[Deck] Dreadstill - Enter the Fist

Counterbalance Top allows you to have a great game against Zoo, and many other decks in the format. Not only can you play "Protect the Nought," which is helpful in and of itself, you can also end the game for some decks, then lay down the Nought.

CB-Top allows you to have a decent game against Zoo if you can get it online. You can counter all their 1 drops most of the time, so they can't burn you out. Kira doesn't protect you from being burned in the face and killed. They can just go "Bolt, Chain lightning, Bolt, Price of Progress, Fireblast. Win?"

CB-Top also gives you a real edge against Combo. Most of the time, Combo either tries to take your Force of Will, or build up enough protection and play so many things you can't counter them all, then they Chant you. With CB-Top on board, you just counter their relevant spells with CB, then hard counter spells you can't touch (ex. Iggy) with real counters.

It is a bit slow, I'll be honest. I'm not as much of a fan as I am having something else, but it is very good against a variety of matchups, I still keep it in because its just SO good against so many things, it can be better than having extra Engineered Explosives or what have you.

Hope this helps!

-Matt

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Originally Posted by sdematt

Counterbalance Top allows you to have a great game against Zoo, and many other decks in the format. Not only can you play "Protect the Nought," which is helpful in and of itself, you can also end the game for some decks, then lay down the Nought.

CB-Top allows you to have a decent game against Zoo if you can get it online. You can counter all their 1 drops most of the time, so they can't burn you out. Kira doesn't protect you from being burned in the face and killed. They can just go "Bolt, Chain lightning, Bolt, Price of Progress, Fireblast. Win?"

CB-Top also gives you a real edge against Combo. Most of the time, Combo either tries to take your Force of Will, or build up enough protection and play so many things you can't counter them all, then they Chant you. With CB-Top on board, you just counter their relevant spells with CB, then hard counter spells you can't touch (ex. Iggy) with real counters.

It is a bit slow, I'll be honest. I'm not as much of a fan as I am having something else, but it is very good against a variety of matchups, I still keep it in because its just SO good against so many things, it can be better than having extra Engineered Explosives or what have you.

Hope this helps!

-Matt

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Oh yes, I'm a bit more clear now on the matter. Thanks for the polite response. I always expected just a fast naught to be able to win it... Do you ever side out CBT in the non-zoo, non combo match ups then? Just to give it a more combo feeling.

I don't think I've ever sided out Tops, but I do tend to side out Counterbalances in matchups where it is not as crucial: Ex. Goblins or Merfolk. In those matchups, you're trying to race them, whereas with Zoo, you'd like to CounterBalance lock them out, then combo.

Merfolk and Goblins can get around your Counterbalance via Aether Vial, and also run a more loose curse (not so much focused on CMC 1 and 2, and moreso on 2, 3). In this matchup, I usually side out Standstills and Counterbalance for Firespouts and the like.

Counterbalance is/theoretically seems terrible in the Landstill matchup, as the stuff that matters to them (Wishes, Jace, etc.) are at awkward converted mana costs. I'd take it out here.

I'm curious as to how Dreadstill handles the UBG Landstill matchup. Seems pretty difficult with 4 Deeds and 4 Innocent Blood. In a way, floating 3 on Counterbalance wouldn't be a bad thing.

Hope this clears stuff up! :D

-Matt

Participated in the Ovinogeddon 5 with Dreadstill. The build was similar to my last list, -1 Jace, +1 Academy Ruins and some further manabase changes to support some different sideboard options. The deck didn't work very well and I had a hard time at this tournament. Got in at a 26th place of roughly 350 players going 6-2-1. This is a very disappointing result.
In the end I had 2 Byes there, because I am really that awesome, and still scrubbed out.

1. Bye
2. Bye
3. UGrw Bant Survival 0-2
4. Enchantress 1-1
5. Rw Goblins 2-0
6. Zoo 2-0
7. Zoo 2-1
8. Aggro Rock 0-2
9. Zoo 2-1

The Bant Survival deck was not very well tweaked (running Anger + Vengevine + Rofelos), but he absolutely devastated me in about 10 minutes 2-0. I didn't draw bad here at all, but he got the nuts here in both games. He drew more Survivals and Forces in both games than I could counter.

Game 2 He decided to completely pawn me. After I have assembled counterbalance + Top he drops 2x Jace(1x Countered), 1x Trygon Predator, 2x Vengevine, 1x Anger and I don't manage to get a 3 or 4 on top.

Against Enchantress I lost game 1 after keeping the following hand on the draw: 2 Stifle, 1 Dreadnought, 1 FoW, 1 Brainstorm, 1 Spell Snare, 1 Island. I never found my second mana.

G2 I mulled to 5 and somehow could grind it out with CB + Top + Jace + Academy Ruins + Explosives.

G3 we went to time after I mulled to 6 again and would have lost horribly.

For the rest of the day the deck did what it is good at and destroyed Zoo. The Goblin player was rather inexperienced and consequently doesn't tell much about the matchup which isn't that good.

While Aggro Rock (list was like the 8th place list from GP Columbus piloted by Brad Nelson) certainly isn't that good of a matchup, I couldn't win here as he got the nuts g1 while I mulliganed to 6 on the draw.

There was no G2 as I got a game loss for being too late. Postboard my chances of winning here would be greatly increased with the removal spells from the board.

In the end I was very unsatisfied with my result and several other good players from my car played the same deck and were also rather disappointed by how it performed. The tournament was really bad organized as there was 1 single toilet for 350 people and that could not be locked. People were seated so tightly, that they were playing with each other's elbows in the face and the location was an old fabric hall or garage that was much too small and dirty for that many people. While at the location one could buy some sandwiches, we were in some industrial area with no restaurant or mall anywhere in the next 5 miles.

Pairings and time were announced in Italian exclusively, even after many players asked for some English announcements. Some of my opponents and especially even some judges understood no English at all. And while I certainly played against some nice guys during the tournament about 3 of my opponents were total pricks for throwing their cards at me after having lost or insulting me with some "Puta Madre, Stronzo, Cazzo, Faccia de Merda..." without any reason (like for a blind CB reveal or getting a T2 Dreadnought). One of my Zoo opponents was heavily slow playing after having won G1. So I called a judge and he was like best friends with my opponent and didn't care at all while my opponent took like 5 minutes to figure out which land to get with a Wooded Foothills on turn 10 with roughly 5 in play already. After my opponent lost G2 of the same match he called exactly the same judge again to get some Italian rulings or wordings of cards I played as he didn't understand my english explanations. We still got no single minute of extra time, even if the whole thing took roughly 10 minutes and there were 5 minutes left for G3. (where I totally annihilated him with Top-> CB->Nought->Nought->Firespout and got called Faccia de Merda for my draw.)


I have never been to a tournament with such a bad location and atmosphere. All the people playing the deck had mediocre results and the deck seems to be pretty weak against Vengevine Survival decks and Rock of any kind. This probably makes it a very bad choice in the current metagame due to those 2 decks being rather popular right now. I am yet deciding if I will continue to run this deck after having played it for more than 2 years to great success now as all people have had rather badish results with it lately.

CB + Top seems to be unspectacular without a sufficient amount of removal, Dreadnoughts don't win that many games any more and my Wasteland + Stifle package only seems to prevent my opponents from getting totally flooded. But maybe I am just pissed at the moment about my performance and the deck is still good as it gave me 5-1 or similar results every time I played it during the last events I participated in.


@sdematt: Ubg Landstill is a fine matchup because you drop Counterbalance on them, Stifle their Deeds and they don't beat Planeswalkers + REB's postboard (especially my Elspeth in the board). You can lose this easily of course because that deck is rather strong in the control mirror, but especially their weak manabase and the weaknes of Pernicious Deed to Stifle effects makes this matchup very decent. Take out your Noughts and Dazes for some Planeswalkers, Plains, REB's and 1-2 StoP effects to protect your planeswalkers from factory.

Thanks for the advice, Muradin.

I'm going to a tournament for a Moat on Saturday, and I'm thinking about running Dreadstill.

I expect to see Aggro Loam, Storm Combo, Dredge, Zoo, and possibly Vengvival but no Rock (since I'm the only guy locally who plays it) or Landstill.

Any sideboard tips? Should I splash for White or keep the Black for Perish?

-Matt

Muradin I recommend testing the Standstill builds again if you're having trouble against Survival-Esque decks. Literally any time I ever played any Survival MU I just wanted to see Standstill in my hand. This is definetally a MU you want to see Standstills badly.

Also don't get discouraged from a sub-par result. You will be fine with the deck just need to keep truckin. Once you've mastered this deck it's pretty damn solid right now.

So I did some testing with the following decklist, and I was pretty impressed


2 Volcanic Island
1 Underground Sea
4 Island
1 Academy Ruins
2 Scalding Tarn
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Mishra's Factory
4 Wasteland

3 Phyrexian Dreadnought
3 Trinket Mage

4 Stifle
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
3 Spell Snare
3 Daze
4 Force of Will
3 Counterbalance
4 Brainstorm
4 Standstill
3 Sensei's Divining Top
2 Engineered Explosives


I realize now that there are actually 4 (5 in some builds) indepentant strategies that mesh together, and that many games of Dreadstill, even against similar matchups, will play out differently depending on what you end up with in your opener.

1) Stifle-Wasteland mana denial, possibly augmented by crucible lock post SB
2) Stifle-Phyrexian Dreadnaught beatdown plan, with counter backup for path and the like
3) Standstill+Mishra's factory to accrue card advantage, with a possible long-game grindout via ruins/crucible recursion
4) Counterbalance-Sensei's Divining top soft lock.
5) Jace your face.

These strategies complement each other to a certain extent-for instance, if you stifle a fetch T1, you'll be in fine position to set up counter-top, jace, land-still, or stifle-naught in the near term. Jace is nice because it gives us a way to win the game that's not creature-dependant, because he gives the pre-board mono-blue dreadstill lists a reliable way to handle large creatures(e.g. Tombstalker, Emrakul, etc.), and because his card filtering blows even games wide open. To fit him in, I cut down 1 trickbind and 1 Dreadnought, and so far I am impressed.

I think that the SB probably needs reconfiguration, though.

If you want to see what I have been doing with Dreadstill lately, this article might be worth reading.
http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/e...readstill.html

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Originally Posted by The Atog Lord

If you want to see what I have been doing with Dreadstill lately, this article might be worth reading.
http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/e...readstill.html

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Well, the article was a good read!

With Both Bob and Standstill you probably find a way to draw cards and that's good. Unfortunately slots in this deck are really tight, I agree that Jace must be played and Peacekeeper sounds like an interesting tech!
Onyways having 2 Daze and 2 Spell Snare looks quite random.. Also from my experience the deck really benefits from a 4th Counterbalance, but as I already mentioned the slots are really tight.

Anyways congrats on the solid list and on the finish!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by The Atog Lord

If you want to see what I have been doing with Dreadstill lately, this article might be worth reading.
http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/e...readstill.html

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woah, nice and VERY interesting read! we definately need to have a discussion going around this SB plan, with the rise of emrakul decks and having no real sollution to tribal decks. Maybe this is it? also, running confidant with top is just great!

I would imagine that the peacekeeper is a pretty strong strategy against the UG survival deck as well...

One question regarding the number of Engineered Explosives, i agree that 1 EE is enough in the maindeck, but i feel a little bit uncomfortable with no further EEs in the board. Most concerning is a resolved Chalice for two, as your only additional cards against it are Spell Pierces. With the current metagame in mind it might work out okay i guess.

I will definitly test your list, it looks very well rounded and thought through - great job!

I'd certainly like having another Engineered Explosives. But sideboard space is hard to find. Until the metagame shifts to really mandate that second EE, I don't see how to fit it in.

All right, so Peacekeeper is obviously the future. Having one card that really sticks it to Merfolk, Show and Tell, Ichorid and U/G Madness, Reanimator and to a much lesser extent Dragon Stompy is awesome.

So Rich's deck is pretty awesome, but I have a couple of problems with it.
-I really hate running 4 Dreadnoughts with only 5 Stifle effects. Having Dreadnoughts stuck in the hand is the worst.
-Running only 2 Daze and 2 Spell Snare isn't very much countermagic. I have always liked 6 counterspells besides Force, and 5 is about the minimum I can accept.
-Only 1 EE between the MD and SB.
-Having a two color manabase would mean more basics.
-A White anti aggro card that synergized well with Peacekeeper might make cutting Perish a more reasonable possibility.
These factors left me wanting the stability Uw version over Dark Confidant. So I was thinking about something like this:

4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
3 Trinket Mage

4 Stifle
2 Trickbind
3 Spell Snare
2 Daze
4 Force of Will

4 Brainstorm

3 Sensei's Divining Top
3 Standstill
3 Counterbalance
2 Jace
2 Engineered Explosives

Sideboard: 15
1 Plains
1 Relic of Progenitus
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Pithing Needle
1 Jace
4 Perimeter Captain
3 Peacekeeper
3 Spell Pierce

The only thing I changed in the MD from a normal deck version is -1 Standstill, +1 EE, since we don't have that many answers to Counterbalance, and there wasn't much room in the SB for it. The big question for me is, what should the sideboard look like? Specifically, how is the aggro match up going to be dealt with?

Perimeter Captain seems good against Zoo and Goblins. Against Goblins, he will eat primarily Weirding but possibly other removal that would hit Dreadnoughts and Peacekeeper, all the while warding off Goblin Lackey and gaining life. Against Zoo, he will buy time and hopefully eat Path to Exile (Zoo often sides out their burn for REBs and Grips against us, so its better than you might think). I figure you don't bring The Captain in against Merfolk, since their creatures will probably be unblockable and they don't have any removal we need to deal with.

Peacekeeper makes Perimeter Captain significantly better against Goblins and Zoo since our opponent's removal will be at a premium in those match-ups, hopefully making up for the shortcomings of The Captain not being Swords to Plowshares.

Pithing Needle obviously gets Vial and other typical targets, but it also seems to me that a mixture of Needle, Crypt, Relic, Counterbalance, Jace and most importantly Peacekeeper could somehow get you there against Lands.

I really like that this deck has 3 Spell Pierce in the board. Ur Dreadstill didn't really have space for Spell Pierce in the sideboard (if you wanted Lightning Bolt, ReB and Perish, also) which made Ancient Tomb and Combo matchups tougher than I would like. However, with Peacekeeper, REB isn't needed for Merfolk so we can run Spell Pierce guilt free. Huzzah!

-Any thoughts on Perimeter Captain? Suggestions for other cards that are good against both Zoo and Goblins? Ideally something better then Swords to Plowshares, since that card isn't the best answer to the Goblins matchup.
-This deck should definitely run another non-Tundra-blue-dual, and a 1-2 card splash in the SB of that color would be acceptable, but what color? Tropical Island and Krosan Grip would be sweet since we don't have much in the board against them, however Jace would become that Krosan Grip, and I am not sure if Grip is better than Jace. Underground Sea could bring Perish. Volcanic Island would ideally be used for a card that was good against a deck that didn't run wasteland, making Firespout a somewhat suboptimal candidate (plus it isn't great with the Peacekeeper strategy), but perhaps there is something better. Maybe just Crucible of Worlds and a random dual.

Just a quick note to say i played Rich's list at a small local tourney (with only a couple of changes in the sideboard: a fourth StP and E.E. for a Relic and something else). We only played four rounds of swiss, finishing 4-0 more or less comfortably. The matchups were as follows:

R1 vs Belcher (2-0): these were basically two no-games where he mulliganed a lot and i was playing counterspells...

R2 vs Rock (2-0): turn two Dreadnought on game one and he had no answer. A turn two Bob won me game two going all the way whilst giving me stupid card advantage all the way.

R3 vs SuiBlack (2-0): Exactly the same as the previous round. Peacekeeper would have been great in this matchup since i only need to protect it from Smother but it only occured to me after presenting my deck. But Top + Dark Confidant was good enough anyway.

R4 vs Survival Madness (2-0): I sideboarded out all Dreadnoughts and went for the Peacekeeper plan with Bob as card advantage engine. My opponent didn't expect Peacekeeper and couldn't do anything about it. Then it was just a matter of resolving Jace.

Not the strongest meta but the deck was just perfect. Although the number of counterspells is too low, as BKclassic mentioned, the card advantage provided by Dark Confidant makes up for it.

On second thought i really would like to see the second EE in here. Not because of Chalice, but because of CB and its versatilty against all kinds of stuff.

To make room in the board i currently see two possibilties:
- Cut Spell Pierce down to 2: I vie SP as the most cuttable card in the board. The remaining two can be swapped with either Daze or Spell Snare after boarding. Ofcourse its nice to have three but is the third stronger than an EE? As mentioned the deck is low on answers to resolved permanents (outside of creatures), therefore the EE might be better.

- Move the SB Plains to the maindeck by cutting a Mishars F.: In my opinion it is okay to run just 3 Mishras with only 3 Standstills. Only problem is that their internal synergy (the pump effect) gets weaker.


Regarding BK's post:
-I do think that the 4 FoW + 4 additional CS setup is okay. Especially with the insane amounts of draw this versions features. The total number of CS is three less compared to the first Ur build (4 Daze / 3 Snare), but there 4 more cards, which let you draw faster through your deck (+3 Bob, +2 Jace, -1 Standstill).

-Three colours is not really unstable here, the three basic Island (instead of just one or zero) are a testament of this. It also increases the power of EE as a sideeffect. Perimeter Captain does not fullfil the same role as Perish, as it doesnt stop a larger Goyf, Knight or Vore. Gaining life that way is not bad, but overall i think that the card is a little bit underpowered.

Good to see such a healthy discussion.

Regarding the stability of the manabase, I've not had an issue with that. Having Black means having Dark Confidant, and he does a lot to ensure that you make all your land drops. I fear that, if Black were cut, the manabase would in fact become less consistent.

BK: Your concept is to cut draw from the deck to add more of all of the non-draw types of cards. You want to have more counters, more combo pieces (Stifles), and more stable mana. But having draw in the deck lets you run smaller numbers of all of these types of cards. More draw lets you have fewer counters, fewer combo pieces, and be a bit more aggressive with the manabase. I have more more counters and more mana in the sideboard, actually. But for the maindeck, these have been sufficient.

I doubt that Perimeter Captain is the way to go. He's worse than Swords since they can just remove him. Swords has value against many decks, including decks like Merfolk which can nullify Perimeter Captain via Lord of Atlantis. And against Burn, I like the idea of being able to run out a Dreadnought, stack its self-removal ability, and then eat it for 12 life.

Hi guys i think i am gonnat raise Dreadstill again the next days since i like the deck a tad more than UGR Tempo i played al lot the last year. Is UR getting unatractive at the current metagame? (past GenCon etc) i think i prefer the UR build over the UGR build at the moment but i am not able/willable to put Jace in this Deck its awesome but when i tested it i rarely played it.

I like the UBW list but i am actually out of $ at the moment so i can't affort Usea/Tundra and stuck at the 3 colors above.
First list i would give a try (recently untested):

3 Dreadnought
3 Trinket Mage
2 Vendilion Clique

2 Predict
3 Standstill
4 Brainstorm
3 Daze
3 Spell Snare
4 Stifle
4 Force of Will
2 Engineered explosives
3 senseis divining top
3 Counterbalance
1 Trickbind

4 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand
4 Volcanic Island
4 Wasteland
4 Mishras factory
3 Island

Sideboard will be posted when i am sure how to set up the maindeck. I liked the idea of predict and found it as pretty usefull to this deck but i din't want to cut standstill completly as its a powerhouse for this deck so i made a 2/3 split hoping i can draw into each other.
I use Vendilion Clique at the 2 slots the other people use jace at the moment but i explained why and also clique isn't bad at all.

I am thinking about taking Dreadstill to a local tournament. Now, I was wondering and I am asking for your opinion: What do you guys think about engineered plague in the sideboard? I never see it in a list, but it is good against merfolk and goblins.

I'm not understanding why people feel it necessary to run multiple copies of EE. The card is quite handy as a 1-of in the instances we wish Trinket Mage to remove something on the board, but in my experience there are not a great many instances where we want to perform this action twice in one game. Certainly, I cannot remember the last time I lost a game because I had access to only one EE. I think a card like Pithing Needle goes a long way in helping the EE out, considering we can use Needle as a veritable answer to many permanents such as Survival of the Fittest or perhaps an enemy Planeswalker.