[Deck] Ultimate Walker

Tacosnape, I really like the playset of Jace. I hope people start to realize soon that he is the single best card printed for control in a long time. I've been running 4 in various Landstill builds (Ugbw and UWr) for ages and I'm never going back to less than 3. But I do have some issues with the list you've posted:

0) I realize that the entire point of Walker is to not run Standstill, but it is still the best draw engine at a U-control decks disposal. Why? Because an early Standstill will either be an Ancestral Recall for 2 mana, or it will slow the game down to draw-land-go, which is just as beneficial. If your opponent is not playing spell and just dropping lands, that means you have more time to drop lands and set yourself up for the lategame. Seeing as how this is a control deck, time to set up is better than card advantage, as your lategame drops will out-class their lower mana drops. The ability to Swords a 1 drop or drop a EE for 1 and then drop Standstill simply outclasses every other draw engine available (except for Jace of course). The only matchup where Standstill is anything short of amazing is against Vial decks like Gobs and Folk (more on that soon).

1) I like the lower mana-curve, but your manabase sacrifices color-consistency for a *slight* increase of resiliency against Wasteland. I say slight because you still run 8 duals and 4 Factories, and will undoubtedly draw 1 in the early game. You run 23 lands, and 6 of them don't tap for blue, making it difficult to cast a T2 Counterspell. In addition, you have 3 EE, 3 Vindicate, and 4 Jace, all of which are color intensive and running basics plus Factories decreases the likelihood of playing those cards early (you know, when your fighting just to stabilize and stay alive). Also, I understand Factory is badass, but you run nothing to take advantage of it. No Standstill, no Crucible, no Humility, no Elspeth. Protecting Jace and being a detergent to little dudes is nice, but the Wasteability of it and the fact that it doesn't tap for colored mana is pretty significant.

2) Understandable. You can't solve every problem preboard and Spell Snare is pretty amazing right now.

3) 4 Plagues says you don't fear Goblins or Dredge. That's it. Those are just about the only matchups where Plague is a significant bomb. Unless you have two out, it's a Thunderstaff against Fish. It only kills a max of 8 dudes without a lord in play (Cursecatcher and Adept), and most Fish builds run 12 lords (LoA, Reerjay, Commander). You only have 4 Swords for cheap, targetted removal, and the rest is either slow (Vindicate, EE) or untargetted (Edict). You'll also be playing it on T4 or later (unless you like to get blow out by Daze/Spell Pierce), and that gives them plenty of time to shit out a few lords or put you in the danger zone (6-7 life or less). Many Fish builds run a few Needles in the board, and Needle on Factory or Jace is pretty shitty. Your draw engine (Visions) conveniently triggers their draw engine (Standstill) and won't net you a single card until T5 at the earliest (unless it eats a Stifle). Basically, Merfolk, one of the most common matchups in Legacy for a variety of reasons, and the premier "anti-blue" deck, straight blows you out barring terrible draws on their part and nut-draws on yours. For this reason most importantly, I suggest (see section 4)...

4) Red is better than Black. But Red AND Black are better than either. Why? Aggro, Blue, and Extirpate. Forsaking Red means you lose out on 2 of the best cards control can run in Legacy: Firespout and Red Blasts. Firespout is simply the best card available to you in the Merfolk, Zoo, Goblins, and other random aggro decks (like DnT, Elves, GW Survival). It's a 3 mana sweeper with easier color requirements. The ease of cast-ability and efficiency of it give it so much power. Even fetching a Volc against one of the aforementioned will change how the opponent plays. Nobody likes to get blown out due to a sweeper, so they'll often use more conservative play, giving you more time to draw gas and additional answers. REB/Pyroblast are amazing for reasons I shouldn't have to explain. In any given metagame, you can reasonably expect 35-40% of the field to be blue. That's a 1 mana Vindicate or Counterspell in 35-40% of your matchups. It gives you a significant boost in the Fish matchup, better game against CB and other U-control like Landstill, and additional cards to side in during the Storm matchup (which is not a great matchup).
The merit of black is questionable depending on metagame. The main reasons to run black are 1) Extirpate (huge), 2) Plague (relavant), 3) Perish (depends on metagame and MD choices), and 4) Vindicate (a solid, but never amazing pick). VVSur's prevalence is enough reason alone to run Extirpate x3, but the rest are arguable, especially with your choice of 3 MD Edicts as an out to Prog making Perish less significant.
I see no reason what so ever that you couldn't drop the Swamp and 1-2 Seas for a few Volcanics to significantly increase your game against both Aggro and Blue decks, while at t. Giving your EE's the ability to hit PWs (which you admit is a major PW for the deck) is significant. In a month (more than likely), Extirpate's value will drop significantly due to lack of VVSur and a predictable rise of both CB-decks and various aggro will make Black even less useful and probably push Green to be a better splash color (KGrip, FS for flyers, Nature's Claim), but that is completely arguable.

Really, Walker is a badass deck, and a blast to play, but there just isn't a U-control deck that can handle VVSur AND Merfolk AND Storm effectively enough (except Deedstill) to warrant play right now. Good VVSur pilots can play around hate pretty well and they know how to avoid Extirpate blowouts and common hate like Needle, Crypt/Relic. The ability for the deck to just slow roll you by hardcasting Vines and running us out of removal/countering it is just too hard to handle. You may win a few games against bad pilots, but anybody worth their salt playing the deck is going to know what your siding in before you scoop up your cards.

If VV (or Survival) gets banned though, this deck could definitely be a contender. The only problem I see is lack of a consistent, fast, and efficient draw engine. Visions is just too slow and is a terrible topdeck. Standstill is terribad against Vial decks. FoF is 4 mana. Jace, The Man Who Wins Games is probably the best engine available, but that puts you in the decision of using him to draw cards or "race" by Fatesealing. We need something to supplement him in the mean time. I have a UWrg list that is reasonably effective against an open meta, but just scoops it up to VVSur. So we'll see where the deck will go come December 20th.

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Originally Posted by Mana Drain

0) I realize that the entire point of Walker is to not run Standstill, but it is still the best draw engine at a U-control decks disposal. Why? Because an early Standstill will either be an Ancestral Recall for 2 mana, or it will slow the game down to draw-land-go, which is just as beneficial. If your opponent is not playing spell and just dropping lands, that means you have more time to drop lands and set yourself up for the lategame. Seeing as how this is a control deck, time to set up is better than card advantage, as your lategame drops will out-class their lower mana drops. The ability to Swords a 1 drop or drop a EE for 1 and then drop Standstill simply outclasses every other draw engine available (except for Jace of course). The only matchup where Standstill is anything short of amazing is against Vial decks like Gobs and Folk (more on that soon).

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You're talking to the man who would rank Standstill #2 on his list of favorite cards ever printed. Yet I can't run it for several reasons:

First off, I like running basics. I like how many games I don't lose to Wasteland mana denial shenanigans where other Landstill decks would. I love being able to roll into three basics and not care what my fourth land drop is because it's making Jace hit the table and that's the only thing I need it for. Because I like my three basics, I run no other manlands than Mishra's Factory. And I don't run Wasteland, because I'm not going to attempt mana denial, I need double blue as much as possible, and I can handle any rogue problem lands with Vindicate. The point of all of this is that I'm terrible under a Standstill. Standstill doesn't help me at all against Merfolk, Dredge, or Landstill, and while it can be helpful against Goblins, Ancestral Visions is better. Plus, when you don't have a clock to back it up, good players tend to crack Standstill with an instant on your end step with 7 cards in your hand, so you actually turn Standstill into draw three, discard three.

On TOP of all this, in any situation where I lead with a fetchland, the opponent drops a non-fetch land, 1-drop creature, I EOT fetch and Swords, then dropped a turn two Standstill? I have to know for a fact my opponent isn't packing a playset of Wastelands. Because now my deck is thinner, and I have four Factories to their four Wastelands, and there's a chance that I'm STILL going to have to break the Standstill unless I want to risk an Instant war to deck them when we're both below 3 cards.

So the point of this, given that I'm not going to warp my manabase to the point where Wasteland shenanigans slaughter me, I play Ancestral Visions. It's been a monster for me. I like it better than Standstill, Predict, Ponder, Preordain, or any other option I have here.

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1) I like the lower mana-curve, but your manabase sacrifices color-consistency for a *slight* increase of resiliency against Wasteland. I say slight because you still run 8 duals and 4 Factories, and will undoubtedly draw 1 in the early game. You run 23 lands, and 6 of them don't tap for blue, making it difficult to cast a T2 Counterspell. In addition, you have 3 EE, 3 Vindicate, and 4 Jace, all of which are color intensive and running basics plus Factories decreases the likelihood of playing those cards early (you know, when your fighting just to stabilize and stay alive). Also, I understand Factory is badass, but you run nothing to take advantage of it. No Standstill, no Crucible, no Humility, no Elspeth. Protecting Jace and being a detergent to little dudes is nice, but the Wasteability of it and the fact that it doesn't tap for colored mana is pretty significant.

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We've already established why I don't run Standstill. Crucible is useless without Wasteland or some other land to abuse it, and I don't need that engine. Humility and Elspeth defeat your own argument by making my deck more color intensive than it is now.

My manabase is absolutely fantastic. As for turn two Counterspells, you'd be amazed how little I actually attempt to do this. There's very very little I need a turn two Counterspell for that I can't answer with Force, Snare, Swords, Vindicate, EE, or something else. Counterspells come in between turns three and four, and help me keep everything under control once Jace hits the board. In some matches, sure, absolutely, I start firing them off turn two. More likely though, I'll be suspending a Visions and keeping a mana open to Snare, or firing off an EOT Edict, or something along those lines. Depends on the matchup and what you have to fetch.

And I completely understand your logic about Factory. The neat part is? Factory still works. People don't draw as many Wastelands as I draw Factories. Ever. Because my card advantage engine is second to none in a long game. And if they do? Oh well. Jace decks people.

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3) 4 Plagues says you don't fear Goblins or Dredge. That's it. Those are just about the only matchups where Plague is a significant bomb.

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This is where you're wrong.

Engineered Plague IS the single best sideboard card in Legacy. Or close to it. It's at least top 5. It's good against well more than just Goblins and Dredge.

If it kills eight guys against Merfolk, fantastic! Swords, Snare, Force, Counter, Edict, Vindicate, and Engineered Explosives say I can at least put up a fair effort at keeping Lords off the table. Get two against a clear board and it's over. Pretty neat. Also, you're wrong about playing it on turn four or later. You walk Plague into the Daze almost every time. If it fails, you bought yourself tempo by them missing a land drop. Also, Pithing Needle? Engineered Explosives + Vindicate say Pithing Needle's not scary. I've seen well over 15 Needles hit the board against me in the last month or so. I won every single one of these games.

Also, if this wasn't enough, Merfolk is a terrible deck. It's already begun dying out and will only continue to see play by people wanting budget decks that handle combo.

Against Elves, Plague i's face-wrecking. Even if they ramp out a Joraga Warcaller or Elvish Archdruid, There's tons of other removal to kill off Lords. Lords don't negate Plagues against this deck.

It harms some builds of Affinity, and is almost always better than Edict against Affinity. Plague for Beasts to shut off Ravager, or Constructs for Memnites, or whatever. There's plenty of options.

It rocks against Belcher on the play. Plague handles ETW tokens just as well as EE, and you might as well run both. 7 of Belcher's 11 1-Kill condition opening hands will drop an ETW on you and not a Belcher. Stopping the Tokens is huge.

It's also pretty good against random shit like Aluren and some builds of Vengevine Survival (Plague for Humans shuts off both Noble Hierarch and Loyal Retainers, and Plague for Lizards is decent if you manage to Extirpate Vengevine.)

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4) Red is better than Black. But Red AND Black are better than either. Why? Aggro, Blue, and Extirpate. Forsaking Red means you lose out on 2 of the best cards control can run in Legacy: Firespout and Red Blasts.

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In counter,

1. Not dying to Wasteland >> Dying to Wasteland.

2. Engineered Plague >> Firespout. Not in every match, obviously. I miss Firespout against Merfolk. As much as I miss Ajani Vengeant. But in no other match do I miss it. The second best place for Firespout is against Zoo, and I murder Zoo.

3. Unless I for some reason build Imperial Painter or something really weird gets printed / happens to the format, you will never, ever, ever see me pack Red Elemental Blast again in a Legacy deck. I think it's the single most overrated card in the entire format, and if ten pro players, Mr. T, Jason Statham, a roid raged Triple H, and the Lord Jesus Christ all ran four in their sideboard, I'd call them all idiots. So I think splashing a color just for one other card and Red Elemental Blast is an utterly horrid idea.

With 4 brainstorm, 4 jace, 4 AV, and fetches, I would run a misers copy of The Abyss. You are in black, run no creatures, and it paves the way for walkers.

I have been trying to figure out how to pair it with PWs but have not had any time for magic these last few months.

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Originally Posted by conboy31

With 4 brainstorm, 4 jace, 4 AV, and fetches, I would run a misers copy of The Abyss. You are in black, run no creatures, and it paves the way for walkers.

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Believe it or not, I actually did at one point, then I cut it. It was in that spot that the fourth Snare was in, until I realized I was (and still am) losing far more games to problems that Snare or maindeck yard hate better addressed. When I lose a game with this deck (Aside from just bad luck and poor play), it's almost always to one of two things:

1. A deck getting too fast of an opening for me to stabilize.
2. Some graveyard-based strategy.

The Abyss didn't really help any of these things. I found once I had 4 mana, a Jace was just as effective at making sure either that I kept drawing answers to threats or they didn't get more of them.

If I had to face an absolute ton of Zoo and other midrange aggro decks, I'd consider putting it back in. It was fantastic in some situations. But right now I'd rather have that 60th card be Spell Snare #4 (To help problem 1) or a Nihil Spellbomb (To help problem 2.)

Taco, I love your list!

I took it to a small tournament on saturday and split the final. I made small changes:

Academy Ruins for a Flooded Strand
Crucible of Worlds for a Jace

I also amended the sideboard to look like this:

3 Peacekeeper
3 Perish
2 Pithing Needle
3 Extirpate
4 Leyline of Sanctity

The changes in the SB where mainly motivated by my fear of the Survival matchup...and they helped a lot (see report below). We also generally have some amount of Burn.dec and some Storm.dec showing up, hence the Leylines in the SB.

The deck is smooth as silk and a lot more forgiving and easy to play than I expected.

A short matches breakdown is below:

Turn 1: Mono White with Armageddon
Game 1: Early removals and Explosives cycling ftw! Jace comes in to close the deal
Game 2: In Peacekeepers and Needles. She starts putting Needle on Jace and on Explosives, I remove all the threats and wait for a Vindicate to clear the Needle on Explosives. Peacekeeper lands and I defend it from the her StP. We get to turns and she is incapable of killing me.

1 - 0 - 0

Turn 2: AggroLoam
Game 1: he opens with Bloodstained Mire fetching Bayou and I immediately know he is on AggroLoam. I make a stupid mistake and play Ancestral (twice, lol) he plays CoTV at 0 and blanks my draws. I keep the board clear until I land a Jace while he is unlucky and can't get his hands on a Loam. When he does (Jace is close to lethal) I have the counters to prevent any crazy play.
Game 2: I know what to do :) Extirpates and Peacekeepers come in. He tries CotV at 1, I counter and it is downhill from then. When Jace lands he concedes.

2 - 0 - 0

Turn 3: Affinity with Red
Game 1: I know he plays Affinity and I manage to get the Explosives cycle to work early on...not much he can do.
Game 2: I bring in Peacekeepers and Needles. We look at each other while Peacekeeper does its thing...until he manages to shoot it down with me not having enough counters for his REBs and Burn spells...
Game 3: I lock him out but I only have a Jace left and I get it too close to turns to be relevant. At the 5th turn he flings me his Cranial Plated memnite and he is 1 point short of killing me...lucky me :)

2 - 0 - 1

Turn 4: The Gate
Game 1: I know what he plays and he is a good player, I need to play very tight...He puts up pressure but I remove pretty much everything he has, then Jace lands and we go to game 2.
Game 2: I know he is going to bring 4 Extirpates in and I have to make sure I don't give him many chances to use them. I board in the Peacekeepers (you may notice a trend here...). I keep an hand with a Tundra and a Underground Sea...he sees 4 Wastelands :)...but I manage to recover because he is unable to capitalize on his tempo gains. Peacekeeper hits the board and I keep it safe from removal. I get Jace, Mishras and Academy Ruins extirpated (so much for my careful strategy...and wth he saw 4 wastelands and 3 Extirpates !!) but I'm awesome and defend the fort without stalling and end up being 2 cards from being decked in the 5th turn :D

3 - 0 - 1

We go to Top 4 and I get paired up with my buddy playing GW Survival...I'm prepared for this!!

Game 1: I remove the living hell from the board. He manages to land a VV that get StPed and when Jace lands we go to game 2.
Game 2: I HAVE THE SIDEBOARD FOR THIS!! :) Peacekeepers, Needles, Extirpates and Perishes (yes 10 cards :) ) join the fun and we start. He has the nuts draw and I'm incapable of keeping up. Survival never hits the board but I fail to see the right amount of removal (kind of crazy considering how much of it I packed :) ) and we go to G3.
Game 3: Awesome game. We play our best and perish puts him too far back in the race for control. He tries to get back but Jace gives me too much card advantage/quality for him to cope with and he finally concedes.

As you noticed my MVP card has been Peacekeeper, I knew the meta would be aggro orientated and it really helped me win many difficult matches.

In closing I think this is the best answer to the Survival builds around and I really thanks Taco for sharing his list.

That sideboard is sick tech against the Vengevine Survival metagame, I must admit. It's probably better than mine in a top tier metagame, but I face too much Zoo and Goblins to cut BEB, and too much non-storm combo to cut Mage. I like how Peacekeeper got you to turns wins after you'd gone 1-0 twice. It's like stalling with your deck instead of unfair play.

What was the logic behind Leyline of Sanctity, out of curiosity? Defense against both Combo and Burn?

And did the Crucible of Worlds ever come up for you? I don't agree with Crucible in the deck at all, so I'm curious.

The Leylines are are there for the storm combo and burn matchup. The Crucible is more of a paranoia thing that I have in being able to defend the Ruins ;)

I'm doing some testing tonight and going to a tournament (bigger one) on sunday, I'm going to test the 4th Jace in the place of the Crucible and I'll let you know how it goes.

BTW, if Survival gets banned my SB is going to change to look a lot more similar to the one you use...

double post ftl...

I've been playing some with your list Tao and I really like it alot. Only thing I actually miss is the 2nd basic island.

What are your sb plans vs the tier decks ?

Tested yesterday night and the Crucible is gone replaced by the 4th Jace.

I also changed the SB to look like this:

3 Peacekeeper
3 Perish
3 Extirpate
3 Counterbalance
3 Sensei's Divining Top

With the SB listed above I feel a lot more confident against Burn and Combo while improving my matchup with Zoo...thoughts?

@Taco:
I've been tinkering with similar approaches (read: dropping Wrath/Deed for cheaper removal) for years now.
UBW used to be my first colors of choice - I loved Vindicate but came to find it a little too slow - I'd probably not go with more than 2 now. Your 3rd copy would definitely be a Shackles for me.
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Since you dropped Standstill, I see no more reason to actually play Factory. In my experience with such builds you win 95% of your games on Jace's back. Mishra was there for one reason only: force your opponent to break Standstill at one point.
It can come in handy to chumpblock a guy to save Jace for another crucial turn, but more often than not, your opponent will have tons of removal, which clogged up his hand before. I'd say: don't give 'em ANY target at all.
Either way, I'd vote for Academy Ruins, which does win games paired with EE (or death by decking, which has happened quite a few times in my career), even though you have no way to tutor for it, but a lot of games will allow you to go through more than 50% of your library. The EE lock is even more important for spot removal Control decks than for conservative builds, because it's our only means of mass destruction.

On saturday, I played Tacosnape's list in a small, local tournament, with some small changes:

-1 Underground Sea
+1 Island (I'm more comfortable with more basics)

I played the following sideboard:

3 Leyline of Sanctity (large amount of discard present)
3 Peacekeeper (Merfolk, Survival, etc).
2 Path to Exile
3 Extirpate
1 Kataki, War's Wage (knew there was going to be some affinity)
1 Energy Flux (the same)
2 Pithing Needle

R1: Affinity

G1: I mull to five, and can't kill all his threats.
G2: Drop Kataki, protect him from burn, he concedes 2 turns after.
G3: He has a really slow start, playing his first creature on turn 5, and I have an iron grip over everything. However, he draws more and more and MORE creatures (multiple Atogs, Ravagers, etc) while I draw a total of 14 lands, and I'm forced to chump block with the Factories to not die. I then loose as I can't handle his robots.

NOTE: I probably misplayed somewhere along the line, but 14 lands is excessive. At this point, I was extremely pissed off, as I had never lost to Affinity in years, and I'm used to beating the living hell out of it in the old extended, and to a lesser extent, Legacy.

0-1

R2: GW token-gain life-random deck

G1: I counter/kill all his "dangerous" cards, and beat him down with factories.
G2: Peacekeeper stalls the board for 122222 turns (even though he doesn't have removal, he doesn't concede), allowing me to Jace him out.

1-1

R3: UG Vengevival

G1: He gets a slow start, allowing me to explosive (got stifled) and then vindicate his survival, but he then gets another one, which I can't answer, and I loose.
G2: PEACEKEEPER FTW! I slow him down, accumulate counters + extra mana, drop peacekeeper, and then Jace him out.
G3: The same thing as in game 2 happens.

2-1

R4: UB Reanimator

G1: He mulls to 3, enough said.
G2: I keep complete control on everything he does, killing any creature that manages to hit the board, and countering his Reanimates and Exhumes.

3-1

Due to opponent points and other shenanigans, I ended up in 4th place.

Thoughts:

-Peaceekper was the absolute MVP of the tournament, I'm glad I played it.

-I think adding 2 Wraths would be a positive change, as an OH SHIT! button (it would have won the game against affinity). Maybe you could take out 1 Edict and 1 Spell Snare. However, I could be biased due to my match loss against the robots.

-The decks plays smoothly and is much more forgiving than I expected.

-Chaining A. Visions is incredible.

- Vindicates were awesome.

- If the affinity resurgence continues, I'll add 1 Null Rod to the Sideboard.

Comments?

I also did -sea +island

Did you board in Peacekeeper vs affinity?


@Klaus, I actually like factories for the little extra defense they provide.

No, I didn't board in the Peacekeepers because I knew he was running Galvanic Blast, Fling and that he might bring in Sudden Shock.

I did board it against different builds in past tournaments when I was playing Landstill.

There's two Affinity decks in my metagame, and it can randomly be a tough matchup. It's one of the few times you miss Deed, and if you get no business spells early, it can be a problem. The Kataki/Energy Flux duo was a neat little metagame choice. Serenity, however, is my card of choice if I expect a lot of Affinity. Play it quickly enough and you buy enough turns to stabilize. Plus it's randomly good against Enchantress and other things as well.

I've actually often thought about doing -1 Sea, +1 Island. Never gotten around to testing it a ton, though. I'll probably give it a shot. I see the merit.

I actually like the Factories not only for the defense, but largely for the same reason you guys like Peacekeeper. Against decks that don't have ways (or many ways) to remove them, I'll often power-brainstorm with Jace to get answers to anything they could possibly drop in front of the Factories. Academy Ruins is a weak kill condition. It's subject to graveyard hate and Wasteland both, and Wasteland moreso than Factory because, well, you aren't going to run 4 Academy Ruins. And relying too heavily on just Jace to get the kill will get you eaten by Extirpates (Which is another large reason I like to pack Mage.)

I'll be trying out a pair of Peacekeepers in my sideboard as soon as I can pick them up. The concept interests me and it seems to have been wrecking face for you guys.

EDIT: @Treefolk: And as for the 14 lands thing, it happens on occasion. One of the guys who borrows this deck when I play Survival runs into it a fair amount, though I almost never seem to. My answer for it is that I've got the 8 fetches to thin, 8 Brainstorming effects to reshuffle them back in, and running less than 23 lands in a control deck that needs to curve out into 4 I think would lose a lot more games than you'd lose to flooding by running 23. Knowing when to hold lands and when to not crack fetches makes a huge difference, but sometimes you just get flooded. Sounds like between that and the firzt game mulligan to 5, you pretty much just got hit with a wave of bad luck. The matchup may hopefully go better next time.

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Originally Posted by Tacosnape

EDIT: @Treefolk: And as for the 14 lands thing, it happens on occasion. One of the guys who borrows this deck when I play Survival runs into it a fair amount, though I almost never seem to. My answer for it is that I've got the 8 fetches to thin, 8 Brainstorming effects to reshuffle them back in, and running less than 23 lands in a control deck that needs to curve out into 4 I think would lose a lot more games than you'd lose to flooding by running 23. Knowing when to hold lands and when to not crack fetches makes a huge difference, but sometimes you just get flooded. Sounds like between that and the firzt game mulligan to 5, you pretty much just got hit with a wave of bad luck. The matchup may hopefully go better next time.

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Yes, it was just bad luck, 23 lands is perfect for this type of control deck.

@Serenity: I had completely forgotten the card existed. I'll will be testing it, aswell as Null Rod.

I was wondering with the recent banning of survival what this means for this deck.
Is it still viable? Since merfolk will become a strong performer again.
Is black still preferable over red? (the argument for plague still remains of course and vindicate can be such a house)
Is a playset of spell snare still the best option? (It's obvious that a lot of good spells will still be on 2 in the post-survival meta but I'm not sure weither a playset is still warranted).
I would like to take Taco's list as a reference since it seems the best basis to start from.

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Originally Posted by Reagens

I was wondering with the recent banning of survival what this means for this deck.
Is it still viable? Since merfolk will become a strong performer again.
Is black still preferable over red? (the argument for plague still remains of course and vindicate can be such a house)
Is a playset of spell snare still the best option? (It's obvious that a lot of good spells will still be on 2 in the post-survival meta but I'm not sure weither a playset is still warranted).
I would like to take Taco's list as a reference since it seems the best basis to start from.

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1) I think so. If the main opposition for this deck is CB, Zoo, and Merfolk, then yes, it is most certainly viable. If combo becomes a strong performer, than this deck will probably backseat it to Landstill or upgraded CB decks as the control decks of choice.

2) Depends on what you predict your metagame to be. This deck is not a "just put good cards in and go for it" deck like CB or Zoo. It's a pure metagame deck. If you expect a significant presence of Goblins, Dredge, Grave-based stratagies (like Aggro-loam and Lands), or random shit like Enchantress, black splash with Vindicate, Extirpate, and Engineered Plague is the way to go. If you expect Zoo, CB, other blue control, or Merfolk, play red with MD Firespout, heavy EE's and Spell Snares, and 3-4 Pyroblasts/REB in the SB. It is extremely beneficial to know what the rest of the field is when building, especially when playing control.

3) I think 3 is the best number, possibly putting the 4th in the SB (for Zoo, CB, and Storm). It's always been an amazing card in Legacy, but people didn't start to realize this until Survival became a 1G + GGGG "win target game" card.

4) Taco's list is probably the best in this thread that plays black. Although it may need some tuning now that Vines are no longer a consideration and CB is (additional Vindicate in the board, some better combo and "randomness" hate than MM, like Spell Pierce or Duress/Thoughtseize).
A good starting point from which you can make your own tuning and playstyle choices. A red list looks something like Landstill - Factories and Standstill with + Visions and Firespout.

EDIT: Top is really good in any control that lacks a serious draw engine, such as this one (don't count on Visions to get the job done in time). Keep that in consideration.

Thanks for your answers.

In the meanwhile I have been able to do a little testing yesterday agains gobs. I should probably mention that I have played UWb landstill for quite a while so I had a basis for knowing how to play such a deck.

First impressions:

- the deck seems to get easier to mid-game/late-game compared to Landstill (against gob). Which frankly surprised me a lot. You seem to have an answer more often against first turn lackey/vial. In the end though I always run out of counters/pressure and goblins still overwhelm me. This (for me) means that post-board with the addition of a playset of plagues that this MU should be OK. Against pure aggro that's no small feat.
- spell snare was underwhelming but has always been as such in the face of gobs. I think though 3 is certainly warranted given the fact that merfolk counter/top and combo will be a large part of my metagame as of now.
- I played 4/2 split of vindicate diabolic edict and was not unhappy with that. The fact that vindicate also hits lands/artifacts and such is a real bonus.
- I had some issues with visions (mostly because they were almost never in my opening grip. I can see the advantages over standstill and intend to keep going at it. But I cursed it from time to time because it comes to late to give you the advantage.


Some other stuff:

Red: although I can see the advantage of playing red I would never play it for firespout. I find it such an underwhelming card against merfolk that it's just not worth it. I'd rather have more spot removal that's also useful against goyf and so on.

Factory: without wasteland it's just weak and difficult to protect. I am considering throwing them out and looking for another win condition (although I'm not sure which). Probably a planeswalker (Elspeth comes to mind). The fact that it makes creature removal relevant for your opponent, just makes it too much of a hassle. I have no idea what the manabase should look like without factories though.