1 Humility
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Wrath of God
2 Engineered Explosives
4 Mental Misstep
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Counterspell
3 Spell Snare
4 Force of Will
4 Standstill
4 Brainstorm

1 Academy Ruins
4 Wasteland
4 Mishra's Factory
4 Flooded Strand
3 Polluted Delta
4 Tundra
1 Plains
3 Island
1 Celestial Colonnade

Bignasty197

06-27-2011, 04:35 PM

I would find room for a Volcanic/Underground/Tropical so you can set EE at 3.

Tom T

06-27-2011, 04:50 PM

paladin3056

06-27-2011, 08:59 PM

vercadium

06-27-2011, 09:31 PM

Why isn´t there any discussion going on about the whole UW Stoneblade Landstill variants? Is this a different thread or isn't there any interest in the inclusion of Stoneforge Mystic, Batterskull & friends?

I was planning to ask the same question as well. Is there a seperate thread for the UW Stonestill?

I was also wondering if it is optimal to run 4 MM? Thanks

I too was thinking the same thing. Search function doesn't reveal much.

As for the 4 MM - I think so, it hits so many targets in the format and having another way to react on turn 1 for free is always good :)

Dr.Jones

06-27-2011, 10:54 PM

the reason this deck HAS to play misstep 4 is the namesake standstill ! lose the counterwar for vial against merfolk T1 and you will see why...

TheInfamousBearAssassin

06-27-2011, 11:11 PM

klaus

06-28-2011, 04:10 PM

You ought to be running Repeal, so no, 4 Mental Misstep is not necessary or, in my opinion, optimal. I think a 4 Force/3 Misstep/3 Counterspell split on the countersuite is a reasonable starting point.

Misstep is the mainreason LS is experiencing a revival.
I'm too lazy to do the math, but being able to cast Standstill due to Misstep having cleared the way on turn 0.5/1/1,5 is a very common scenario in my testing.
Unless everyone starts cutting their 1-drops it's quite unlikely I'll be cutting a single Misstep in the future.

mossivo1986

06-29-2011, 02:02 AM

Misstep is the mainreason LS is experiencing a revival.
I'm too lazy to do the math, but being able to cast Standstill due to Misstep having cleared the way on turn 0.5/1/1,5 is a very common scenario in my testing.
Unless everyone starts cutting their 1-drops it's quite unlikely I'll be cutting a single Misstep in the future.

That's simply not true. The reason landstill is seeing a revival is because Gerry T and Drew Levin piloted landstill, and some guy thought it would be a cool idea to run ancestral visions over standstill.

These type of things happen every few years. Some guy tries to reinovate the control deck, another guy plays ancestral visions because it's "super sweet"

The bottom line is that the speed-still approach is quite simply not as resilient as more traditional variants. You mine as well be playing UW tempo with a splash for some slightly better cards.

4 Mental Misstep is clearly incorrect, and if you can't see it; I don't know what to tell you Klaus. Landstill runs between 22-24 lands, not counter cow or dragon, adding in 4 misstep's clearly hinders your late-game. In my own opinion I feel like landstill shouldn't be playing misstep at all, but that's just me. If your opponent is playing vial the nominal percent of the time he draws it on 1 or 2 and he's goblins/merfolk/slivers/ some versions of maverick then I guess i'm just going to have to accept my responsibility to force it, and see if the force gets there. If not, I guess I just have to resolve my threats like normal, instead of falling for this trap that is a tempo war. Your not trying to gain tempo, your trying to break theirs. By playing into the misstep war, or a vial war your accepting that you cannot continue the game without dealing with such cards. I don't think this is the correct approach at all.

GGoober

06-29-2011, 02:40 AM

I agree with moss for most parts, but I'll disagree on that MM is 'useless' in Landstill.

For one, at least people are not dumb enough to cut Snares/Counterspells in favor of MM. This is definitely the wrong decision to cut Snares/Counterspells since there are many bombs that can't be answered without Counterspell/Snare/FoW. At the same time, MM functions very similarly to what Snare does. The question is: Are there enough targets and worthwhile threats that need to be countered by MM the way Landstill favors playing Snares? I think the answer is yes. For the time being.

MM hits Vials, Lackeys, Thoughtseize/Duress/Pierce, Ritual, High Tide, SDT, Nacatl and a TON more important spells (e.g. GSZ/Hierarch in Bant which accelerates to an unfavorable KotR/NOGenitus a turn faster). Moss, you are dead right in saying that MM isn't for Landstill if it's used as an edge to gain tempo advantage. This I agree with you dead on and people who pilot Landstill using MM with this mentality is doing it wrong (e.g. GerryT's UW LOLstill with repeals and Llawans and Submerge). However, I feel that most people who've come to see what MM does in the format (in tempo decks) can also observe what MM does if it's used outside of gaining an edge. In Landstill, when I play with MM, it's the same reason as I play with SNares: I anticipate a meta of relevant 1cmc bombs. Sadly the format is still filled with one. Landstill does fine without MM like it did in the past, but with MM, it frees the use of FoW for later game-breaking counter fights. I usually don't MM at every chance at get despite the feeling that it maybe a 'dead' card in hand. This train of thought is wrong. You use MM/Snare when the situation demands it (i.e. do you have EE in hand etc?). I think this is the key difference between maximizing the power of MM in control decks. For myself, I see MM in the same light as Snare, with the added benefit of actually powering out Standstills (this is a huge boon of MM but I primarily see it as a counterspell similar to Snare).

I don't think it's wrong to run 1-4 MM, just as I don't think it's wrong to run 1-4 Snares. I do think it is wrong if someone thinks that they need to play 4 MM to be a successful Landstill pilot. THe number of MM in your deck is directly correlated to what the strategy of the deck is employing, to which I agree with Moss that Landstill may or may not need it, depending on which approach it is heading. Moss pointed that the 'speedstill' approach of 1-1'ing and then playing an x-1 spell to gain late-game advantage is not as strong as the traditional approach. I don't necessarily agree with this, but I think that's one way of looking at it. At the same time, there are just about enough benefits of MM to justify or at least question if MM should be played like a counterspell that functions similarly to Snare. I personally like playing 3 MMs. If I don't draw them early game, too bad for me, but I know that I play 3 MM because I'm worried about 1 mana spells that do affect my game, whether it's early/mid/late-game. That's the reason you play cards in decks. If I'm playing MM just to gain a boost in the early game, then that's ENTIRELY the wrong reason to play MM in a control deck, because if you don't draw MM early, you lose. However, if your maindeck is playing MM to account for its deficiency to 1cmc bombs at any point in the game (not just early game), then MM becomes much justifiable to play, and has the additional bonus on answering early game 1cmc threats when you do draw MM early, or setup for a standstill.

Less talk, Knappstill-ish list that I've been testing and bringing to my playgroup for more testing tomorrow:

60 UWr Scepterstill
24 Lands (23+1Edragon)
4 Flooded Strand
3 Scalding Tarn
1 Plain
2 Island
3 Tundra
1 Plateau
2 Volcanic Island
4 Mishra's Factory
1 Academy Ruins
2 Wasteland
1 Eternal Dragon

6 Win
1 Isochron Scepter
1 Crucible of Worlds
2 Elspeth, Knight Errant
2 Jace, the Mindsculptor

13 Permission
3 Mental Misstep
3 Spell Snare
3 Counterspell
4 Force of Will

9 Removal
4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Lightning Helix
2 EE

9 Draw
4 Brainstorm
1 Top
3 Standstill
1 ETutor

15 SB
2 REB
2 Negate
2 Relic of Progenitus
3 Vendilion Clique
3 Peacekeeper
1 Path to Exile
1 Humility
1 flex slots (2nd Scepter being played here right now)

This list has a very strong matchup against aggro decks, in particular SFM/Merfolks/Bob/Goblins/Elves/Zoo. The weaker matchups are mid-range Rock/KotR decks, which have to be played more tightly given the loss of sweepers maindeck. 1 Scepter in the MD was the last testing I've done about 6 months ago, and it worked great when you drew it with something to imprint (over 14 hard spells to imprint).

The 2nd Scepter is brought in against decks with little artifact removal (Merfolks/non-GWx aggro/Control/Combo). 2Negate/2REB in control mirror along with 3 Cliques has been pretty solid, Relic + Peacekeeper against GY-based decks e.g. Dredge/Reanimator and Negates/Peacekeeper/Humility/REB against Show/NOBant decks. Path comes in against Tombstalkers/KotRish decks. So far the list seems too tight and I've been trying to squeeze the 4th Standstill. I decided on the lone ETutor instead of the 4th Standstill to reduce the awkward situation where I open with no MM/FoW against Vial decks.

@Lightning Helix. I've tested Fire//Ice in its place. In all honesty, Fire//ICe is stronger these days due to huge prevalence of Bobs/Cliques/NORug/Merfolks/Tribal/SFM, but I still end up prefering Helix (due to Zoo in my meta), and the ability to race control/aggro/combo when you imprint Helix on a scepter. I remember the good days where I would race 5-power merfolk Lords with Helix to the face when going to time. Helix also surprises opposing Jace if they decide to brainstorm (somewhat narrow but it has that option, and it kills Nacatls as well).

Will let you know on testing. I made a promise to quit playing Landstill for awhile, but I just can't help but sleeve it out again.

IsThisACatInAHat?

06-29-2011, 02:51 AM

4 Mental Misstep is clearly incorrect, and if you can't see it; I don't know what to tell you Klaus. Landstill runs between 22-24 lands, not counter cow or dragon, adding in 4 misstep's clearly hinders your lategame as it takes away card quality later in the game. In my own opinion I feel like landstill shouldn't be playing misstep at all, but that's just me.
I think it is just you. Does the fact that any deck ending in "-still" sucked ass between the debut of Triton's Minions and MM's printing not indicate to you it's necessity as a 4-of? Gerry may have started the trend, but the best players in the world (i.e. the pros) universally used a full set in their various whatever-still control decks in Providence. Those who've written about it even testified that it had become another automatic slot alongside Brainstorm and Force of Will for said decks. Just like that, pure(r) control became viable again overnight.

Powerful 1-drops exist in Legacy, many of which can mark the beginning of the end for slow [Ux] control if they're not dealt with quickly and efficiently. Sometimes, those 1-drops aren't cast on the first turn which means Misstep, contrary to popular acknowledgment, is not dead on turns 2+. If it's reeeally a problem, you can just Brainstorm (a very Misstep-able spell) it away with one of the 4 JTMS you should also be running. "Traditional" lists still suck now as much as they did starting in 2008, which is why they're still not top 8ing events and still not being played except by the handful of self-titled old guard players who can't help but remember what Landstill was like in Type 1.5 when it was "super sweet," always forgetting the entire last 3 years.

Iron Buddha

06-29-2011, 05:38 AM

@ Metalwalker: May I remind you that you shouldn't run any less than 3 EE?

---
I personally think that SDT (as a three of ) + Path to Exile is a better early-game plan than Mental Misstep + Spell Snare.
As Moss said you're not particularly furthering your own gameplan with Misstep (and Spell Snare) that is hitting your land-drops and then smashing with 4cc bombs. SDT, on the other hand, ensures your land-drops while digging for a sword/EE.
If Mental Misstep enables Standstill, that's another point I admit, but I don't think that MM enables Standstill on a consistent basis, since you're not the only one running MM.

I don't know what Moss is suggesting, though.

Tom T

06-29-2011, 06:12 AM

Guys,

I'm writing a primer for the UW Stone-Blade archtype so discussion about the deck doesn't mix with the original UW Landstill archtype.
However, I don't have enough experience with the deck to make a correct match-up analysis.
I was wondering if the more experienced players would be interested in helping with the match-up analysis. A PM would be great!

Thanks in advance,
Tom T.

klaus

06-29-2011, 08:37 AM

@ catinthecat:
Thanks for that very true analysis on MM in U.Control.

@ moss:
Don't forget that we have Bs, FoW, Top, and sometimes Ponder to address unneeded late game MMs.

dsck

06-29-2011, 04:00 PM

Any tips on a game plan against UR Painter?

GGoober

06-29-2011, 05:09 PM

What UWx build are you playing?

- Snare on Painter, MM on Welder
- StP on Painter in response to Grind
- EE@2 on Painter in response to Grind (it's best to set this on 2 against Servant instead of 1 against Grindstone)
- Extirpate (if they play Intuition)
- Grudge/Grip are good against this matchup (UWg builds are not as popular)
- Needle isn't ideal (since they can REB it) but it works on Grindstone
- Disk is slow, but if Disk/Deed ever resolves, it's over for them. Humility should always be boarded out against this matchup
- If they decide to be cute with Show and Tell postboard, you can be cute with Tariff (which kills Painter if they don't go Emmy, or kill the Emmy if they Show'd you the FSM).

I've played against Painter multiple times, and find the Imperial Painter builds to be much more brutal than the fast combo that is in the DTB section. Imperial Painter can sometimes screw you with Moon/Jaya, making it difficult to fight, but the UR Painter is much easier to beat since they usually go for pure combo/speed which you have many outs to.

mossivo1986

06-29-2011, 05:56 PM

I think it will be better served if we actually discuss what MM counters that your worried about if this is the kind of discussion you wish to have. I would also like to see where you value such a threat IE something like the following.

Threat level

Difficulty
vial

Medium
lackey

Easy
nacatl

I think then we can actually determine if this card has value versus something like snare or counterspell.

Me myself I prefer a package that looks like this:

4 force
3 counterspell
3 snare

removal
4 stp
2 ee
2 moat
1-2 wrath

draw
4 bs
3 still
2 jace

I don't feel like jace deserves four slots in the deck.
I don't think there is anything that can or should be labelled as a "pure control deck" as you put it.
I do not feel mistep is absolutely useless in landstill, but I do feel like there are absolutely better options to fight a tempo war with these decks. Sure your stp/bs/ee etc can get countered, that doesn't mean you have to fight wars your not going to win against tempo strategies which pride themselves on controlling the early game with mana denial/ back-breaking dazes. spell pierces, mm's, etc. etc.

TheInfamousBearAssassin

06-29-2011, 07:58 PM

I think it is just you. Does the fact that any deck ending in "-still" sucked ass between the debut of Triton's Minions and MM's printing not indicate to you it's necessity as a 4-of? Gerry may have started the trend, but the best players in the world (i.e. the pros) universally used a full set in their various whatever-still control decks in Providence. Those who've written about it even testified that it had become another automatic slot alongside Brainstorm and Force of Will for said decks. Just like that, pure(r) control became viable again overnight.

Powerful 1-drops exist in Legacy, many of which can mark the beginning of the end for slow [Ux] control if they're not dealt with quickly and efficiently. Sometimes, those 1-drops aren't cast on the first turn which means Misstep, contrary to popular acknowledgment, is not dead on turns 2+. If it's reeeally a problem, you can just Brainstorm (a very Misstep-able spell) it away with one of the 4 JTMS you should also be running. "Traditional" lists still suck now as much as they did starting in 2008, which is why they're still not top 8ing events and still not being played except by the handful of self-titled old guard players who can't help but remember what Landstill was like in Type 1.5 when it was "super sweet," always forgetting the entire last 3 years.

While I don't think 4 Mental Misstep is "clearly incorrect", this post is putting an entirely unhealthy emphasis on what is. It's important to look at what's winning, but the best deck at a tournament usually doesn't win, and the absolute best deck 75 in a metagame (certainly in Legacy anyway) will almost never even be registered.

I think this is particularly important to keep in mind when discussing Landstill, which I think is experiencing a resurgence largely because of Misstep, although some of that is indirectly so, by causing the format to slow down.

(nameless one)

06-30-2011, 08:49 AM

Hey Guys,

I was wondering for the right number of Super Jaces and Elspeth1.0s in the deck? I have most of the pieces (I run Merfolk, Quinn and CounterTop Thopters) outside of the Tundras, Moats and Jaces.

Would this deck do fine with minimal to no Tundras? It might sound suboptimal but I'm staying away from dual lands as much as possible.

Does anyone have a sample lists that incorporate both Jace and Elspeth that I can start working on?

Does the deck really need Stoneforge Mystics?

Thanks in advance

GGoober

06-30-2011, 11:16 AM

I run 2/2 Jace/Elspeth split. Most people these days run 3 Jace and 0-1 Elspeth (usually no Elspeth). I strongly believe Elspeth is much better than Jace in an aggro environment, and resolving Elspeth deals easily against a resolved opposing Jace.

Jace is played because in a favorable board position, he immediately wins you the game with fateseals/brainstorm and bury your opponents in a stage he can't recover. Elpseth serves a different purpose: she is incredible at getting you out of an unfavorable position (which Jace is terrible at).

I play with 3 Tundra for about 1-2 years now. The deck probably cannot go below 3 Tundras if you're planning to play WW-based spells like Humility/Moat/Elspeth. Blue is the primary color (so basic Island is valued higher than basic plains) but if you're playing WW-based spells, you can't drop below 3 Tundra IMO.

Read a few pages back on lists. I always play 2-2 Jace/Elspeth splits. I don't recommend the most recent list I posted because playtesting I wasn't doing so well. The UWb builds that I've posted on previous pages are pretty standard and strong.

I believe SFMstill isn't really under the playstyle of Landstill. It's a strong strategy but I feel the deck isn't classified under the Landstill archetype, but rather under a Stoneblade archetype that I don't understand why we still don't have a thread/primer opened for one under DTB/Developed because the deck is for real.

Notes: Yesterday, I had an EE against Batterskull in play. I plow'd the SFM and EE@0 the germ token, just thought I mentioned that was an interesting play against an otherwise annoying situation :P

Iron Buddha

06-30-2011, 02:22 PM

GGoober

06-30-2011, 03:21 PM

I was making space for more 1-1 pinpoint removal. 2 Top is great in a build that is constantly digging every turn, countering/Stp'ing the only relevant threats, then follow up with a sweeper. I didn't enjoy the list I posted on last page. 1-1'ing bob/SFM is really not the way to go. I'm open to Shackles etc but I feel Shackles isn't stellar in Landstill due to the lower island count. However, with Cliques/Bobs/SFM/Maverick/Merfolk being ever more popular than Goyf/Knights.dec, I think Shackles is indeed solid even with Landstill's manabase.

I'll give it a shot again. I like Top much more than Ponder (that Klaus is playing in his list). I felt a little underwhelmed with just 1 Top after my brainstorm gets MM'd (and I fight back with MM because that particular brainstorm was very much needed). 2 Top is what I primarily play with. I played 3 Tops a few months back because of Counterbalance in the board (great against combo/High Tide/burn/zoo etc) but since MM was printed, I dropped the Counterbalance in the board and went back to 2 Top. I tried the 1 Top in a more speedstill approach of having a stronger early game against faster Bob/SFM/merfolks deck. Didn't pan out too well because it was still hard to keep up with Bob/SFM in particular.

I did steal a couple of games with Scepter/Helix against UWb Stoneblade (lol). After some playtesting, I feel that the loss of sweepers and end-game x-1 spells was not worth the initial better gameplan with additional 1-1 removal.

RogueMTG

06-30-2011, 03:46 PM

Metalwalker, you played 2 Top for a long time, then upped to 3 Top (p. 235), but then you finally arrived at 1 Top. I'm curious why the fluctuation? I'm personnally a big proponent of 3 Top. I think Top is an excellent early-game card just like Misstep, Snare, or PtE, but I would like to hear your opinion (and the opinion of anyone else).

I've also gone through this fluctuation over the years. Started with 1, upped it to 3, then 0 and now still debating between 1 and 2.

I had been testing the deck a while with no Top, as was the style of the time, but I decided to try 1x for my first "big" tournament with the deck (170~ people) and it performed well and I managed to sneak into the Top 8.

So I upped it to 3... and I found that it did a very good job of letting me not lose, but not a great job of helping me win. That is, I picked up a TON of draws.

I had a number of tournaments where my record was something like 5-0-3, ending in 9th/10th place because you stretch games out with topping and often top lets you delay the inevitable when you're in a losing position. So rather than just losing/scooping game 1 or 2 and having time to roll them in game 3, you drag it out (unintentionally), and now you don't have the time to even shuffle up and end up taking a draw.

Well I got fed up quickly, and decided top was a crutch and I would just be a badass and not run it at all like the old days and just get by with a very consistent build (lots of 4 and 3 ofs). This is a workable strategy, and has it's merits, but in the end it just didn't feel as powerful despite solving the "tons of draws" problem.

So now I'm back to 1x, flirting with the 2nd, which I feel is a good balance of utility and real answers/threats.

IsThisACatInAHat?

07-01-2011, 04:34 PM

Me myself I prefer a package that looks like this:
cards
You and most landstill players for the past several years. In that time, Landstill was never a tier 1 deck, nor was it even very good. CBtop just did everything better. But times have changed. The decks are faster and the format's #1 bogeyman since Coldsnap is gone. Moat and Wrath are no longer reliable stabilizers by themselves against aggressive decks with 16 counterspells or where half their damage is burn-based anyway. EE went from a slow, crappy card with the versatility to get around CB to just being a slow, crappy card.

The "neo" blue disruption package looks like: 4 FoW, 4 MM, 3 Snare, 4 BS. It trumps the classic Landstill suite in basically every way; any counter you pay for, they pay half to stop you and they run just as much of it. What are you even trying to stall into, assuming you don't just get run over? One of your two Jaces? An Elspeth? Against other slow blue decks, you're running exactly half as many of the single most powerful card in the matchup. Against aggressive decks, you're banking on expensive 4-mana trumps that all of them have ways to get around anyway, if you can resolve them without dying (a very, very big if).

If you choose to "accept your responsibility" to Force every potentially backbreaking cmc 1 card, you also choose to accept your responsibility to lose to them because you'd rather put your faith in expensive catchalls. Before NPH, it was a cost you had to pay if you wanted to play the archetype. Now, you have a free unconditional 1:1 counter. Eschewing it in favor of the same cards that were mediocre when they were "good" is just negligent.

While I don't think 4 Mental Misstep is "clearly incorrect", this post is putting an entirely unhealthy emphasis on what is. It's important to look at what's winning, but the best deck at a tournament usually doesn't win, and the absolute best deck 75 in a metagame (certainly in Legacy anyway) will almost never even be registered.
Yes and no. Yes, it's statistically provable that the "best" deck in a metagame is more likely not to win a tournament in which it's registered. But no, that does not mean classic Landstill is anywhere near it. Here we have a bunch of players who insist the classic UW Landstill shell is optimal. Objectively, since Merfolk entered the Legacy metagame, the deck has failed to put up any kind of consistent positive results. But all of a sudden, Landstill is a tier 1 deck. Even if none of the lists putting up numbers every week is optimal, they all have some things in common. One of those things is 4 Mental Misstep. Another is 3+ (usually 4) JTMS. Could it be coincidental that all of these decks are winning despite these 8 slots, rather than because of them? Sure. Is it likely? Mmm probably not.

TheInfamousBearAssassin

07-02-2011, 02:56 AM

People tend to insist that the current version of a deck is the best until someone, usually a pro comes along and wins a tournament with something new and flashy and then everyone jumps on that ship.

But to say that the 2008 builds of Landstill are insufficient is not to say that the Gerry Thompson build is optimized.

Iron Buddha

07-02-2011, 08:03 AM

RogueMTG, that is indeed a valid point. But theoretically it comes down to the player being able to evaluate the gamestate correctly. I'd say with Landstill you have a very good knowledge of what your deck can and cannot do, because what it can do is excatly your 4c bombs:
Cards like Wrath of God/Humility/Moat usually turn things around if they resolve no matter the gamestate, and Standstill/Jace immedietaly puts the nail in the coffin afterwards. - So you can judge pretty well whether your plan is worth it or not.
---However, that's theory of course.---

But I have to say that my two favourite Landstill variants ever are the one of Citrus God p. 169 (I'm aware that it's two years old) and Mana Drain's list p. 223. They both run 3 Top. What I like about them is that they perform very straight forward.

I really like mossivo's setup. Assuming 24 lands he has now 7-8 cards to play with.

At least one of those should be some kind of artefact/enchantment removal (third EE, Oblivion Ring, Cunning Wish, etc.). Gerry Thompson made that mistake in the SCG Open Louisville: he cut the Repeals, and ended up having no maindeck answers to artefacts/enchanments. He "lost handily to Joe Bernal's Bitterblossoms".

Two more slots should be dedicated to card draw, else the deck is losing consistency: Top, Standstill, whatever.

That's 4-5 remaining slots.

You can't ever run less than 3 Counterspells, LSV and PV did in the GP, but I'm very sure that this is an awful idea. Counterspell is a fundamental part of Landstill's lategame consistency.

Your evaluation of EE I don't understand. EE is a tier one card, am I wrong?!

Wrath of God/Humility/Moat: I'm very sceptical if a list doesn't run 3 of those. Jace and Standstill fail under severe pressure. Don't forget that Mutavault is a huge threat for Jace. Do you really want to get out of the worst case scenario with pin-point removal? Also, Mental Misstep relegated Spell Pierce to the SB, good thing. Daze you can draw out simply by playing into it in the first couple of turns.

EDIT:
I suggest this layout:

24 lands

// counter: 10
4 FoW
3 CS
3 Snare/CS/MM/Cunning Wish

// removal: 10
4 StP
3 EE
3 WoG/Humility/Moat

// draw: 10
4 BS
3 Standstill
2 Top
1 Top/Standstill

// win: 3
3 Jace/Decree of Justice

// 3
3 open slots

dsck

07-02-2011, 01:45 PM

I made top 4 today in a 28 player 5 round swiss + top 8 tournament with the following list:

4 Mental Misstep
4 Force of Will
3 Spell Snare
3 Counterspell
4 Brainstorm
4 Standstill
3 Jace, the Mindsculptor
1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
4 Swords to Plowshares
1 Dismember
1 Wrath of God
1 Day of Judgment
1 Humility
1 Oblivion Ring
1 Crucible of Worlds
2 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Flooded Strand
1 Polluted Delta
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Arid Mesa
3 Tundra
2 Island
2 Plains
1 Celestial Colonnade
4 Mishra's Factory
3 Wasteland

Sideboard:
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Relic of Progenitus
1 Phyrexian Metamorph
1 Moat
1 Leyline of Sanctity
2 Misdirection
3 Peacekeeper
1 Volcanic Island
2 Pyroblast
2 Vendilion Clique

Round 1 TES 0-2
Round 2 BW 2-0
Round 3 Burn 2-1
Round 4 RUG Order 2-0
Round 5 GW with Fauna Shaman/Vengevines 2-1
Top8
Quarter finals Aeon Bridge 2-1
Semi finals Hive Mind 1-2

GW Maverick won TES, Cephalid Breakfast and Hivemind in the top 8 and won the tournament.

Omega

07-02-2011, 04:07 PM

Congratz! Too bad you didn't face Merfolk, as I believe this is Landstill nightmare :( (the only reason why im not playing the deck...)

On a related note, expecting a lot of Zoo + Merfolk + aggro control + aggro tomorrow. I expect very little combo/dredge.

Should I decide to pick Landstill, how am I to optimize it for that meta? Red for maindeck Helix/Bolt/Fire and ice/pyroclasm effect?

Lemnear

07-02-2011, 04:30 PM

the only question I have is, what happend in the first round? 0-2 vs. TES with this deck?

dsck

07-02-2011, 05:05 PM

Congratz! Too bad you didn't face Merfolk, as I believe this is Landstill nightmare :( (the only reason why im not playing the deck...)

There were at least 3 Merfolks in the room, they were all destroyed by gw decks. My side plan was 3 peacekeepers + misdirections to protect them (from dismember) but I havent actually ever gotten to test these.

the only question I have is, what happend in the first round? 0-2 vs. TES with this deck?

G1 He broke 2 standstills and I was starting to beat him with factories but then he warrens'd for 8 goblins, I had full grip of fows/counterspells and active jace, he had massed a lot lands on the table with the standstills being there so I couldnt really counter anything before the warrens. I dealt slowly with the goblins (lack of Engineered Explosives showed here.. couldnt find wrath either, I was mainly fatesealing him with jace to not let him have tendrils) he got me low enough life total and used the tendrils he had been holding whole game to kill me :frown:

G2 He went for 16 tokens with pyroblast back up on turn 2 after duressing me turn 1, I could only get to 3 mana while holding day of judgment.

I didnt find myself needing explosives in any of the other games though, here it would have been MVP.

Ozymandias

07-04-2011, 03:39 AM

Made top 8 at a 40ish person tourney with Landstill today.

2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Elspeth, Knight Errant
1 Moat (borrowed, probably better as Wrath 2)
1 Humility
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Wrath of God
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Oblivion Ring
4 Mental Misstep
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Counterspell
3 Spell Snare
4 Force of Will
4 Standstill
4 Brainstorm

1 Academy Ruins
4 Wasteland
4 Mishra's Factory
4 Flooded Strand
2 Polluted Delta
1 Marsh Flats
3 Tundra
2 Plains
2 Island
2 Underground Sea

SB:
3 Extirpate
3 Enlightened Tutor
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Planar Void
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Energy Flux
2 Engineered Plague
1 Nevinyrral's Disk
1 Eternal Dragon
1 Oblivion Ring

The SB was pretty terrible, but nearly every single card in the maindeck pulled its weight. The mana was a little iffy, and I definitly punted my t8 match, but whatever. I will play it again soon.

DragoFireheart

07-07-2011, 09:01 AM

I have a little dilemma:

2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Elspeth, Knight-Errant

OR

4 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

GGoober

07-07-2011, 10:37 AM

If your meta is heavy aggro (Zoo/Affinity/Goblins/GW), then 2/2 split. If your meta is mostly 8-10 creatures/deck, play Jace. Jace is terrible against Zoo/Goblins/Merfolks unless you have a way to support him (Peacekeeper against Merfolks, enough counters against Zoo's Burn i.e. difficult considering you still have to keep dudes off the board, and Jace is just not very spetacular against goblins when he faces Ringleaders/Matrons/Siege-gangs etc).

Ozymandias

07-08-2011, 06:44 PM

Elspeth is really good at establishing inevitability, and doesn't eat it to pyroblast, and gives you another out to Thrun, and is a faster clock than Jace a lot of the time.

Hourglass

07-10-2011, 09:32 AM

dsck

07-10-2011, 10:42 AM

Hey guys. just wanted to know how you guys deal with Thrun. I splash black for Perish, but I'm not sure if that's the best answer. Humility works to an extent but green usually means Grip. Also, what do you guys think of running SFM + Equipment package in the sideboard of a traditional Landstill List? In theory it takes up quite a bit of space (6-7 slots) but I'm eager to see if it works; Drew Levin went 10th at Providence with his Uw list packing SFM in the side (link (http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/twtw/145)). Anyways, just wanted to hear some thoughts.

These take care of Thrun or buy you time to find Wrath of God.
Phyrexian Metamorph
Moat
Humility
Elspeth, Knight-Errant (infinite chump blocks)
Crucible of Worlds with Factories (infinite chump blocks)

As for the Stoneforge sb plan its probably vs Merfolk? I prefer Peacekeepers.

GGoober

07-10-2011, 12:00 PM

I took this homebrew list to a tournament. It was a small 8 man tournament but i just wanted a feel on how the deck played.

UB Landstill
23 Lands
4 Delta
2 Strand
1 Tundra (EE@3)
4 Underground Sea
4 Island
1 Swamp
3 Wasteland
3 Mishra's Factory
1 Academy Ruins

6 Win
3 Jace
1 Crucible
2 Isochron Scepter

9 Draw
4 Brainstorm
2 Top
3 Standstill

9 Removal
3 GFTT
2 Diabolic Edict
2 Vedalken Shackles
2 The Abyss

14 Permission
3 Mental Misstep
3 Spell Snare
4 Counterspell
4 Force of Will

15 SB
2 Perish
1 Damnation
1 Vedalken Shackles
2 EE
2 Negate
4 Bob
3 Extirpate

The reason to the creation of this list was based on:
- Examining UWx Landstill v.s. Ubg Landstill and realizing that the 'weakness' of UWx Landstill is the strained manabase of having to play WW spells in a deck that primarily wants to play UU spells. It's usually not an issue, but the inconsistency definitely exists. So I went ahead and worked on Ubg lists with Deed but still felt that having Waste/Factories in a 3-color deck was creating situations where I lost games because of manabases.

-I referred to the recent success of UW builds and saw the strength of 2-color lists, especially those packing Shackles (which is decent against the Merfolk matchup and slightly poorer against Zoo/Bant/Junk). I originally wanted to try out UW builds, but decided to take a fresh look at something I've never done before: UB.

- The reason I tried out UB was: a lot of powerful black removal has been printed recently i.e. GFTT, Dismember etc. In particular, GFTT is the single most powerful removal right now that only doesn't answer a Dreadnought/MUD (both decks not being tier and a primarily concern). StP is still the best removal, but with Mental Misstep around, I feel that the-turn slower GFTT is still capable of pulling its weight because you know that GFTT is going to resolve without risks of running into Mental Missteps. Another reason that pushed me to black was: In white, your second best white removal is Path to Exile, which I absolutely detest. The land drop from Path really costs you too many games that matter, and I feel that black offers more for removal numbers 5-8. For sweepers, black also gets Damnation, so the black-equivalent of Wrath is always available. More importantly, black gives Perish (popular in UWx splashing black anyway), and Extirpate (which is an all time star currently against Painter/Show/NO/control mirrors).

- As such, I went ahead and worked a UB list, my removals are misstep-proof. I still fell back on Scepter because sticking a Scepter in a game usually just steals games. I board out my 2nd scepter against decks with better artifact removal (Grudge/Pridgemage/Grips) but keep them in against almost any other deck. All removal is imprintable on Scepter, giving a total of 13 (4 Counterspell, 5 removal, 4 Brainstorm) spells that are imprintable and 6 less subpar spells that you don't imprint (MM, Snare). In the SB, imprinting Extirpate against control/aggro-control decks is viable although usually it's a win-more situation.

- The new list I made has an extremely stable manabase. The high island count supports Shackles, where 3-color builds can't support shackles at all. Shackles is another small win-condition in the deck, but gives the deck better chance against some matchups (SFM/Bob/Merfolk/Gobs/). The Abyss is extremely devastating when resolved (against Thrun it works too), and getting either Abyss/Shackles means that your opponents have to overextend, making your DAmnation/Perish better postboard. The Abyss creates situations where your opponents are simply shut out until they build a hand to dump multiple creatures and counterspells, to which you have time to build up your hand for counterspells etc. If both Abyss and Shackles stick, it's pretty much game over (they have 2 creatures, both will die to the Abyss since you steal one).

In the games I played, my opponents had SoLS/SoFF and Bitterblossom, therefore making Abyss much weaker, but I can't imagine how the Abyss will function against decks that don't have pro-B. Pridemage is an issue, but that applies to Moat as well, so only Humility is truly powerful against Pridemage-creatures. Aside from that, sticking an Abyss means that the aggro player is unable to develop a board, allowing you to have time to build up with Crucible/Jace/Standstill/Scepter etc.

- I really like the list so far. The manabase is pretty stable. Black for Perish and Bob (for control and combo) and Extirpate really offer a lot. The combination of high Island count for Shackles and 2 Abyss Maindeck seems to work out well as x-1 removal spells that stick in play. The only change I would like to make is adding the 4th Snare and 4th Standstill. I'm not sure if cutting Scepter is correct but I am open to the idea on cutting those 2 slots for DAmnations/Snares/Standstill.

Like I said, this is a fresh list and idea that I had thrown out. It has its weaknesses but I liked how it played out.

Koby

07-10-2011, 12:08 PM

@Metalwalker
Are there any threats that you're worried about that have CMC >3? If not, then consider Smother. It handles all the creatures GFTT as well as the occasional Affinity/Metalworker/Dreadnought too.

GGoober

07-10-2011, 01:27 PM

In my meta we have NORUG, Show/Hypergenesis, SFM+SoFF/SoLS, I ended up taking the Edicts which worked out nice against those matchups. If me meta weren't so full of pro-B/shrouded creatures, I would go with Smother.

IsThisACatInAHat?

07-10-2011, 10:35 PM

- Examining UWx Landstill v.s. Ubg Landstill and realizing that the 'weakness' of UWx Landstill is the strained manabase of having to play WW spells in a deck that primarily wants to play UU spells. It's usually not an issue, but the inconsistency definitely exists. So I went ahead and worked on Ubg lists with Deed but still felt that having Waste/Factories in a 3-color deck was creating situations where I lost games because of manabases.

- The reason I tried out UB was: a lot of powerful black removal has been printed recently i.e. GFTT, Dismember etc. In particular, GFTT is the single most powerful removal right now that only doesn't answer a Dreadnought/MUD (both decks not being tier and a primarily concern). StP is still the best removal, but with Mental Misstep around, I feel that the-turn slower GFTT is still capable of pulling its weight because you know that GFTT is going to resolve without risks of running into Mental Missteps. Another reason that pushed me to black was: In white, your second best white removal is Path to Exile, which I absolutely detest. The land drop from Path really costs you too many games that matter, and I feel that black offers more for removal numbers 5-8. For sweepers, black also gets Damnation, so the black-equivalent of Wrath is always available.

- As such, I went ahead and worked a UB list, my removals are misstep-proof.
It bears mentioning, though no doubt duly ignored, that the "problems" you're bringing up disappear when you stop running antiquated cards. If some split of StP/WoG/EE/Moat/Humility has really been your removal suite since any time during or after Lorwyn block, you're going to lose to aggro decks. "Misstep-proofing" your removal by doubling its cost (high cost: the problem with said removal in the first place) is taking two steps backward to take one step forward. Not only are you taking out the only spell that's unconditionally still as good as it was years ago, you're replacing it with something that's also answered 1-for-1 by a commonly played counterspell.

Buuut, if by "GFTT is the single most powerful [non-StP] removal right now" you meant "Dismember is..." then you'd be right; scalable cost without necessary access to a second color is awesome. As awful as The Abyss is, stalling into it on a clear board is actually almost as good as stalling into a planeswalker against a creature deck. That's something to consider: something like 4 StP, 2-3 Dismember, 2 Abyss/Damnation is not the worst thing you could be doing with your slots if you've got a set of Jaces in your deck to follow it up. You'd have to play 3 colors, but StP is not a difficult or terrible splash and Dismember can pick up a good amount of slack. You're still mostly 2 colors anyway with no double color requirements outside of UU.

If you really wanted to work on it, that would be the direction to go. Last thing, The Abyss can't ever target Thrun because you still control the Abyss trigger. If that guy's actually a problem for you, just board Edict since he's not in anyone's main either.

rayaj

07-11-2011, 11:27 PM

dsck

07-12-2011, 04:21 AM

After seeing some of the newer lists, this is what I've been thinking about running, but some card choices I'm not as solid on. Mainly the sideboard is where my doubts are. Is PtE just not worth it anymore? Is it worth dodging extraction/extirpate by running 1 day 1 wrath?

4 Mental Misstep
4 Force of Will
3 Spell Snare
3 Counterspell
4 Brainstorm
3 Standstill
3 Jace, the Mindsculptor
1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
4 Swords to Plowshares
1 Dismember
1 Wrath of God
1 Day of Judgment/Wrath of God
1 Humility
1 Oblivion Ring
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Engineered Explosives
2 Sensei's Divining Top/Path to Exile
4 Flooded Strand
3 Marsh Flats
3 Tundra
2 Island
1 Plains
1 Scrubland
1 Celestial Colonnade
4 Mishra's Factory
3 Wasteland

Sideboard:
1 Oblivion Ring
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Relic of Progenitus
1 Phyrexian Metamorph
1 Leyline of Sanctity
1 Go for the Throat
2 Misdirection
2 Peacekeeper
2 Extirpate
1 Surgical Extraction
2 Vendilion Clique

1) Path to Exile - I want to slow down my opponent with cheap removal early game so I can dominate with my 4 mana bombs, so instead giving them a land and speeding them up isnt a good idea. Example: opponent just played stoneforge mystic which searched for batterskull, do you want to path that mystic?

2) 2x Wraths is probably better so you can kill Thrun.

3) Why 3 Standstills instead of 4?

4) I'd recommend 1 Enlightened Tutor in the SB as it 'doubles' your sideboard cards.

rayaj

07-12-2011, 07:09 PM

1) Path to Exile - I want to slow down my opponent with cheap removal early game so I can dominate with my 4 mana bombs, so instead giving them a land and speeding them up isnt a good idea. Example: opponent just played stoneforge mystic which searched for batterskull, do you want to path that mystic?

2) 2x Wraths is probably better so you can kill Thrun.

3) Why 3 Standstills instead of 4?

4) I'd recommend 1 Enlightened Tutor in the SB as it 'doubles' your sideboard cards.

I've almost always run 3 Standstills, I ran 4 at one point, but it felt like too many at the time. I honestly couldn't tell you what I would cut for a 4th Standstill because I like the way it feels at three. Historically I ran 3 because it was bad against vial decks. With MM out it could be more viable, but I still feel like I don't want the 4th.
As for the E Tutor, what should I cut? The Go for the Throat? I'm also not sure how much I like leyline in board.

Rekk

07-14-2011, 01:53 AM

I've been wondering if two shackles is the proper number with how amazing it is vs all the creature decks that have been running about. I believe that this deck has tools to beat most decks in the format and has not been getting the love it deserves due to the popularity of Stoneblade

(also i have been playing on Lackey if anyone wants to test real decks on that please hit me up my name is Rekk on that as well Message me)

GGoober

07-14-2011, 10:47 AM

@Catinthehat: Saying playing Moat/Humility/WoG/EE is wrong since LOR block gave aggro decks a host of powerful creature tells me that you know nothing of this archetype except for trolling or following the recent trends of the more 'popularly' played control decklists (that aren't really Landstill for that matter). With regards to not playing StP, it is a loss to not play the best removal in the format, but that doesn't mean that it's not viable. Ubg lists don't run StP, and PV ran non 1cmc black removal in his suite for the GP, with the idea to have non-misstepable removal. Obviously if you're playing white, you still play StP even with Misstep being around in the format, but if you're going black removal, where possibly the next best non-StP removal in the format is still GFTT (Dismember is terrible in control lists), then there's more incentive to go for GFTT then something like Ghastly Demise and Innocent Blood.

@Rekk: Shackles is great in control (also see Hanni's Countertop control list and MUC). The only issue with Shackles is: If you're playing in a landstill shell with manlands and wastelands, it becomes increasingly hard to maximize Shackles and in fact Shackles becomes a liability that doesn't do anything. If you do want to pack 2 or more Shackles, you need to consider playing 2 colors instead of 3 colors and maintain your colorless lands low (i.e. you can't run 4 Factories + 4 wastelands etc). I tried Shackles in UWx builds and the only issue with that is in UWx builds, it is more desirable to run a manabase of 2 Plains to support your WW-costing bombs. This naturally makes shackles weaker, on top of the manlands/wastelands/Ruins you play. If you play shackles, make sure that your non-blue color isn't a restriction in your manabase. That was one of the reasons I tried the UB list I posted earlier because it supported Shackles better than the UW/UWx lists (since you want WW consistently in UWx builds).

crovakiet

07-14-2011, 04:13 PM

Yea I don't get what catinthehat meant by the antiquated removal suite. The only thing I agree on in regards to being antiquated is Moat and EE. Moat is antiquated mainly because of Quasali Pridemage with tutors and the number of GW decks running around and EE is just kind of clunky at times and requires a little bit more of the nonbasic(s) that you need the extra color(s) from. Wrath of God/Humility is still relevant as an anti aggro strategy. Wrath of God obviously being one of the best sweepers in the format and kills off Thrun and other problematic(s) enabling the empty board to JaceTMS or Standstill, and Humility shuts off Quasali Pridemage, KOTR shenanigans and most everything else.

Also in a misstep laden environment, I would still use dismember as a one of in a lot of control decks, even U/W. Obviously still use 4 swords to plowshares as well..

kiblast

07-15-2011, 04:44 PM

If your spot removals are Misstep proof, this means that every Brainstorm/ Top that you cast in late game and in g2-g3 (if he doesnt board MM out) will be countered. Not good.

rayaj

07-17-2011, 05:36 PM

I'm wondering what would be a better sideboard card, leyline of sanctity or serenity? I feel like having something to wipe affinity would be nice to have, but sanctity definitely has its place.

lorddotm

07-18-2011, 06:51 AM

You guys still like the Peacekeeper plan even though they now have Dismember to answer it?

dsck

07-18-2011, 08:51 AM

You guys still like the Peacekeeper plan even though they now have Dismember to answer it?

I packed misdirections as well for that reason, BUT honestly you are probably better off getting 4 pte from sb and drop humility or moat on the table.

rayaj

07-18-2011, 12:47 PM

That is an option, or have a red source + firespout in the main/board. I also still like EE set at two or three to do a pretty good board sweep. It's really up to you, I'm going to test it in a few different ways to get a feel for the right option.

markdirt

07-20-2011, 05:23 AM

I have a couple questions:

1. How much countermagic is too much?
I'd like to experiment with 14 because Spell Snare is nifty versus everyone and Counterspell is great for our late-game.

2. Thoughts on Dismember and Crucible of Worlds in today's metagame?
Dismember seems really rough. The lifeloss is huge for Landstill. At a glance it seems people are playing it just because they can. Why not just play Path to Exile? Crucible is another interesting card. Stalling with Mishra's Factory is nice, but finding the right moment to drop a 3cc artifact is difficult. Does Mental Misstep make up for this?

I play mostly in an aggro meta and have been having some issues pre-sideboard with Zoo. I switched to UBG Landstill for a bit but really hated it. After testing I arrived at the following list:

Draw:
4 Standstill
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor (probably run a split with Elspeth v. Zoo, etc)
4 Brainstorm
2 Sensei's Diving Top

Countermagic:
4 Force of Will
4 Mental Misstep
3 Counterspell
3 Spell Snare

Removal:
2 Engineered Explosives
1 Vedalken Shackles
2 Humility
4 Swords to Plowshares
1 Wrath of God

Land:
4 Flooded Strand
3 Island
1 Polluted Delta
1 Marsh Flats
4 Tundra
2 Wasteland
1 Plains
3 Mishra's Factory
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Underground Sea
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Volcanic Island

I know my manabase looks funny but I haven't had any issues. I experimented with 3 Wasteland but disliked the colorless mana.

Anyway, I hate to clog up the thread with another decklist. Just getting back into the game and hoping to get a fresh take. I'll check back tomorrow and try to add some relevant responses to the other posts in this thread.

Iron Buddha

07-20-2011, 05:33 AM

The problem with Spell Snare is that it can be misstepped. If you need room, Spell Snare is the most obvious cut.

The lifeloss of Dismember is horrible; Path to exile is an excellent card in my opinion.

If you want to improve your zoo matchup, add the third EE I'd say. EE is about the best card you can have in this matchup.

Crucible of Worlds is very strong, although I'm not a fan of it. CoW is very good if want to reinforce your board-position, but it doesn't turn things around in the aggro matchup like Humility, Shackles, WoG. The thing is that CoW is actually just as slow as the 4c bombs or Shackles.

Iron Buddha

07-20-2011, 05:33 AM

RogueMTG

07-20-2011, 09:46 AM

I have a couple questions:

1. How much countermagic is too much?
I'd like to experiment with 14 because Spell Snare is nifty versus everyone and Counterspell is great for our late-game.

2. Thoughts on Dismember and Crucible of Worlds in today's metagame?
Dismember seems really rough. The lifeloss is huge for Landstill. At a glance it seems people are playing it just because they can. Why not just play Path to Exile? Crucible is another interesting card. Stalling with Mishra's Factory is nice, but finding the right moment to drop a 3cc artifact is difficult. Does Mental Misstep make up for this?
...

I was trying a similar counter heavy build for a time, but it never seemed to work out for me. You don't get the proper balance between answers off of your Standstills. It's really awkward & frustrating having them break your Standstill with say Knight of the Reliquary, drawing a bunch of Missteps/Snares and no removal.

I'm fairly confident after this that 10-11 counters main deck is still the sweet spot. I'm currently testing dropping Snare entirely for Misstep for a 4/3/3 split with FoW/CS/MM, and going back to running 2x Path in the main.

It feels promising but I haven't run the gauntlet quite enough yet to draw any strong conclusions.

@Crucible. Love the card, and I'm currently running 1x main (although I do play a 1x E. Tutor build). Though you make a good point that it can be awkward to find a good time to cast it. Its job is really to carry you through to 4+ mana against decks that are going to try and keep you off of it. The added benefits of Factory recursion and wastelock opportunities are just gravy.

Unfortunately in some match-ups you will certainly wish it was something else. Because of that it's a card that has been fluctuating in and out of my lists for a long time. Whether it belongs in the main or the side or not at all I think is potentially list/meta dependent.

@Dismember... I have no idea why people are playing this. Maybe-MAYBE in a heavy black splash build, but in any other UW Landstill it seems pretty terrible.

Tacosnape

07-22-2011, 10:00 AM

FWIW, to those who think this deck's dead, I've gone undefeated in back to back locals with it Wednesday and Thursday. I beat NO Bant, Cephalid Breakfast, Maverick, and Show and Tell combo in the first one, and in the second beat BUG Landstill, Burn, Cephalid Breakfast again, and Dragon Stompy of all things.

The list I ran varied in sideboard between days, but not maindeck:

4 Flooded Strand
3 Polluted Delta
4 Tundra
1 Underground Sea
2 Island
1 Plains
4 Mishra's Factory
3 Faerie Conclave
1 Celestial Colonnade

4 Brainstorm
4 Standstill
4 Jace, The Mind Sculptor

4 Force of Will
4 Counterspell
3 Mental Misstep
3 Spell Snare

4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Path to Exile
3 Engineered Explosives
1 Wrath of God

SB, In General:
3 Meddling Mage
2 Vendilion Clique
1 Wrath of God
1 Mental Misstep
1 Spell Snare
2 Seal of Cleansing
2 Tormod's Crypt
1 Surgical Extraction
2 Pithing Needle
(Other things that I try on a given day - Serenity/Energy Flux, more yard hate, Blue Elemental Blast. Will try Mage 4 and Clique 3 soon.)

Vendilion Clique, I've learned, is amazing. I won most of my game 2's on the back of a well-timed Clique, especially beating a tapped out burn by flashing it down, seeing 2 Pyroblasts, leaving them both, untapping, and dropping Mage for Pyroblast. It was good in almost every match, and I'm contemplating trying to find room for them maindeck.

RogueMTG

07-22-2011, 10:10 AM

Tacosnape

07-22-2011, 01:05 PM

Congratz on the results.

Holy man-lands batman... a very interesting list. All the ETB-tapped lands makes me nervous though, were they ever an issue?

I like that you managed to shoehorn Path and Snare and Misstep into the maindeck together, and I've always been a fan of the Meddling Mage + Clique board plan.

Did you ever miss being able to produce 1/1 soldiers?

ETB tapped was never anything more than a small inconvenience. Ever since the curve of the deck got so stupidly low with most of my disruption costing 1 or 0, I just have to find the right time to drop the tapped land. Turn 3 is almost always an amazing time for this, as I have no 3-drops prior to Clique boardins. Occasionally, depending on my hand and the match, turn 2 or turn 1 works for this as well. I am contemplating dropping one Conclave for a Mutavault, but we'll see. The blue's been good to me.

As for soldiers, no. I've been arguing since the beginning of time that Elspeth, Knight-Errant didn't belong in any list unless you already had four Jaces. I'd much much rather just drop more Jaces and have a second or third one to get through counterwalls or Vindicates or whatever.

crovakiet

07-22-2011, 09:50 PM

Congrats.

I hope you fit the clique(s) into the maindeck somehow. I know a lot of people are in a love/hate relationship with the Vendilion Clique seeing as how some people think they are useless due to the 1 toughness and pretty much dies if you as so much as blow on it, as well as dying to almost every creature in the format if its ever used as a blocker. Despite the con(s), personally, I love it in every control or aggro control list as a maindeck creature. It has evasion, built in thoughtseize/gitaxian probe thus allowing you to make much better decisions which goes hand in hand with your own Jace using brainstorm/fateseal, dodges misstep/snare, allows you to not tap out on your turn, faster clock especially in conjunction with a manland and pretty much anti jace when flashed in and they brainstormed, . Since you are landstill and your list has a LOT of manlands, even if they fatesealed more than likely clique and a manland will kill Jace on the following turn that clique was flashed in. I don't know but I just love the clique main and/or side. I just wish I had a full playset of them, but only have 2 at the moment.

Also, its pretty cool to just ambush a Dark Confidant with a flashed in Clique...it's happened before!

Tacosnape

07-23-2011, 11:10 AM

Ambush flashing is actually what I'd usually do with Clique in game 1. What people don't realize about Clique in UW Landstill is that in a lot of matchups, it's a removal spell. Trying to protect and go the distance with him in matchups with a lot of removal is sort of futile. Against Deadguy, for example, you can flash in Clique, clear the Vindicate out of their hand, block a swinging guy, untap, drop a Jace, and win.

The downside, obviously, is that it gives them a use for their Swords to Plowshares game 1.

crovakiet

07-23-2011, 11:33 AM

Yeah, clique ambush flashing is really useful. Mind game tricks can happen at that point if you have successfully done a clique ambush once earlier against the same opponent. That same opponent when they see 3 mana open will be very wary about attacking into what seems like an empty board especially if they don't have an instant removal spell and swinging with a guy they want to keep as long as possible such as a Dark Confidant (which saves you 2 life in the process). Also, if they have a creature they want to keep such as a Dark Confidant and they don't swing into an 'empty' board seeing your 3 mana up, that can telegraph to you as the clique player that they probably do not have an instant removal spell. Then again, the opponent could be playing mind games with you and bait you into thinking that they don't have the removal...

GGoober

07-23-2011, 11:52 AM

I think creature cards like Clique/Bob/SFM in Landstill is best played on game 2. Most Legacy decks have MD answers to creatures because aggro is a huge part of Legacy. The ability to turn off 4-8 cards while playing UWx Landstill in game 1 has always been the deck's strength (similarly applied to BUGstill/Countertop etc).

In game 2, most of my opponents do mention to me that they will board out all removal for control-hate and only keep removal if they can't board in anything else from their SB. This is where cards like Bob/Clique will be maximized. Your opponents now have little outs to them, and you can sometimes ride them to victory.

In game 3, it's your choice if you want to utilize the strengths of Bobs/Cliques against your opponents. For most parts, you need to look at the matchup and analyze if sticking a Bob/Clique will most definitely win you games. If it doesn't, then I tend to not play with these in game 3, if it does (e.g. control mirror where Clique/Bob is huge) I will play them in game 3 knowing my opponents will bring in hate again. Being on the play/draw is huge when deciding whether I'm playing Bob/Cliques in game 3. I usually don't play Cliques in game 3 on the draw unless she definitely wins the matchup for me (e.g. combo). I keep Bobs in against control/combo even if I'm on the draw because 2cmc is cheaper to cast. However against control lists with StP/Snare, playing Bobs in game 3 demands a little more thought if you are debating whether you want to entirely kill 4-7 cards in their deck or you want to leverage bob to win games.

Just my 2c.

Nice list Taco. I would personally play more Colonnades over Conclaves. I seldom feel the need for Landstill to go into attack mode, even when under a Standstill. For most parts, I think that the Conclave will be attacking around the same turn as the Colonnade (i.e. late game when you have lots of mana). Colonnade is great on the defense but it is a little more mana intensive but it does fix the mana well in the early game. Also, it helps the control player gets around Chokes ;P

Iron Buddha

07-23-2011, 12:05 PM

Vendilion Clique is only good because of Jace TMS. Vendilion Clique is like Duress in Vintage. Harm their hand and drop a bomb they simply cannot deal with: Yawgmoth's Will respectively Jace The Mind Sculptor. I think you can very well run Vendilion Clique, because its primary purpose is to resolve Jace TMS.

Tacosnape

07-23-2011, 04:06 PM

The 1 Colonnade choice is actually pretty deliberate - It can't really afford to swing until pretty late game, and I can never swing with two. And it can't swing with me having mana open for a hard Counterspell until I have 7 land on the board (8 if I fear it can get removed prior to a game-shifting spell.) So if you hit two, it's kind of the blows. And in any Landstill mirror, while it's awesome in a late game manland race, it's terrible in determining who has to break a Standstill first. And as a fast clock, it's just the blows. And while you don't always need a fast clock to not lose, sometimes you need a fast clock to not run out of time in a round.

Conclave #3 is a spot up for debate. I've contemplated everything from Mutavault to Dust Bowl to even Vesuva in its position. And it'll probably get tinkered around with. But I don't ever really find I want more than 1 Colonnade.

Iron Buddha

07-24-2011, 05:13 PM

You could also run a Bojuka Bog in that conclave #3 slot and and cut a Tormod's Crypt in the board freeing up a SB-slot. Just a thought.

C Rayz Walz

07-24-2011, 06:49 PM

Ven Clique is really good even with out jace. He is a perfect creature for this deck as he does everything you want him to do. I am very happy to see taco using him to success as I feel that he should be some where in your 75.

rayaj

07-27-2011, 12:30 AM

rayaj

07-27-2011, 12:31 AM

deleted for double post

Tacosnape

07-27-2011, 10:38 AM

@Taco

I like the list a lot and it has inspired a slightly different build than what I usually go with. But I wonder if you have missed humility/moat with this build? I also feel like part of the reason you don't like/miss Elspeth in your build is the inclusion of conclave with its flying built-in already. Are you also not a fan of wasteland? I think it can be such a house in the format with so many decks having few basics. How do you like having four standstill? Do you feel like they're getting there enough?

I personally liked the idea of dismember, but it might be better as a SB option. Honestly the only time I can think of it being really relevant after more thought is if reanimator goes for jin-gitaxias and you can hit him before they get their hand full again. It can be good to kill some of the smaller threats, but path is probably just as good at that. The only issue I have with path is that it can make wasteland worse should you decide to run both in the same list.

Point by point,

1. I've never missed either. I feel they're both underpowered, believe it or not. Humility doesn't stop a bunch of guys from dinking you for one, and Moat doesn't stop creatures from doing shenanigans or being part of a combo. Or, you know, just from flying. I'm not going to run an effect similar to this until they make it a three drop and make it significantly better than Ghostly Prison / Norn's Annex.

2. I used to run Wasteland. Anyone who knows me and reads my posts knows how much I love Wasteland. But then I started questioning what the point was. I have no clock and usually want to hit 6+ land in a late game, so I don't really want it for mana denial. I'm not concerned with hitting other people's manlands because instead I'm just running more of my own, and some of mine fly. So this narrows down my desire to see Wasteland against the very tiny list of nuisance lands in the format, which I will address my answers to:

A. Dark Depths: STP, Path, Spell Snare/Counter/Force on Hexmage, and Needle on either or both postboard.
B. Dust Bowl: Pithing Needle in sideboard. Also, stopping the Crucible at all costs and winning with Jace asap.
C. Maze of Ith: Needle, win with Jace, or overwhelm with 3-4 guys lategame.
D. Hideaway lands: Needle them, or Stop the condition from happening.
E. Karakas: STP/Path guys in response, glare at them for playing Death and Taxes.
F. Anything goofy that 43 Lands plays: Mage/Counter/Needle/Yard Hate the engine, resolve a Jace.

Additionally, not running Wasteland gives me the freedom to Needle Wasteland on turn one if I think that mana denial is going to be a large part of my opponent's strategy.

3. Yes. Four Standstill is amazing. It's so easy for my list to get there with it given the retarded number of ways I have to interact with the opponent for zero or one mana.

4. Anything Dismember can do, Path can do better. Well, within reason. Killing Phyrexian Crusader or dodging Chalice of the Void for 1 are not included here, but the deck has other answers to this sort of thing. And as for them getting the land, I don't care. I'm not playing the mana denial game. I'm not counting cards, I'm only counting cards that can actually kill me and letting my deck get there to deal with the rest.

EDIT: I will say I'm currently testing a Dust Bowl in place of one Conclave, as it both helps in the manland war and can address the problematic lands that show up.

rayaj

07-27-2011, 11:41 AM

Okay, I can see your points, though that doesn't immediately make me feel the need to go immediately put your version together without a few edits. I am mostly wary of the conclaves in particular but I do like the 2 conclave/1 dust bowl idea more than 3 conclave.

I'll probably give it a test and see how it goes with 3 Jace/1 Elspeth, and 2 EE and 4 Misstep. Unless you think that 3 EE is really the best number in this situation.

Tacosnape

07-27-2011, 06:22 PM

I'm not going to defend Conclave as being amazing. It's really not. I just happen to like it better than anything else in its place currently. I'm contemplating trying Vesuva, also. Vesuva can be a manland or a dual, but if you have to make the choice early, it can backfire. It's kind of neat if a Junk Depths player passes with a Dark Depths on the board, though, as there's no way to respond to Vesuva copy-killing Dark Depths. In any case, I'm definitely not sold on Wasteland for a deck that always wants to resolve a 4-drop.

As for the other changes, I'm afraid to drop below 3 Engineered Explosives without any other way to get an artifact or enchantment off the board maindeck (Sometimes I wish I ran Cunning Wish.) Some games I even want four. The 2 for 1's it gets you are countless. I recently even got a 4 for 1, taking out a Tarmogoyf, a Pridemage, a Stoneforge, and a Jitte against Bant. In some matches, though, it's subpar. So your call there.

As for Jace #4 being Elspeth, I get it, but I don't agree with it. There are only two times I ever want any Jace I see to be an Elspeth:

1. If I already have an active Jace, and in this case I don't particularly care. I can Brainstorm extra Jaces away with the current Jace.
2. If Pithing Needle is on Jace, the Mind Sculptor.

rayaj

07-27-2011, 07:12 PM

Part of my Jace/Elspeth split is my lack of a fourth Jace at the moment. I've also always liked Elspeth, and if I don't play conclave then the jump ability can make some situations a little easier. Without humility I can see her being a bit underwhelming, but I still like what she does. I like the idea of vesuva, maybe going vesuva/conclave/dust bowl could be a good idea or having multiple vesuva.

Tacosnape

07-27-2011, 07:15 PM

Not owning a 4th Jace is a pretty good reason.:)

The only thing that scares me about Vesuva is this. You don't ever want to see it in your opening hand. Unlike the other CIPT lands, you can't lead with it very effectively.

rayaj

07-27-2011, 08:01 PM

Yeah, that makes sense, for now the list I'm messing with is a lot like yours but with some changes for cards I do/don't own:

4 Flooded Strand
3 Marsh Flats
3 Tundra
1 Watery Grave
1 Scrubland
2 Island
1 Plains
4 Mishra's Factory
1 Academy Ruins
1 Dust Bowl
1 Celestial Colonnade

4 Brainstorm
4 Standstill
3 Jace, The Mind Sculptor
1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant

4 Force of Will
4 Counterspell
4 Mental Misstep
3 Spell Snare

4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Path to Exile
3 Engineered Explosives
1 Wrath of God

Though apparently I don't know where I put my dust bowl and upon further inspection I've ended up cutting a land for the 4th misstep. I'll try it out a bit and see how it does.

Ozymandias

08-01-2011, 03:19 AM

Split top 4 in a 39 person tourney today.

2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Elspeth, Knight Errant
1 Decree of Justice
1 Crucible of Worlds
2 Wrath of God
2 Engineered Explosives
2 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Mental Misstep
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Counterspell
2 Spell Snare
4 Force of Will
4 Standstill
4 Brainstorm

1 Academy Ruins
3 Wasteland
4 Mishra's Factory
4 Flooded Strand
2 Polluted Delta
1 Marsh Flats
3 Tundra
2 Plains
2 Island
2 Underground Sea

SB:
3 Vendilion Clique
3 Extirpate
2 Enlightened Tutor
1 Humility
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Planar Void
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Energy Flux
1 Circle of Protection: Red
1 Nevinyrral's Disk

I beat Hive Mind, Junk Depths, a Deadguy Ale variant, Pattern/NO Hulk, and Soul Sisters. I lost to Aggro Loam, and drew with Enchantress.

Erdvermampfa

08-01-2011, 03:41 AM

Actually I intended to write an elaborated tournament report, but as I was about to finish it I accidently pressed the "back-button" and the whole text was gone...so here's a short summary of the tournament on saturday in Nürnberg ( 37 participants ). I attempted with the following list :

// Lands
3 [ON] Island (1)
4 [B] Tundra
3 [ZEN] Scalding Tarn
2 [OD] Plains (1)
4 [ON] Flooded Strand
4 [JGC] Mishra's Factory
3 [REW] Wasteland

// Spells
2 [ALA] Elspeth, Knight-Errant
3 [DIS] Spell Snare
4 [IA] Brainstorm
3 [OD] Standstill
4 [FNM] Swords to Plowshares
4 [AL] Force of Will
4 [NPH] Mental Misstep
3 [CHK] Sensei's Divining Top
3 [WWK] Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 [10E] Wrath of God
2 [IA] Counterspell
3 [JU] Cunning Wish

// Sideboard
SB: 1 [IA] Counterspell
SB: 1 [CFX] Path to Exile
SB: 1 [SC] Wing Shards
SB: 3 [DK] Tormod's Crypt
SB: 4 [PS] Meddling Mage
SB: 1 [IN] Fact or Fiction
SB: 1 [IA] Disenchant
SB: 1 [NPH] Surgical Extraction
SB: 1 [SHM] Fracturing Gust
SB: 1 [DS] Pulse of the Fields

3 Cunning Wish because I like it to have an proper answer to rather specific and uncommonly seen decks even in game 1. Loam-based decks, Affinity and Dredge are good examples for this. In addition to that, the Wish also serves you a reliable way to deal with Progenitus ( wing shards ) and particualry thrun the last troll ( note that gw maverick is fairly popular in nürnberg ). In fact I won 2-3 matchs at this day due to Cunning Wish.

2 Wrath of God in my maindeck because as I've already mentioned, G/W Maverick is quite often seen in Nürnberg and wrath does a great job against them as the don't pack any cards which prohibit me from casting it ( like Daze and cursecatcher ). Besides it's another good solution to Thrun, the Last Troll.

No EE, because I think the manacurves of today's aggro piles are too diverse so you won't get a reliable sweeper with EE in these days. for example, if you get paired up with merfolk, they'll have CC1, CC2, CC3 creatures and EE is not a good card to get done with these. Besides, cunning wish can handle Vial too...( like EE does, but I've often seen that people who argued FOR Engineered Explosives due to it's ability to deal with Aether Vial.

round 1 vs Affinity: I win both games due to cunning Wish as Fracturing gust wipes his whole board in each of the 2 games -> 1-0-0
round 2 vs Aluren: ID as I see no chance to win this in G3 and obviously he was a bit concerned about losing too...->1-0-1
round 3 vs Lands: As I noticed what he was playing I got quite unmotivated ;). I lose G1 because he cuts off my mana income beats me steadily down with Factories. G2 and G3: I win both games due to Meddling Mages which targeted Loam and EE and cunning Wish, which enabled me to remove Crucible with Surgical Extraction from the game. If I hadn't had cunning wish, Crucible would have been returned with Ruins, so thanks to cunning wish at this point ;).
2-0-1
round4 vs. Team america: I lose both games to hymn to tourach as my opponent managed it to hymn away my swords and counterspells for his threats. additionally, his wastelands disrupted my ( at this point fragile ) manabase.
2-1-1
roound 5 vs Dredge G1 is decided quickly as he has 3 ichorids and some bridges in this grave. I don't get the chance to cunning wish for Extraction, but I don't think that would have mattered though. G2 and 3 are decided for my favor as I manage it to counter each of his discard outlets with MMS and Force which gives me enough time to find some crypts and Cunning wish :D .
3-1-1
round 6 vs UBG landstill. I lose g1 to Life from the loam :( even tough I had a jace out ( recurrsive Manlands>Jace ). I win g2 because I've got more Elspeth and Jace than him xD. G3.... -.- My comrades who were watching the game and my opponent had already accepted my win, but I don't fucking manage it to kill him as the 5. extra turn began. Note that Jace had already 13 counters and my elspeth was steadily producing threats so it would have taken about 2 turns to finish the game...that pissed me off quite a bit :D

end result
3-1-2
I became 12th and got a Stoneforge Mystic. im quite satisfied with the performance of my deck and i can highly recommend it to run cunning wish and meddling mages in your sideboard.

thanks for reading

klaus

08-01-2011, 06:04 PM

rayaj

08-02-2011, 08:39 AM

I might actually cut an explosives for shackles instead considering that I am running Academy Ruins in my list.

Magic Orb

08-06-2011, 09:27 AM

Hi @ all! I'm new here and want to introduce myself into the thread.

I now practiced a lot and can say that 2x C.Wish is better than the 2 Counterspell many players are running atm. I remember many times when I had Counterspell and wanted something else, like a Wish e.g.

The thing is, on the one hand you need 2xU, even if its not of a problem most of the time, but on the other I found it often getting Spell Snared. I think the 3cc slot is a pretty safe mana cost slot in terms of resolving these days. 1cc + 2cc seem rather unsolid since times of MM and Snare..especially 1cc, since even non-blue decks run them :/

Thats why I think you should run a counter package of:

4x FoW
4x Mental Misstep
3x Spell Snare

I'm didn't miss counters somehow, eventhough Im looking for space all the time to add some..But actually you dont need more than these above in my build. (see list below)

The only alternative to C.Wish for me is E.Tutor with a Tool Box in main and another in your SB. Didnt test this yet.. Any experiences here?

And I think, that the current meta definately has gotten slower! Me and probably you too, faced a lot of situations where it ended up to a Mental Misstep Counterwar and the one who had more MMs won.. So many of the early gamespells (1cc = catched by MM, 2cc= catched by Spell Snare)
won't hit the battlefield, thus leading to a slower Meta, opening chances for :
- Decree of Justice, which is epic (I run it as a 1of)
- C. Wish
- Wrath of God

Few more decisions I arrived at:

- 1of Crucible is definately good and sometimes gamebreaking!
- 1-2x Elspeth, imo: you really underestimate this girl, its so useful in many situations, where jace isnt (e.g.: I rather place her then another jace to handle the one of the opponent!, thus likely ending up with a destroyed Jace on his side, and a Ultimated Else on mine!)
- Wing Shards as a Wish target in the SB is totally nuts! (keep in mind, playing the whole in a row, ends up letting sacrifice at least 2 creas!)
- 2x Wrath is really good, AND definately better than Firespout, no way for discussions here, really^^)

Things Im still not sure about atm:

- whether to run SDT !?
- 2x or 3x EE !?
- 4 or 5 Killoptions !? (meaning adding the 2nd Else)
- adding a 2nd Humility !?
- keep C.Wish or replace by E.Tutor with Toolbox (MB+SB)

=> Maybe you guys can help me here and give comments, thx!

Here is my current list btw:

4x Tundra
1x Scrubland
1x Volcanic Island
4x Flooded Strand
4x Mishra's Factory
3x Wasteland
1x Academy Ruins
3x Island
3x Plain

2x Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1x Elspeth, Knight-Errant
1x Decree of Justice
1x Crucible of Worlds

4x Force of Will
4x Mental Misstep
3x Spell Snare

4x Swords to Plowshares
2x Wrath of God
2x Engineered Explosives
1x Humility

4x Standstill
4x Brainstorm
2x Cunning Wish
1x SDT

SB:

1x E.Tutor
1x Wing Shards
1x Surgical Extraction
1x Fact or Fiction
1x Pulse of the Fields

4x Meddling Mage
3x Vendilion Clique
3x Relic of Progenitus

Thoughts !?!? Feel free to comment please. Thx!

greetz MO :cool:

Tacosnape

08-06-2011, 09:23 PM

Sensei's Divining Top's power and usefulness completely depends on the speed of your metagame and what kind of manabase you're trying to get away with. In general, the slower your metagame, the better Top is, and the more you're erring on the side of excess land, the better Top is. The fastest aggro decks don't give you time to dig, and against quick combo Top has the same problem that Street Wraith/Gitaxian Probe always had in Belcher - You don't know what it's going to find you, and if you need a specific thing and don't find it, you may be screwed.

So if you're expecting a bunch of Landstill mirrors, Deadguy Ale, NO Rug, etc, Top's decent. If you're dealing with Zoo or Hive Mind, you want that Top to instead be some kind of immediate interaction. Against some decks, like Merfolk, it can go either way. It won't help you against a blindingly fast Merfolk hand, but it can help you maintain stabilization and goes a long way to winning a "Who can draw more lands that make a difference" Standstill fight.

I personally don't run it, because I feel like anything I want Top to do, the rest of blue can do better. Brainstorm and Jace outclass it. But in a nonblue based control deck? Absolutely. I want Top all day long.

Iron Buddha

08-07-2011, 04:28 AM

If you run 4 BS, 4 Jace, 4 Standstill, Top is unnecessary, because you already have packed sufficient card-quality.
But since you're only running 4 BS, 2 Jace, 4 Standstill, that single Top is very strong - you can even add another one.
I think it's all about the overall count of card-quality cards.
In my opinion Top (in place of Jace) is excellent for faster metagames, simply because Top is actually usable in the early game (it costs 2, cost is splitted - shouldn't be so hard to find the mana for it) whereas Jace is a 4cc card, that is obviously dead in the early-game and is thus boarded out / not stellar against Zoo and Merfolk.
The advantage of Jace over Top is that Jace is an actual win-con.

Top has the same problem that Street Wraith/Gitaxian Probe always had in Belcher - You don't know what it's going to find you, and if you need a specific thing and don't find it, you may be screwed.You're pretending that Top lowers card-quality ("if you need a specific thing and don't find it"), there must be something wrong here. Street Wraith / Gitaxian Probe only draws a single card, whereas Top digs three cards deep into your library and even more if you have a fetchland and the mana to use it.

Tacosnape

08-07-2011, 11:29 AM

You're pretending that Top lowers card-quality ("if you need a specific thing and don't find it"), there must be something wrong here. Street Wraith / Gitaxian Probe only draws a single card, whereas Top digs three cards deep into your library and even more if you have a fetchland and the mana to use it.

That's not quite the point I was making. The point I'm making is, that in the case of all three cards, if you see it in your opening hand, you don't know what card it's going to turn into. While granted, SDT is waaaaay better at filtering card quality, it's also much slower at it. You won't always have time to get the card you need with it. So for different reasons, it still suffers from the same problem.

Say you're playing against Hive Mind, going second. You get an opening hand of 3 land, Standstill, Swords to Plowshares, Counterspell, Sensei's Divining Top.

That's an okay hand for the situation. That's not a great hand. It'll lose if they've got a turn two Show and Tell, regardless of which half of the combo they go with. It'll also lose if they can fight through your one Counterspell if your Top/Standstill can't dig for another counter fast enough. Deciding whether to mulligan this is tough. I believe most players would roll with it.

However, if this Sensei's Divining Top is actually a business spell, you're much more likely to know what to do with the hand. If it's a Force of Will, you're going to keep it obviously. If it's a second Swords or a fourth land, you probably aren't.

The longer this sample game goes, the better that top's going to be, but in the immediate hand you'll wish it was a Brainstorm to see cards faster, a Force to just stop things outright, or some garbage card so you know to mulligan it in hopes of an amazing six.

Top's still an absolutely amazingly great card, but it does have its drawbacks. Top in your opening hand is a question you have to answer: Are my other six enough to keep me in this game until I get time to find what I need with Top? And the more questions you have to answer, the more likely you are to make a mistake.

Magic Orb

08-07-2011, 12:17 PM

Okay enough to SDT^^ lets conclude, SDT is a meta-thing and its also up your total amount of Draw-Engines you have in your deck (so to say: Jace,BS,SS,etc)

But what about the other points ???

- 2x or 3x EE !?
- 4 or 5 Killoptions !? (meaning adding the 2nd Else)
- adding a 2nd Humility !?
- keep C.Wish or replace by E.Tutor with Toolbox (MB+SB)

Thx guys!

rayaj

08-07-2011, 04:22 PM

-It really depends on the rest of your removal suite. Two EE is probably enough with the inclusion of academy ruins.

-Rather than a second Elspeth, I would suggest a third Jace.

-Humility can be good, but it really isn't strong enough as Taco has convinced me.

-As for wish vs. tutor, I would probably stick with wish, but even if the meta has slowed down I don't like wish very much. Aggro decks may have slowed down, but wish isn't great against combo in fact it is quite the opposite in my opinion. It also doesn't answer an early Progenitus/Emrakul very well. I really like the wish package but even more I like having a full board for what I expect to play against. The final call is yours, but having played with wish before, I always found myself wanting to just be able to have a sideboard that could push unfavorable matchups in my favor.

Tacosnape

08-07-2011, 05:09 PM

The thing about Humility is this. While it's invaluable against some dudes, 1/1's with no abilities are still a problem you have to answer at some point if your kill isn't fast. So I don't find it necessary for the most part.

I run 3 Engineered Explosives and wouldn't consider changing it without a black splash. UW alone has way too few means of dealing with random problematic permanents. EE's versatile. It's how you get rid of artifacts and enchantments, and it does so in a card that's also useful for getting rid of dudes.

As for Elspeth, as I don't run Humility, I have no real use for Elspeth. And I think any list not packing four copies of Jace, the Mind Sculptor while running any other planeswalker is making a mistake.

kiblast

08-27-2011, 09:17 AM

I played a 12 man tournament today as a warm up for a 50 players one that I'll attend tomorrow.

I tried an UWr build (I always liked UWb but I'm reconsidering Pyroblasts as I'm seeing too much Snt these days, too much Ancestral Visions and fish is always a problem)

My list:

// NAME: Landstill

// Lands
3 [M12] Island (1)
2 [M12] Plains (1)
4 [ON] Flooded Strand
4 [DDF] Mishra's Factory
3 [R] Tundra
1 [B] Plateau
2 [ZEN] Scalding Tarn
2 [U] Volcanic Island
1 [TSP] Academy Ruins
1 [WWK] Celestial Colonnade
1 [10E] Faerie Conclave

// Spells
4 [OD] Standstill
4 [COM] Brainstorm
3 [DD2] Counterspell
4 [AL] Force of Will
4 [NPH] Mental Misstep
3 [DIS] Spell Snare
3 [WWK] Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 [10E] Wrath of God
2 [ALA] Elspeth, Knight-Errant
3 [FD] Engineered Explosives
4 [IA] Swords to Plowshares

// Sideboard
SB: 2 [HOP] Relic of Progenitus
SB: 3 [IA] Pyroblast
SB: 2 [DK] Tormod's Crypt
SB: 3 [PS] Meddling Mage
SB: 3 [MOR] Vendilion Clique
SB: 2 [B] Blue Elemental Blast

I played against Stax (2-0) UB suboptimal Rogue Mill (2-0), Aggroloam RGB (1-1, he was very slow so I didn't have enough time to finish him, I needed 6-7 turns more), ID with the Gate for top4 (but we play it and I win 2-0), then first round of top4 vs the Gate (2-0).
Final against Merfolk. He steamrolls me drawing more counters, more fish, 2 Wastelands, 2 Mutavaults, 4 lords etc...in g1. I race him g2 with Elspeth tokens and Celestial Colonnade + Faerie Conclave and triple Jace bounce.
G3 he shows me that 4 Swords to Plowshares, 3 Pyroblasts, 3 EE and 2 Wrath of God are not enough to stop fish. I finish 2nd.

Thoughts on the list: I don't own 4 Jace so I cant play the set, but I have to say that in various situations Elspeth has been invaluable today(chumpblocking 6/7 Goyfs, 7/7 flying Colonnade etc...).

I don't have Peacekeepers but I think that a couple of Firespout should be enough in the board to fight Fish (sb plan would be:-4 Standstill -1 Brainstorm, +3 Pyroblast +2 Firespout). I'm probably cutting 2 Beb for the Firespouts (also they're pretty good in various Mu, while Beb seems a more narrow sb choice.)

I loved EE's all day. 3 is the perfect number. They blow up Chalice and Mox Diamonds with little effort in one of our worst MU preboard ( AggroLoam) and are very good vs a wide range of decks.

I'm ok with 6 Manlands and no Wastelands. There's actually nothing we really want to waste anyway.

@Rayaj: While I tried Tops and E. Tutors in the past ( and I thought that they were invaluable) now I think that they suck and they should be real cards.
Wishboard sucks even worse. Too slow and situational unless you play 3 Wishes,but they clog the maindeck in an incredible way.

Iron Buddha

08-28-2011, 08:06 AM

Elspeth sucks, no seriously...

Elspeth is good against decks that play dumb creatures: Team America, Maverick, Bant, Zoo, but very weak against combo-engines: NO Progenitus, SnT Emrakul, Reaniminator, Dredge, Goblins (Matron + Ringleader + Siege-Gang, Piledriver), Merfolk (Islandwalk + Mutavault + Silvergil Adept).

What do you think is the right number of Mental Missteps? 3 or 4?

lyracian

08-28-2011, 08:42 AM

Elspeth sucks, no seriously...
but very weak against combo-engines:
I disagree. You could say the same about Wrath or other cards that they are weak against a deck type.
Elspeth and a Factory means you are hitting for 5 flying a turn; that is a fast clock. She may be better in an aggro build (10 a turn with Crusader is wonderful) but she is no slough in Landstill.

Hanni

08-28-2011, 09:53 AM

Elspeth is absolutely amazing, as she has always been. Jace has blinded people to this. I've been running a 2/2 split in my U/W Control decks for the last year+, and I'd never consider cutting Elspeth.

It's funny when I hear people advocate for running 4 Jaces to win the Jace war, when Elspeth assassinates Jace like a pro and then sticks around to keep being awesome. The only time she's lackluster is against a board of multiple creatures, or evasive creatures. Jace still sucks in the former, and is only good against the latter if it can find an answer in time.

I'm not trying to compare Elspeth to Jace directly, since they have very different functions. What I am saying is, I think a U/W Control deck (whether it be Landstill or something else) should be running both.

Iron Buddha

08-28-2011, 10:04 AM

But don't you agree that Elspeth is very weak against NO Progenitus, Emrakul, Reaniminator, Dredge (and to a lesser extent Merfolk and Goblin)?
That's not just a deck type, but a big part of the metagame.

As for the Jace war, it probably doesn't really matter whether you run 2 Jace / 2 Elspeth or 4 Jace. Whoever sticks the PW first, wins.

Hanni

08-28-2011, 10:11 AM

When you say very weak, are you implying that the card itself is weak, or that it's weaker than Jace would be in the same situation? Against NO Progenitus, neither Jace nor Elspeth is actually stopping a 10/10 from coming down. While Jace may be able to try and draw you cards to answer it, if they have a guy on the board, you're going to be in bounce-mode till you find an answer anyway. If they are on the Goyf beatdown plan, Elspeth is alot stronger than Jace. Both Elspeth and Jace are bad against Clique.

Against Emrakul, sure, Jace is better.

Against Reanimator, both Jace and Elspeth are extremely slow, since the opponent is likely casting their key spells in the first few turns. This means both Jace and Elspeth are fairly bad here. Sure, Jace can bounce a fatty, but if they dropped say a Jin-Gitaxias and you didn't have a Swords for it, casting a Jace is going to be just as irrelevant as casting an Elspeth.

Against Dredge, Elspeth is better. Making 1/1 tokens is alot stronger than whatever Jace can do against them.

Against Merfolk and Goblins, Jace is awful unless the board is clear. On the flip side, Elspeth is good against Merfolk if they don't have a Lord of Atlantis or flying Coralhelm, and Elspeth is an absolute bomb against Goblins.

As for the Jace war, it probably doesn't really matter whether you run 2 Jace / 2 Elspeth or 4 Jace. Whoever sticks the PW first, wins.

The 4 Jace vs 4 Jace control battles usually involve someone casting a Jace, and the other person countering it or nuking it with their own Jace. This goes back and forth until one or both players run out of answers, finally someone sticks a Jace on the table, and then that player jumps far ahead of the other.

In the case of Elspeth, especially against situational counters like Misstep and Spell Snare, she can come down against an already-on board Jace and make a 1/1 token. Jace player can bounce it, in which case the Elspeth player will make another. This may go on for however long, but each bounce is neutralizing Jace (opponent is not drawing cards), Jace is going down in counters, and Elspeth is going up. Eventually, a 1/1 will stick, Elspeth will make it 4/4 flying, and it will kill the opposing Jace. Elsepth sticks around, and now the opponent is on a clock. Opponent resolving another Jace won't turn the situation around.

EDIT: The Jace vs Elspeth comparisons are very loose anyway, since they are both dependant on what other spells you have, the board state, what other spells the opponent has, etc. My point is, if you playtest with both Elspeth and Jace as much as I have, you will realize that there are many situations in which Elspeth is better than Jace.

EDIT 2: Also, "Superfriends mode," i.e having both Jace and Elspeth in play at the same time, is deliciously good.

Iron Buddha

08-28-2011, 10:39 AM

Actually I'm rather thinking of comparing Elspeth to Humility, WoG, and Cunning Wish.

My suggestion is 3-4 Jace TMS, 3-4 WoG/Humility, and possibly Cunning Wish, 0 Elspeth. (I personally like Decree of Justice too.)

I think that Elspeth is a good card, but considering the current metagame (with a lot of different combo decks) she's lacking comparing to Humility, Wrath of God, and Cunning Wish.

Hanni

08-28-2011, 10:42 AM

Comparing Elspeth to Humility or Wrath of God is like comparing Jace to Standstill or Ancestral Visions.

rayaj

08-28-2011, 06:54 PM

Personally I see much less use in the format for Humility, because it really only deals with Emrakul and Progenitus, and even then they still have a creature on board to ping you or your walker. I'd rather have a sweeper in that slot or Elspeth, if you've played enough against aggro decks then you know that humility only serves to staunch the bleeding but not stop it. You really need Elspeth to generate tokens to chump or have Wrath/Firespout to clear the board. Right now I have one shackles in the main, but I'm thinking of going back to the wrath I had in that spot. Even if Wrath only hits one creature, if that creature is Thrun/Emrakul/Progenitus then it's more than worth it.

I've been running a 3 Jace/1 Elspeth split and I love it, I hardly need more than one Elspeth; if she doesn't show up I can still win, but when she does show up she can tilt the scales far in your favor and put you on the aggro plan (3-4 turn clock) instead of the fateseal plan (6 turn clock if you don't have to brainstorm/bounce). Also, if you ever get her ult to go off it is such a house, most decks can't handle it. Having invincible factories (outside of exile effects) is just crippling to any opponent, not mentioning the psychological effects of having essentially all your permanents be indestructible.

Piceli89

08-28-2011, 07:29 PM

What about moving Clique maindeck? She's been amazing today in my build with Ancestral Visions (which, on the contrary, have been the epytome of situationality); I guess they're even better with Standstill. EOT Cliquing their counter away and then dropping a Standstill is pretty good; beyond this, it's an instant duress that gives information, improves the combo matchup preboard, and shortens the clock (especially paired with Elspeth). It even Vindicates opponent Cliques. Everything Control wants.
I'm currently tweaking a red-splashed list that features a couple of MD Fire/ice because they're amazing in a metagame of Maverick, NO Rug, and Merfolk. I'm still undecided on a couple of points:

- Removal suite: 4 Stp, 1 Path to Exile, 2 Fire/Ice, 2 EE, 1 Shackles. No Wrath of God, at least maindeck. I've found out that it's way better to be proactive and increase the number of spot removals, in order either to gain tempo and stay open for the counters. The mass removal approach doesn't seem to work anymore, these days, considering either the size of the single threats (which makes it sufficient not to overextend for a ZOo Player, except when Elspeth is on the board), and the presence of planeswalkers. "Wrath. Ok, untap, Jace. Nice Counterspell in hand".
I'd like also to discuss a bit Path to Exile. The drawback may be costy these days. In a format where giving a free land drop may cause them to accelerate their Jace/Kotr/Batterskull, that may be pricy. I know it has the purpose to guarantee better Standstills costing only 1, but it seems a removal you don't want to cast in the early stages of the game.

- Counter suite: I absolutely love Counterspell, and judge Spell Snare mediocre. In a format where the cmc of the threats is extremely diversified, unconditionality is better, even at the expense of more mana. I want to be able to answer everything, minimizing situational cards in the md against an unknown field. Snare is one of those. I play 3 MM for the same reason- I like redundancy and squared lists, but it soon becomes quite situational. The only worth targets soon become their MM on my removals.
-Planeswalkers split: I want to second Hanni here when he says not to underestimate Elspeth. She plays both the defensive and the offensive role in a good way. Jace provides card advantage, she provides board endurance and stall. This is critical against aggro decks when light on removal or waiting for the EEs to come. Jace is better with Standstill, though. Bounce ability+SS is just bonkers.
I'm playing 3-1, contemplating whether or not to switch to 2-2.
-Colorless/Utility lands: I'd like to fit a 5th manland, but Colonnade is just that shitty. I'm already playing 1 Ruins and 1 Karakas, so Mutavault seems out of question. I also tend to prefer solid configurations (especially considering the 4 CSpells), even if I'm worried because packing SS without Wastelands or an adequate number of manlands is danngerous nowadays that Turternwald-ish lists are everywhere.
---------------------------
My list. Feedbacks are appreciated. I'm getting interested in the archetype, makes me feel like playing real, thought Magic.

4 Flooded Strand
3 Scalding Tarn
3 Tundra
1 Glacial Fortress
2 Volcanic Island
4 Mishra's Factory
1 Academy Ruins
1 Karakas

2 Vendilion Clique
3 Jace, Tms
1 Elspeth

4 Fow
4 Cspell
3 MM
2 Snare

4 Stp
1 Path to Exile
2 Fire/Ice

2 Engineered Explosives
1 Vedalken Shackles

4 Brainstorm
4 Standstill

Sb
3 Meddling Mage
2 Relic of Progenitus
1 Surgical Extraction
1 Faerie Macabre/2nd Surgical Extraction
2 Spell Pierce
3 Pyroblast
1 Wrath of God
1 Path to Exile/Fire-Ice/Shackles/2nd WoG
1 Mental Misstep/Open slot

kiblast

08-29-2011, 04:25 AM

I don't know what you are talking about Spell Snare. I understand that you can find all kind of cc's, but almost every deck has a crucial cc2 drop. There are actually tier decks (blade variants) based on a 2cc drop.Also if you misstep their vial, Snare counters an insane amount of Merfolks. I'm not sure about cutting it (even partially).

Yesterday I attended a 45 players tournament.

R1: Aggroloam RGB: win 2-0. I actually controlled the game since turn 1 till Jace's fatality, in both games.

R2: Landeed: win 2-1 g1 he's better under standstill by seeing 3 Wastelands and 3 Factories in a row ( I played 6 manlands).G2 and G3 I show him the importance of playing Cliques and splashing red for Pyroblasts.

R3: Goblin mono R: WTF. He wins 2-0. g1 he has the nuts play with turn 2 SGC. G2 I sword/Wrath/Firesput/EE 17 dudes ( I actually checked, I'm not joking) he drops 25.

R4: Goblin mono R: Fuck. There are 4 goblins out of 45 players, I play against 2 of them. 2-0 for him.

Again, my matchups against swarm aggro/tribal are awful. I continue loosing to merfolk and goblins even if I played 4 Stp, 3 EE, 2 Wraths maindeck and 2 Firespout in sb.

Piceli89

08-30-2011, 03:47 PM

I know most of the Legacy tiers (not the whole, because stuff like Hive Mind and Dredge don't) have crucial cc2 drops, but you should judge also basing on which are these threats.
Lately I've found out that most of the spells countered by Spell Snare can be managed in other ways, with the benefit of increasing catch-all spells and decreasing the situational ones. Considering the actual tiers, we have:
-Stoneforge Mystic;
-Dark Confidant;
-Tarmogoyf;
-Qasali Pridemage;
-Lord of Atlantis, Silvergill adept, Coralhelm Commander.

In all these cases, running more than 4 spot removals benefits the Standstill plan, since you can comfortably remove them EOT and then drop SS. No one of these is a must counter, and can be sent to farm easily.

If you Stp/Path/(F-I) Stoneforge, you'll allow the card advantage but leave them with a dead piece in hand. If it's Batterskull, the game must be dragged onto long distance to make it effective-but Landstill has tons of ways to deal with it.
Dark confidant is a must remove, this is true. This is as easily achieved as the case above; and still, decks running Confidant are slightly decreasing nowadays.
Qasali Pridemage is quite uneffective against this deck, considering the only worth target is the singleton Vedalken Shackles or the Crucible. EE can be popped in response, Factories aren't activated with it on the board.

Tarmogoyf is just a big beatstick that doesn't provide any significative advantage over beating, thus it can be taken care in a second moment not wasting the removal immediately. Spell Snare has become half effective in countering TGoyfs not just for Mental Misstep, but for GSZ @3 coming both from Zoo and NORug.

Merfolks are dealt with stalling the board and catching them into EEs and post-sideboard gunshots. By the way, running Firespout is a mistake because it's costy, slow, and bites the dust easily from the most played card by that deck: paymorel counters, Spell Pierce included. The best card against them remains Grim Lavamancer, paired with lots of spot removals, 2-3 EE and a Crucible of Worlds to keep the manlands on and having a defensive engine (and stabilizing the manabase on the long run). Winning against Merfolks through Wrath of God is conceptually wrong and practically undoable- at least, against good players.

The only juicy cc2 targets in the format that Landstill has to stop are Hymn to Tourach, Sylvan Library and Infernal Tutor. The first hurts, but it's fired by 2 single archetypes as of now that both suffer a Standstill deck. These are Junk and Team America. The first is just prone to a well-timed Standstill, the second is pretty low on threats and gets chopped with a grip of suboptimal cards if you manage to bypass the first turns manadenial and chain card advantage.

I'll admit that Spell Snare gives a significative help in handling Sylvan Library; that must not resolve. Still, you play 2-3 copies of EE, and 4 Forces. This isn't a valid argument, but at least you're not totally cold to it.

Infernal Tutor is just a card of a process where what you have to stop is the engine, not the output. Mental Misstep, Force and Counterspell are all very valid solutions to Dark Ritual and Cabal Ritual. Moreover, 2 maindeck Cliques are a fantastic Storm hoser that not only compensate, but even provide more benefits than Spell Snare in that matchup.

I was forgetting enemies Standstills; those can be fought with deckbuilding (by running 6+ manlands), cleverness (breaking it eot when he has 7 cards, and so on), and a solid dose of topdecking skills.

-------------------

Now, let's move onto the real spells that Landstill has to stop. In the current metagame, you're likely to face:

- Jace, the Mind sculptor, either coming before of after ours.
- Natural Order.
- Vendilion Clique, freeing the way for Natural Order or Jace.
- Show and Tell, bringing Emrakul or Hive Mind.
- Crucible of Worlds and Wasteland, played by the majority of UW Landstill-ish Blade lists.
- Choke.
[-Dread Return]

All of these pose serious threat to the deck. All of these have to be stopped, or the game can be lost in a row. All of these do not have a cost of 2. Against all of these cards, which are the crucial cornerstones of a game when you drag if for the long distance, Spell Snare remains stuck in the hand and does nothing but pitching to Force of Will.
Changing the countersuite configuration into 4 Counterspell and 2 Vendilion Cliques just helps a lot in dealing with the aforementioned cards, and brings marginal gains like increasing the race; you're given a threat that does damage against combo decks before they wait 2 years to sculpt their hand, an instant Duress that gives you information about what to counter or not (critical against Stax, Enchantress, the mirror, Stoneblade), where to use removals, when to wait to maximize Explosives; increases the number of answers to Natural Order from 2 to 4 maindeck (if you run 2 Wrath of God, I don't); Vindicates opponents Cliques; scrambles the race in beating for 3 at a turn; steals Batterskull; pops Bridges unexpectedly; becomes a real short clock paired with Elspeth; becomes a serious disruption engine with Karakas.
Clique is just that good, even if she would have to eat Stp immediately. She's so good that I think Legacy was given a new standard of "best creature".

EDIT: Now it came into my mind that Hanni had had a similar discussion with someone else because he cut Spell Snares completely. Perhaps the deck was Countertop Superfriends or such, but if my memory doesn't deceive me, his argumentations for the cut resembled mine.

gustha

08-30-2011, 06:12 PM

@Picelli: while I don't totally defend your choiche, I've always stated that in landstill card slots are really tight, and you have to focus on what you want to remove with removal spells and what you want to counter because you can't remove. Now, which direction do we want to go?

"speedstill" approach, if still exist, was simple: remove remove remove win via jace CA which draw into more removal etc. Now, as I see, there are two paths atm: 1) heavy counter 2) heavy removal

In this configuration (http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/standard/21874_Deck_Tech_UW_Standstill_with_Gerry_Thompson.html), 4 snares are mandatory: you want to counter nearly every single spell your opponent plays. He focuses on curving? We focus on destroying its curve.

Now, Piceli's list seems to go in another direction, heavy removal's one. He is totally right that he barely needs spell snares in his list. More removals will simply do, and snare also gets hit by misstep, plus GSZ make it worse. I'd make some changes, though.

4 Flooded Strand
3 Scalding Tarn
3 Tundra
1 Glacial Fortress
1 Volcanic Island
1 Plateau
4 Mishra's Factory
1 Academy Ruins
1 Karakas
(you miss 3 lands, I suppose 3 islands, and still you're on 22, a bit low I think, go to 23, with tolaria west and just a basic plains)

3 Vendilion Clique
4 Jace, Tms
1 Elspeth//Ajani Vengeant

4 Fow
4 Cspell
4 MM

4 Stp
2 Path to exile (Bolt)

1 Engineered Explosives
2 Vedalken Shackles

4 Brainstorm
4 Standstill // Ancestral Vision

--- I think this is more straightforward, not sold on the EE, could be disk.

3 Meddling Mage
3 Surgical Extraction
3 kitchen finks // 2 finks + 3rd wrath
4 Pyroblast // 3 + crucible
2 Wrath of God

Piceli89

08-30-2011, 06:47 PM

Hey Gustha, thanks for the feedback. I understand your point, and yes, that's the concept I want to apply to Landstill. I don't seem to be happy with the heavy-counter lists, because I open hands that are clogged with them or find myself in unhappy situations with a hand full of blue and a resolved threat beating me. I want to find a good balance between stack control and board control; I'd tend to maximize the spot removals and run 3, 4 sweepers/steal effect.
I'd still run 2 Vendilion and 4 Planeswalkers though; I feel this is the right quantity, you don't want them to overload your hand.

This is the list I'm tweaking at the moment:

23 lands- yes, there are 3 Islands and 1 Plains. Since I'm tempted to fit a single Crucible, I'm considering whether or not to change Ruins and a Colonnade/fifth manland for a Wasteland; but I want to build my manabase and always have enough colored mana for CSpell and Shackles (which I'm in love with), so I'd stick to:

7 fetches
5 dual lands (undecided on Plateau)
4 Factories
1 Ruins
1 Karakas
1 5th manland/ Glacial Fortress- worth it? It was there just to have a dual that bypasses Choke, but it doesn't love Shackles.
4 basics

Threats (6)

2 Vendilion Clique
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 Elspeth

Removals (6)

4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Path to Exile

Board control (4)

2 Engineered Explosives
2 Vedalken Shackles

Stack control (12)

4 MM
4 Cspell
4 Fow

Card quality/CA (8)

4 Brainstorm
4 Standstill

I'm missing 1 card. It could be a single Elspeth, or the single Crucible-even if I'm skeleptical about it without Wasteland, it may be crucial in a metagame of UW Stoneblades. It's hell slow, though, so I might choose the 3rd Elspeth to accomplish a more straightforward "reach 4 mana, close the game" plan.
I dislike Wrath of God; after some games, I seldom managed to at least 2x1 with it, and I was running just 4 Swords to plowshares (it was a previous build with Ancestral Vision). EEs and spot removals accomplish the same job without forcing you to tap out entirely.
I find it really good only against Progenitus and Emrakul, both of which come from another spell. They're clunky against everything else; even against NORug, after sideboard they're not worth coming in because he'll likely switched NOs with Jace.
I might leave one in the sideboard, even if it seems randomic.

That's what I planned to be my 15:

3 Meddling Mage
3 Pyroblasts
2 Relic of Progenitus
1 Faerie Macabre
1 Surgical Extraction
2 Spell Pierce
1 Wrath of God
2 Grim Lavamancer

Given Lavamancer couldn't be that great with only 2 (non-basic) lands producing red, and since they were there to shore the Merfolk/Maverick matchup, I could think cutting them or the Pierces (which are good against NORug and Show and Tell decks, though) for a sideboard Crucible and something else. Finks are a good suggestion, but they'd serve only as a reinforcement against pure aggro or burn. I'm pretty well positioned against the first (I'm referring to Zoo and a bit to Big Zoo), and I'd tend to ignore the second, or to switch to a more aggressive hate-bears+Elspeth+cheap counters plan against it.

Enlighten me with your Landstill knowledge, Master ^^

GGoober

08-30-2011, 06:54 PM

Just wanted to add to Spell Snares that the better builds of Landstill that capitalize the power of Snares are the very list that focus on dominating the early game (which is primarily not a big goal for control decks).

what I mean by dominating the early game isn't winning on turn 2-4, but in a Landstill/control-player's context, it means that being able to survive any threat your opponent puts out in the early game and having a slight if not superior advantage after the early game.

Spell Snare is incredible at doing this, in the right list, in the right meta. Take for instance a heavy 2cmc-bomb meta, or simply, the old Speedstill approach. Your goal was to use Spell Snares/Mental Misstep to gain the edge. Every time your opponent taps out for 2, you are tapping 1 at instant speed to remove a threat. When they tap out for 3 to play that KotR, you are tapping 1 at instant speed to play StP. The real power of Spell Snare in the right meta is pretty simple. It not only answers the 2cmc bombs that people play, but it opens up for mana efficiency for a deck that is deprived of brokeness. You will gain some slight advantage, which puts you ahead (usually resolving Jace/Elspeth while having mana open to protect them).

Similarly, this is the reason why 4 StP + 3-4 PtE MD lists also work, although I'm personally not a fan of those lists.

gustha

08-30-2011, 07:10 PM

The concept behind snare is whole lot different now than it was when snare was first printed and brought to landstill. The goal there was to survive through the early game and then your opponent finished the gas: you began to play.

Now this is not true anymore. Even aggressive decks became more resilient in the mid-late game, aggroncontrol too. We can' buy time just to buy time, that's simply delaying our death, not winning! The goal is to protect jace and win. Period. How do you do this? Via counters? Via sweepers?

@Piceli: LOL! Too bad I don't play landstill anymore, and instead switched to play NO RUG or... well, simply not playing. I don't have enough time, and when I play I don't want to get the unpleasant feeling that, whatever my opponent does, I'm always a step behind!
To put it down very simply, I consider an error playing less than 4 jaces. Jaces is your main wincondition. If I were to cut a walker, I'd cut elspeth instead. Ajani vengeant is much better in combination with vedalken shackles, as well.

As for the color, i don't know if reb's worth making issues with the manabase. Straight UW might work, spell pierces are good vs lots of decks (from combo to discard), reb's good against s&t decks but meh. You have lots of counters. The point isn't having lots of counters but lots of cards. In fact I was considering cutting brainstorms for AV, having a total of 8 draw spells (didn't remember the name of the planeswalker control experiment we did long time ago). Given the fact that I consider an error playing less than 4 jace, I'm fine with 3 cliques to protect it. Cliques not only protect jace from counters, but steals artifacts from SFM too, and it's pretty darn good in combo with karakas.

wastelands: not a fan of those. but a singleton dust bowl may find place.
i'm currently toying with this in my spare time:

4 Standstill
4 Brainstorm -> (Ancestral Vision?)
2 Vedalken Shackles
4 Mental Misstep
4 Force of Will
3 Vendilion Clique
4 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
2 Path to Exile
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Counterspell
4 Flooded Strand
1 Arid Mesa
3 Tundra
4 Island
1 Plains
3 Faerie Conclave
4 Mishra's Factory
1 Dust Bowl
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Karakas
1 Tolaria West

Edit: lol, this screams speedstill!!!! cc3 is fine, +1 makes CA, -2 protects herself, ultimate is a bomb. More suited for The Gate than for landstill maybe?

http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=123312&d=1314763231

Iron Buddha

08-31-2011, 04:30 AM

Spell Snare, Path to Exile, and Mental Misstep are competing for slots. The problem with Snare is that Aether Vial blanks it. PtE, on the other hand, is limited to creatures: it's a dead card against combo (Hive Mind, Storm, etc.) and control (creatureless control, etc.).

The Treefolk Master

09-04-2011, 06:56 PM

4 Flooded Strand
3 Polluted Delta
4 Tundra
1 Underground Sea
2 Island
1 Plains
4 Mishra's Factory
3 Faerie Conclave
1 Celestial Colonnade

4 Brainstorm
4 Standstill
4 Jace, The Mind Sculptor

4 Force of Will
4 Counterspell
3 Mental Misstep
3 Spell Snare

4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Path to Exile
3 Engineered Explosives
1 Wrath of God

SB, In General:
3 Meddling Mage
2 Vendilion Clique
1 Wrath of God
1 Mental Misstep
1 Spell Snare
2 Seal of Cleansing
2 Tormod's Crypt
1 Surgical Extraction
2 Pithing Needle

I've been playing that list and I've got to say that I'm extremely happy with it. I think I'll take it to a big tournament we're having next Saturday.

The Faerie Conclaves are, however, a bit underwhelming. I did try cutting them for 2 Creeping Tar Pits and 1 extra U. Sea, but is was more of the same. Any ideas?

I've also dropped the Colonnade, and I'm tinkering with either A. Ruins or Dust Bowl, any thoughts?

If I add Dust Bowl, I also want a Crucible in. I tested the Crucible a bit and it was quite good, though I did not get Dust Bowl into play at the same time. Getting the CoW in is, however, a bit tricky, as the list is really tight. I ultimately dropped 1 Path to try the Crucible.

What do you think of this sideboard:

3 Peacekeeper
3 Vendilion Clique
2 Tormod's Crypt
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Disenchant
1 Seal of Cleansing
1 Wrath of God (maybe drop 1 Peacekeeper for another wrath, making 3 Wraths between MD and SB. I might be a tad excessive though).
2 Meddling Mage or 2 Pithing Needle (undecided yet, needles seem a bit more versatile at first sight, but I've got to test them).

The Treefolk Master

09-12-2011, 09:03 PM

Sorry for DP, but does anyone have access to the list played by John Winters in the last SCG Open??? By looking at the coverage, it ran 1 Elspeth (or so said the commentators), and I saw 1 Academy Ruins (could maybe indicate he was running Explosives), Crucible of Worlds, Vedalken Shackles, and all the stuff you find in your regular Landstill.

I'll try the list I posted (well, Tacosnape did) above with the following changes:

-3 Faerie Conclave
+1 Island
+1 Plains/Karakas
+1 Dust Bowl/Academy Ruins (could also drop the Colonnade for either)

I also want to try -1 Path +1 Crucible.

Thoughts on adding Vedalken Shackles???

C Rayz Walz

09-13-2011, 12:32 AM

if the mana base can support shackles that card is just amazing.

Piceli89

09-20-2011, 05:53 AM

Can this deck survive without Mental Misstep, expecting Storm, Dredge and Goblins to come back rampant?

RJM

09-20-2011, 07:15 AM

Can this deck survive without Mental Misstep, expecting Storm, Dredge and Goblins to come back rampant?

I'd say we can expect it to be dropped back down to about where it was prior to the printing of Misstep.

RJM

09-20-2011, 07:15 AM

Piceli89

09-20-2011, 07:29 AM

I'd say we can expect it to be dropped back down to about where it was prior to the printing of Misstep.

i.e.?

Piceli89

09-20-2011, 07:30 AM

I'd say we can expect it to be dropped back down to about where it was prior to the printing of Misstep.

i.e.?

DragoFireheart

09-20-2011, 07:57 AM

i.e.?

Back to the pit of the Tier 1.5/2/3 decks.

Piceli89

09-20-2011, 04:11 PM

Back to the pit of the Tier 1.5/2/3 decks.

I'm not sold on this. Mental Misstep used to give a noticeble edge to Stoneblade in protecting t2 Mystic from Stp, but it also made Merfolk incredibly consistent and tempo-thriving. Landstill had its Missteps too, but the use and the boost gained by those decks was way more sick than the use LS had. MM was for us just a form of counter-control, not a way to protect a fast threat. Missing a Misstep in those scenarios-when you had to have it-meant you were already in trouble on turn 2.
No more Mental Misstep means you're more likely for your spot removals and Brainstorms to resolve, resulting in both slowing down them considerably and developing your board to reach the state where you can confidently drop your cc3 bombs/ cc4 Planeswalkers.
Of course Daze still exists, in fact I'm not claiming Merfolk to be a positive matchup after the ban. Still, a dedicated sideboard (I'm thinking about 1-2 Path to Exiles, a couple of Firespouts and 3 pyroblasts, along with Crucible+Shackles) should now be good to stop them. Wrath of God may result in being either stellar or shitty depending on the gamestate.

I don't see Stoneblade being a real threat again. If they're going to pack the Countertop suite, they're essentially giving away the advantage of playing Stoneforge Mystic. Why? To make it consistently protected, you have to assemple CBT, or CB at least before; this means you're slowing yourself down to reach a t3 Mystic, t4 activation. You're giving plenty of time for the aggro player to setup their board, to the Junk player to find a Vindicate or a discard spell, and to the control player to find responses, or ramp to Jace.
Of course they can try to go for a turn 2 Stoneforge, but I'm expecting them to slowly fade from Batterskull and incorporate it as a quasi-Enlightened Tutor that fits the cc2 CB curve in Thopter shells. Batterskull doesn't seem that reliable anymore, even tho' it will still see play. Stoneforge isn't that great under the perspective of having net a card at sorcery speed, if that card depends strictly on her.

Landstill has the advantage, now, of playing more linear games, where the critical turns (the first two) are more streamlined and the early-game defense is more safe. Of course Mental Misstep used to be a great tool for us too, but in exchange we now can count on safe Spell Snares and Stps /Path to Exiles (for those running it). This improves Standstill's critical requirements of an empty board, which is generally good against the metagame.Vial aggro, Storm combo and Dredge will be the problematic matchups, as they always used to be. Standstill was and will be a dead card, here. The first, though, can be beaten with tight play and the right anti-aggro configuration; the second and the third can be marginally improved pre-board with minor tweaks (Vendilion Clique maindeck), but are still horrible (they were even with Misstep).

Despites this, landstill has to me the potential to thrive on a new metagame where Counterbalance and Zoo are going to surge again given Storm Combo and Merfolk are coming back as the pivotal archetypes.
Unlike Counterbalance, LS has the potential to just ignore GSZ, because its advantage engine revolve around card draw and the relevant permanents, Elspeth and Jace, hard to deal with. The only advantage of running Counterbalance is to have a solution against recurring Punishing Fire, but that can be dealt with Wasteland. It's way less a permanent control and more a tempo one; plus, it can solve the Thrun problem by running Wrath of God.
Against CB itself, Landstill has relatively easy life as soon as it reaches 3-4 mana and can begin to drop bombs or just reach EE+Academy Ruins. Plus, having 3 Spell Snares helps a lot. They also just can't fight under a Standstill.
----------------------

I'm not claiming Landstill to become a tier1. It won't, in fact, just because Storm and Dredge exist and are going to be significant again, and the metagame in 2011 is too varied for pure control to be a frontline contender.
I'm just skeleptical about the advantages of running Countertop instead of Landstill, which is more suited to win against midrange decks (I'm also refering to Junk, which will come back).
Counterbalance already had serious weaknesses and was getting weaker and weaker, so I'm not expecting it to return as the premier form of control. Too many variables have been added to the mix (Vial, Thrun, Zenith, manlands, Pyroblasts, Clique, Order) to make it reliable as it used to be, say, in 2010.

edit: to make it clear, this is what I'm testing now.

4 Strand
3 Tarn
3 Island
1 Plains
3 Tundra
2 Volcanic Island
4 Factories
2 Wasteland
1 Ruins
1 Karakas

4 Force of Will
3 Spell Snare
3 Counterspell
2 Vendilion Clique

4 Brainstorm
3 Standstill
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Sensei's Divining Top

4 Swords to Plowshares
2 EE
1 Wrath of God
1 Crucible
1 Shackles
1 Enlightened Tutor
2 Elspeth/1 + 3rd EE
----------------------------

1 Pyroblast
1 REB
2 Spell Pierce

3 Meddling Mage
1 E. Canonist

1 Path to Exile (aiming to cut it)
1 Firespout
1 Wrath of God

2 Relic of Progenitus
1 Tormod's Crypt

1 Disenchant/Serenity/Energy Flux/Negate

In early tests it wins pretty handily against any form of Zoo, Bant, CB and UW SFM-based decks. Merfolk is hard but doable. Shackles and Crucibles are godly here. It also rips it against NORug, but well, without Misstep that's not very difficult.

GGoober

09-28-2011, 01:56 PM

If I can learn how to draw more than 3 lands by turn 4 with this deck, I'll give it a spin again, but for now, I don't want to rage over TES/Belcher drawing more lands than I do. The same shit happens everytime when I play any format. I play 24 lands with 4 Brainstorm and 2 Tops, how the hell do I keep failing?

I like your list a ton man. It's like a few card slots off from what I always play (can't be bothered to dig them up anymore).

Iron Buddha

09-29-2011, 12:12 PM

At least Brainstorm is reliable again, since Mental Misstep is banned.

landstillmaniac

10-12-2011, 06:32 PM

Just won an event with UWb landstill this past weekend (10/8) at Alternate Universes, Blue Bell PA. I am new to the site and have been playing legacy landstill for about 6 years and love it and consistantly do well or win with it. So I will be glad to share some lists here!

The tournament was 40+ ppl, and a great variety of opponents

UWb Landstill

4 standstill
4 force of will
4 counterspell
4 spell snare
2 crucible of worlds
4 brainstorm
4 swords
1 nev disk
2 wrath of god
3 engineered explosives
3 JTMS
1 elspeth

4 strand
3 delta
1 sea
1 scrubland
3 tundra
1 plains
2 island
4 factory
1 colonnade
1 creeping tar
1 tolaria west
1 academy ruins
1 wasteland

Sideboard...
3 extirpate
1 path to exile
2 pulse of the fields
2 spell pierce
2 llawan
2 rule of law
3 ethersworn canonist

Quick run through of what I beat...
Round 1- High tide (2-1 win)
Round 2- Merfolk (2-0 win)
Round 3- Goblins (2-1 win)
Round 4- Tes (0-2 loss)
Round 5- Junk (2-0 win)
Round 6- ID

Record 4-1-1

Top 8- Junk (2-0 win)
Top 4- NO bant (2-0 win)
Finals- ANT (2-1 win)

I won a MINT time walk for the day so it was a great day and wouldn't change a thing about the deck. About a month previous to this tournament a ran a very similar list but 4 misstep over the snares and lost in the finals. I love this deck and I always perform with it!!!

TakeYourTime

11-06-2011, 08:11 PM

Hey landstillmaniac, I was at the same AU tournament also playing Landstill! Congratulations on the win, seeing Landstill do well is great! I was REALLY surprised when I flipped through your deck at the tournament because mine is pretty similar.

I have trouble against aggressive creature decks like Merfolk and GW Maverick. I just started playing this summer, so I tend to make mistakes. What are your thoughts on my deck list? How do you sideboard your deck against goblins, maverick, merfolk, etc.?

Artifacts:
1 Crucible of Worlds
3 Engineered Explosives

Enchantments:
1 Humility
4 Standstill

Instants:
4 Force of Will
4 Counterspell
4 Spell Snare
4 Brainstorm
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Enlightened Tutor

Planeswalkers:
2 Elspeth, Knight Errant
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

Sorceries:
1 Wrath of God

Lands:
1 Academy Ruins
1 Karakas
1 Tolaria West
2 Wasteland
4 Mishra's Factory
1 Plains
1 Island
1 Scrubland
2 Underground Sea
2 Tundra
1 Creeping Tar Pit
1 Celestial Colonnade
2 Polluted Delta
4 Flooded Strand

Sideboard:
3 Extirpate
1 Tormod's Crypt
2 Phantasmal Image
2 Ethersworn Canonist
2 Rule of Law
2 Pulse of the Fields
2 Llawan, Cephalid Empress
1 Serenity

wizard_of_gore

11-15-2011, 09:45 AM

Guys, if brainstorm get axe, what card would replace brainstorm? I thinking about ancestral vision, but it's slow. What do you think?

TakeYourTime

11-16-2011, 06:21 PM

Guys, if brainstorm get axe, what card would replace brainstorm? I thinking about ancestral vision, but it's slow. What do you think?

Ancestral vision does not work well with Standstill. You would potentially break your on Standstill when Ancestral Vision fires off.

Ponder or Preordain are decent cantrips.

kiblast

11-23-2011, 08:36 AM

Ancestral vision does not work well with Standstill. You would potentially break your on Standstill when Ancestral Vision fires off.

Ponder or Preordain are decent cantrips.

In fact, Ancestral Vision is not played in Standstill builds, and vice versa.
In pre-Misstep printing Standstill was not very played, then Misstep happened, and Standstill became super good again. Then Wiz decided MM was too good and warping, so Standstill became a bit worse and SCG grinders/pros/wathever started playing AV in its place. But obviously you cannot play them in the same list.
In my opinion (and testing) Standstill tends to be better in decks that can fully abuse it. So if you are not playing 4/5 Manlands and 4 Wastelands I would not run it. Ancestral Vision is good in those decks (like EsperBlade, or UW Blade, in fact any Ubased Stoneforge.deck) which cannot afford playing 24 lands (of which 8 colorless) or simply have different t2 plays (like Stoneforge, obviously, but also Bob and/or Bitterblossom), and want some mid to late game extra card draw, without having to build a strategy around it to use (and Standstill requires this, while AV clearly does not, or at least it doesn't in the same way/amount of deckspace needed for Standstill).

With the amount of Delver of Secrets around, I highly doubt Standstill viability at the moment. Probably in a R Splashed build with 4 Bolts (4 rebs in sb) and 1-2 Repeals maindeck...

EDIT: Preordain/ Ponder are ''decent'' but no way comparable to the power level of Brainstorm in the right deck.

NeoTech

12-15-2011, 09:06 AM

Hey everybody. I have been out of the loop for several years, last tournament i played in was in 2006 or so. Some people here may remember my old tag as NeoMike as I still recognize a large sum of yall on here.

Anyways, I got married this year and my wife found my cards and long story short she wanted to learn how to play, which is getting me back into tournaments. I am having to repopulate my card collection as I don't have much left, but I wanted to look into rebuilding my Landstill deck that took me to top 8 multiple times. I found my list and want to know what current cards would change this build for the better.

- Creatures
1 Eternal Dragon

- Spells
4 Standstill
4 Brainstorm
4 Counterspell
2 Disenchant
2 Fact or Fiction
4 Force of Will
2 Stifle
4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Wrath of God
2 Crucible Of Worlds
3 Nevinyrral's Disk

- Lands
4 Island
2 Plains
3 Faerie Conclave
4 Flooded Strand
4 Mishra's Factory
4 Tundra
4 Wasteland

Sideboard:
3 Tormod's Crypt
4 Circle of Protection: Red
3 Annul
1 Disenchant
2 Pulse of the Fields
2 Decree of Justice

So this was my list, it did very well every tournament I took it to. But obviously times have changed and it needs to be tweaked into a more current meta. A few things i have noticed is the power of Spell Snare in the current meta, with goyfs and snapcasters... and piledrivers and counterspells.... So I am definately looking at Spell Snare right now. Aside from that what would yall suggest, don't be shy i still have to go out and get most of these cards and i would like to know what i need to get.

GGoober

12-15-2011, 12:20 PM

Hi Neo,

Welcome back! First thing, noting that you're from Houston, would just like to mention we've a Legacy scene at Houston at Asgard Games (along Kirby) if you would like to check it out. We play saturday weekly.

I used to primarily play Landstill but have put the deck aside for awhile. It's still a decent deck but has some weaker matchups and not a lot of spetacular matchups so it demands a lot of pilot-skill and correct choice of cards/deck for a given metagame. The decline of Merfolk is tempting me to pick the deck up again because I feel that outside of Spiral Tide, 12-post and Merfolk, Landstill has a fair game against a host of deck (it just doesn't flat-out destroy decks, which is a big problem for its popularity and success in Legacy).

Regarding your old list. Disenchant could be swapped out for Dismantling Blow, or if you splash a 3rd color, for Vindicate. There are also a number of good cards printed since you stopped playing. PAth to Exile, Go for the Throat are all very good removal for a control player.

Fact or Fiction is still insanely powerful, however Landstill should primarily use Jace, the Mind Sculptor as both an engine to draw cards, buy turns, and a win-condition. Fact or Fiction can sometimes be directly stronger than Jace, but the right deck and choice of cards have to be selected to allow maximum use of FoF. In general, Jace is simpler to use and generates enough advantage and acting as a win-condition all in one card.

I would probably trim down on the 4th Standstill and the 1-3 Faerie Conclave. If you are bent on going for 4 Standstills and resolving Standstills, you would want to pack a little more 1cmc removal e.g. 1-2 Path to Exile, this allows you to pull off more end-of-turn remove creature and land a Standstill.

NeoTech

12-15-2011, 01:08 PM

Hey Metalwalker. Goo to know there is some legacy still going on. I live on the far south side of Houston (League City Area) we have 3 card shops right in my area, atleast 2 do draft and atleast 1 does Legacy. But I have not played in them yet because I lack cards ATM.

I figured Jace had a strong place in here, and FoF seems like the appropriate card to swap out. Since its at the same cc and the end results are about card advantage. I just wish I could trade my FoF up for Jace :laugh:

Dismantling blow seems strong, though I'm not ecstatic of the 3cc since that puts me 1 turn further behind a Vial (assuming it doesn't get countered). But for late game it is truly a beast if I have a target for it.

How about Eternal Dragon? Is he still holding up in the deck? Is he still the correct choice since it is never a dead draw and extremely difficult to kill. Or is there something better out there now?

kiblast

12-15-2011, 04:17 PM

Dismantling blow seems strong, though I'm not ecstatic of the 3cc since that puts me 1 turn further behind a Vial (assuming it doesn't get countered). But for late game it is truly a beast if I have a target for it.

How about Eternal Dragon? Is he still holding up in the deck? Is he still the correct choice since it is never a dead draw and extremely difficult to kill. Or is there something better out there now?

Dismantling is a very nice answer to Stoneforge Mystic based strategies, anyway my personal preference still goes to Disenchant (I know cc2 goes under Spell Snare but cc3 is really awkward against Daze and Spell Pierce) or even splash G for Krosan Grip if you think you'll see lots of Blade or Maverick decks. Green also gives Seeds of Innocence if you think you'll see lots of Affinity.

Anyway Disenchants are definitely Sb material, and I'd use those maindeck slots (and the Stifle ones) for 3-4 Spell Snare (probably 4 since is the best counter available right now). You may trim 1 Counterspell to accomodate the 4th Spell Snare. You absolutely need to reliably counter those ''game ending'' turn 2 bomb when you are on the draw...

You may want to consider a couple of Vendilion Clique in your sideboard ( or even maindeck as various UWx builders proposed recently) against control matchups (cast it eot and blows Jace like a champ) and primarly against various combo decks , where it has the double utility of being a decent clock and providing Instant speed hand disruption.

Eternal Dragon is not an usual choice, however it might be playable if you are costantly in screw like me, and in (very)late game can be an added finisher if needed ( Metalwalker I feel your pain. I was fucking screwing with 24 lands 4 bs and 2 tops last time I sleeved UWx. Meanwhile the goblin player in front of me was tapping Ports like a pro.)

Last, other possible choices are (in addition to the cards mentioned by Metalwalker):

Vedalken Shackles if you keep the nonisland count low enough.
Elspeth, Knight-Errant solid win con and stabilizes your board. Also paired with Factory provides a faster clock than Jace's. Plus the art is amazing.
Humility I don't really need to explain this bomb, beware its casting cost though.
Engineered Explosives alternative flexible removal.
Enlightened Tutor grabs everything you need pre side and post side.
Snapcaster Mage I tried this guy in 2-3x and I'm fairly happy with the results. He adds consistency to the deck.

Basically, read all the ''post Mental Misstep'' pages to get an idea of what UWx Landstill is at the moment. :D

TakeYourTime

12-18-2011, 07:45 PM

Has anyone done well against a tempo deck with Landstill?

Piceli89

12-26-2011, 09:28 AM

Has anyone done well against a tempo deck with Landstill?

Run 24 lands, 6 swords and 2 EE and you're fine as long as Stifle doesn't hit your first 2 fetchlands. Problem is, deck usually sucks to the rest of the format; not because it can't handle it, but because this metagame requires you to apply pressure quite quickly, and this archetype is well known for NOT doing it.

GGoober

12-28-2011, 04:37 PM

@Tempo matchup: Used to be hard because you will lose to Thresh'd goose if you have your EE stifled. You can only kill Mongoose with WoG since your Factories don't stay in play with their bolts/Wastelands. It should be easier now if Thresh opts not to play Mongoose but Delver can potentially speed up the clock if you fall prey to their tempo. Use your life as a resource and gamble accordingly, taking a few beats, the most important thing is to hit your land drops and KEEP them. The worst thing you can do in this matchup is get so land-screwed that you waste your Brainstorms/Tops and turns digging for land-drops.

You know, with the loss of Merfolk/Vial, this deck is becoming enticing again, even if what Piceli said is true of the deck i.e. you are trying to win the long game by trying not to lose (not the best of strategy in Legacy because there's always a risk you incur against decks that really want to win).

The only issue I see in the metagame is Snapcaster/GSZ/Hierarch/Arbors. Those creatures are as annoying as Merfolk/Vial. (Snapcaster in response to your standstill derp).

However, I'm convinced that the meta now won't be as harsh as a meta choked full of those god-damned fish and vials. I'll see what I can do this weekend. Haven't played Legacy in over a month :/

Piceli89

12-28-2011, 08:57 PM

The only issue I see in the metagame is Snapcaster/GSZ/Hierarch/Arbors. Those creatures are as annoying as Merfolk/Vial. (Snapcaster in response to your standstill derp).

Perhaps it has come the time to drop Standstill and Manlands, and trying to incorporate Punishing Fire+ Grove as the new premier form of (virtual) card advantage.
It works wonders in optimizing the floods and killing opposing planeswalkers (Liliana?), too.
Most of all, it's a win-condition per se. Slow as fuck, sure, but still working (let's not forget LS should aim to win game 1 and to stall game 2 the majority of times).

Standstill is just too randomic and too susceptible to mediocre opponents not being able to wait until hands get filled to not being a liability. I don't like giving choices.

...Or Fire/Ice, already played by half of the last European Landstill lists? Problem is, it doesn't generate any long-term advantage, and in certain matchups it is just mediocre. Plus, sometimes you have to tap out to catch that hot 2x1 (common scenario: EOT fetch for Dryad with Hierarch in play), or the dork(s) will still produce mana in their turn for the next bomb coming.

RogueMTG

04-15-2012, 02:08 PM

Bringing this shit back baby. :cool:

I jammed UWb Landstill at the NELC last Saturday going 4-2-1, shaking some of the rust off along the way. I honestly think the deck is well positioned at the moment. Maverick and Bant decks don't stand a chance. You can survive tempo if you play your mana right and you can out control BUG/UW with little difficulty.

The only reason I ever used SFM was to beat Merfolk, which isn't even a deck anymore.

This was the list I played:

4 Tundra
1 Underground Sea
1 Scrubland
2 Island
2 Plains
4 Flooded Strand
1 Polluted Delta
1 Marsh Flats
4 Mishra's Factory
3 Wasteland

4 Standstill
4 Brainstorm
2 Jace, The Mindsculptor
1 Sensei's Divining Top

4 Force of Will
3 Counterspell
3 Spell Snare

4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Path to Exile
3 Engineered Explosives
2 Wrath of God
1 Humility
1 Vindicate

2 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
1 Decree of Justice

Sideboard:

3 Vendilion Clique
2 Ethersworn Canonist
2 Negate
1 Mana Leak
1 Path to Exile
1 Virtue's Ruin
1 Perish
1 Vindicate
1 Disenchant
2 Relic of Progenitus

Wins were against Maverick, BUG Control, UWR Tempo, and Zoo.

Lost to a Standstill mirror (didn't see that coming) and a sketchy game three keep against Canadian Thresh vs the dreaded double Delver draw.

Drew with Geist Maverick as he StP'd his own Knight in response to my Jace bounce on the final turn, forcing the draw instead of the crushing defeat :rolleyes:

Felt pretty confident all day. I had a chance to win every round, but didn't.

Vindicate and Decree of Justice pulled major weight. Loved having them in the deck again. Didn't miss SFM or Snapcaster Mage at all. Also had people boarding wrong the entire day.

salvor

04-15-2012, 04:30 PM

Shawn

04-15-2012, 08:46 PM

Running Liliana would be overly ambitious, at least with the current manabase. the WW spells would have to be dropped; the manabase can't afford UU on turn two, BB on turn 3, and WW turn four with 7 colorless lands and 4 others that only tap for one color.

RogueMTG

04-16-2012, 10:05 AM

Why was vindicate so useful for you? What was main targets? Why no liliana maindeck?*if you're playing black, liliana is awesome with standstill*. Only two jace's?

Isn't red better then black? Bolts gives you better first turn removal vs aggro (better that paths). Did you tried red versions?

Wonder if isochron scepter is viable as 3-4 mana unboltable,unattackable planeswalker (jace with bs, ajani with fire//ice).

Wanted to try this deck, but looks like noone is playing it. That's why I'm wondering.

The black splash is very small, it's mainly for EE at 3. I prefer it over red because of having access to Vindicate and the three mana sweepers (Perish/Virtue's Ruin). Also Bolt forces you to fetch for your splash color early on to use it when it's relevant. Path lets you fetch up basics and it gets better as the game goes longer. Being able to remove big Knights and Terravores and Goyfs is definitely relevant.

Liliana is acceptable in BUGx Landstill where they have the manabase to support her and things like LftL to make use of her +1. Here she's just not viable. Standstill or not, this deck doesn't ever want to discard cards.

I feel like any more than two Jace is incorrect. You don't want to get Jace flooded, and often Elsepth is just better. For example, in my BUG matchup, I'm facing down his board of Jace + Liliana. I slam my Elspeth... and she just wins it. The other walkers can not compete. The 2/2 split has been wonderful, I've been running it like that for a long time.

What makes Vindicate so good is its versatility. Things I blew up with Vindicate on Saturday include:

Jace
Elspeth
Gaddock Teeg
Basic Island
Pernicious Deed
Batterskull
Umezawa's Jitte

Scepter has been tried in the past. Some people like it, I personally don't. It opens you up too much to getting 2 for 1'd, which is exactly the kind of thing you're supposed to be doing to other people. It's a dead card on it's own and a horrible top-deck.

Good luck if you decide to pick the deck up in some form. It's a lot of fun.

dal9ll

04-18-2012, 05:31 PM

Is Fire//Ice still viable in UWr builds as a 2-3? Or is it better to just run Bolt?

Goddik

04-18-2012, 06:11 PM

For those mongoose haters out there, i have a feeling that porphory nodes is the shit in the current meta.

Dark Ritual

04-18-2012, 06:35 PM

Porphyry nodes does seem really techy, the only problem is how susceptible it is to qasali pridemage I feel. If it sticks and kills 2 or more dudes, it's great assuming you aren't facing burn or lethal damage.

You could take a leaf out of tempo thresh's book and run forked bolt, as fire//ice looks terrible when you're facing a thalia. 3 mana for a 2 for 1 is alright, but if you're on the draw it's really slow and they could land a knight. While forked bolt just costs 1R sure it's a sorcery but it's still really great against maverick's surplus of X/1's and it's an answer to turn 1 mom, as mom is a major pain if you lack EE in your hand and they untap with it.

EE is really great in the current metagame right now, I'd probably be running with 3 if I were to run this deck. I love how it kills anything relevant sans batterskull.

Vindicate is just a really solid card, that is live in any matchup. That's why it's still run as a sort of flex slot in UWb lists. It's only really weak against combo and it's not spectacular against tempo but it can randomly hose them.

GGoober

04-18-2012, 06:40 PM

EE not destroying the skull itself is still a great card against germ tokens. Saves you a turn, and forces them to bounce batterskull in which you have a second shot at dealing with it by counterspell. I've pulled that off on opponents and have opponents pull that off on me, not a good feeling :P

Koby

04-18-2012, 07:17 PM

For those mongoose haters out there, i have a feeling that porphory nodes is the shit in the current meta.

*swoon* This is exactly what I've been looking for to beat dumb creature decks.

Shawn

04-18-2012, 09:40 PM

Shhh, don't tell anyone. I bought two Russian ones prior to the GP, but I haven't even tried them out yet. I've been toying with Lingering Souls to some success, but I am unhappy with the numbers of my current list. However, Lingering Souls t3 into Jace or Humility turn 4 is a really good feeling.

Kaslan

04-19-2012, 01:17 AM

Hey guys,
I'v been toying around we ''Devastating Tide'' and I came up with this list:
Instant:(20)
4*Swords to Plowshares
4*Force Of Will
4*Spell Snare
4*Brainstorm
4*Counterspell

Enchantment:(5)
4*Standstill
1*Humility

Plainswalker:(4)
2*Elspeth
2*Jace, the Mind Sculptor

Artifact:(4)
4*Sensei's Divining Top

Sorcery:(4)
++++++++++4*Devastating Tide+++++++++++++

Land:(23)
4*Tundra
4*Mishra's Factory
2*Wasteland
3*Islands
1*Plains
9*Fetch

Devastating Tide
Sorcery 3UU
Return all nonland permanents to their owners' hands.
Miracle 1U

I think this card can replace Wrath of God in this deck.
-Can be easily cast for its miracle cost during the opponents turn.
-Can be pitched to force of will.
-Takes care of any permanent that did not get countered (not only creatures).
-5 mana to return all permanents ( if not cast for it's miracle cost ) it's fine

HPB_Eggo

04-20-2012, 08:29 AM

Kaslan

04-20-2012, 09:08 AM

I honestly think Terminus is the better solution, especially if you're looking to win with non-land permanents, i.e. Planeswalkers. Bouncing a walker after +1ing it a bunch is a terrible loss of tempo.

For reference, this is Terminus:

http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=130273&d=1334808088

One mana, slightly-better-than-WoG. If your list runs SDT, you can pretty much always Miracle it. Unlike Devastating Tide, it leaves the permanents you need on the table, and just removes one of the most common threats - creatures.

Don't get me wrong, Devastating Tide is good, but should probably be in the SB, not in the MD. Terminus solves a big problem that constantly occurs without hosing you in any way. Moreover, there are other good ways to hose most non-creature threats, i.e. Spell Pierce, Oblivion Ring, etc., etc.

I agree that 1 mana Wrath effect is very good but when you cant cast it at it miracle cost 6 mana is a lot.

You say that bouncing your permanents is bad(Planeswalkers) if you're ahead on the board just don't play Devastating Tide and keep it in hand, brainstorm it away or pitch it to force of will.

If you're Not ahead on the board, you should not play your win con (Planeswalkers) until you stabilize.

Devastating Tide adds a new dimension to this deck. Normally this deck lost to Vial ( you needed to 2 for 1 your self in your opponents turn or lost the game) but now you have a turn 3-4-5 out to Vial, Enchantress, goblins if you have a top you can even blow out a hive mind player in response of him playing a pact ( magical Christmas land )

Devastating Tide deals with any permanent. That's why I think it's a 4 of in this deck.

klaus

04-20-2012, 09:10 AM

Terminate :cool: damn you Wizards, you're making the sky fall.

I anticipate a ban guys..

HPB_Eggo

04-20-2012, 09:23 AM

I agree that 1 mana Wrath effect is very good but when you cant cast it at it miracle cost 6 mana is a lot.

You will never be casting it for a cost other than the Miracle cost. Trust me. I've been testing a list with 4 Brainstorm, 3 SDT, and 2 JTMS, and the chances of not being able to play it for its miracle cost are essentially zero.

You say that bouncing your permanents is bad(Planeswalkers) if you're ahead on the board just don't play Devastating Tide and keep it in hand, brainstorm it away or pitch it to force of will.

The fact is, bouncing a walker is bad for us in nearly every case. Terminus lets you react to a threat played after your walker without losing all that tempo. Trust me when I say that's an important aspect of the card.

If you're Not ahead on the board, you should not play your win con (Planeswalkers) until you stabilize.

Many mid-range decks will play out threats after you play a walker. See above.

Devastating Tide adds a new dimension to this deck. Normally this deck lost to Vial ( you needed to 2 for 1 your self in your opponents turn or lost the game) but now you have a turn 3-4-5 out to Vial, Enchantress, goblins if you have a top you can even blow out a hive mind player in response of him playing a pact ( magical Christmas land )

It's a sorcery. You can't use it during the other player's turn. Moreover, Vial is no longer a significant enough part of the meta to make winning or losing against a viable argument, at least for the moment.

Devastating Tide deals with any permanent. That's why I think it's a 4 of in this deck.

It deals with all permanents. That's a problem for us. It makes it more of a SB card against decks where we need to actually deal with a large number of non-creature permanents.

Most important of all, bouncing is not a real removal mechanic, so you cannot actually stabilize the board by playing Devastating Tides, you can simply delay. Playing 4 MD means you have less actual answers, meaning delaying is less powerful. I could see one or two, but four simply isn't a good option.