[Deck] UW(x) Landstill

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After much thinking, Countertop in Landstill might be feasibly viable. It's a slower strategy and the lack of removal to fit the engine in is a drawback. The main reason why Countertop is bad in Landstill is the lack of 2cc spells to flip. You can potentially play 3 CB and 4 Spell Snare with 4 FOW and 3 Top. That is as far as I would go to squeeze it in. What would you cut? Countertop Landstill would be more focused on 3cc/1cc spells, and using Snares and EE to stop the 2cc spells from resolving. That would be my direction to Countertop Landstill

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Feasbily vialble... I don't get why it's not standardized yet. I've had my deck designed for 4 months and just finally got the internet and still no one uses Counterbalance in Landstill.

12 2cc spells is a lack thereof? You don't run CB to blind flip people. You run a ton of other powerhouse stuff that you don't need that. Brainstorm becomes a Counterspell, and Top can lock out 2cc spells like Loam.

I see what the meta looks like, but you don't run Spell Snare alongside CB. You run either or; do you want the tempo of SN, or the power of CB? Choose one, not both.

I still feel like O Ring (or Vindicate if you run Black) is > EE. Just my opinion.

@ Rsaunder

You and me are pretty cool, we've had some long dicsussions before about decks. Let us be honest with eachother: your decklist is too spread out. You need to focus on something. So many non-4 of's. Lots of 2's and 3's, quite a bit of 1's. I've been an avid NON-Cunning Wish correspondant for a long time, and many will hate on me with this. Top is the direct replacement for card quality, and completely dominates it in all aspects, IMO. Top needs to be a 4-of in every Landstill list. After the tighten, after looking at good and bad matchups, after looking at possibilities... Counterbalance should be an obvious shoe-in.

I'm probably short-sighted and single-track-minded, but I've been raping everyone continuously with my list. I just wish at least a handful of people would try it and let me know the results.

Oh, and I just wanna toss the e-peen around real quick. Counterbalance was never dismissed from ITF, while ITF was considered a good deck (and I feel that it is). Has anyone ever seen their Counterbalance curve? It's similar or worse to 12/12 1cc/2cc. Wtf? I call shenanigans.

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Originally Posted by Hanni

@ Rsaunder: [Well Though Out Stuff]

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I've considered vindicate over C. Wish as a catch all, but I've just been saved too many times by wish=>pulse or wish =>x to cut it at this point. I used to think of it as a crutch in certain matchups but with more and more thought on the subject I became more and more sure that it was a correct call that won games that I should not have won otherwise. It's not so much a crutch as a built-in silver bullet and utility slot that can win games or matches by it's self. I'm not opposed to trying out builds without it, but wish has proven it's self time and time again.

As for top, I agree it's excellent. I disagree though, that it's a 4-of. It's terrible in multiples game one (and arguably dead games 2/3 when CB is sided in) and I was reluctant to include copy#3 even, because 2 worked so well when counterbalance wasn't included. At this point though, I also disagree that my list is too spread out. It follows the same theory as Nassif's SB from the GP (highlander with redundant effects); 10 removal spells (counting humility), 10 counterspells, 9 draw/card quality, 25 mana, 4 kill conditions, and 2 catch-all answers. I appreciate how clean your list is, but I think the balance in my list at the moment is right. All of the effects are either redundant or complementary and all of the 1-ofs are tutorable through one method or another.

I hope none of this makes me less cool in your book, I'm kinda under the influence and probably shouldn't be posting in the DTB forum atm :eek:

@ Rsaunder

Catch all is catch all. What all does it do for you? Pulse of the Fields is negated by CounterTop, which answers all that. The best reponse I see is CWish into Extirpate, since I clearly don't have that answer. Dredge is a bad mathcup for me MD. Is that common?

I completely agree with you on redunancy. It doesn't matter what you do. X of certain spell equals equivilants. It's the overall numbers that really count. However, I'm strongly opinionated that 4 Top is the way to go. After lots of playtesting and consideration, that's how I feel. In multiples, it shuffles itself away. I'll repeat what I said earlier: Top is, hands down, the best card in the deck. There is only 1 card I want to see in every opening hand and have in play ASAP every single game. That is Top. Top wins games; the deck's already consistent shell makes Top's increased consistency turn the deck into a repetitive machine. I see the exact same cards I want to see every single game when I want to see them, and that's why I win.

There's no less coolnesss, don't feel that way. I haven't been able to post in months. Just consider what I've said and don't dismiss it right away, particularly about Top and either MD or SB Counterbalance. I promise I would never steer anyone wrong. Not like I'm holding out secret tech; I don't get to play in big events. Top is the best card in the deck, hands down. No reason to not run Counterbalance if that's the case, which actually does improve sooooooo many matchups.

Goodstuff land still guys.

Also

Hypothesis:
Counterbalance> Mindbreak Trap.

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Originally Posted by mossivo1986

Fact:
In Landstill Counterbalance> Mindbreak Trap.

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FYP. I think CB's the way that the deck HAS to go to compete now, since to combat Mindbreak combo's going to be packing even more chant effects to combat the aggro decks packing mindbreak. It's really unsafe for combo to go off against anything post-board now without a duress or chant effect first.


@Hanni: Of course, I consider every piece of advice I receive. I think though, where our builds differ is that you have CB main. Wish is a great game 1 card that fixes problem matchups while allowing greater utility in favorable ones. If I ran CB MB I'd consider going wish-less, but as it is right now I'm not ready to make that step.

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@Hanni: Of course, I consider every piece of advice I receive. I think though, where our builds differ is that you have CB main. Wish is a great game 1 card that fixes problem matchups while allowing greater utility in favorable ones. If I ran CB MB I'd consider going wish-less, but as it is right now I'm not ready to make that step.

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The way I see it, Top does the same thing. Both CW and Top create card quality. Those are the purposes of them. CW gives versatility with the wishboard, Top does it with the MD. Obviously, CW is more pinpoint, but Top's effect is everlasting. CW can grab a few things not found in the MD: Extirpate being the biggest effect. Other than that, every answer is found in the MD. I find Top to be the better card, by far, and I think that both Top and CW compete for the same spot. Since I find Top to be lightyears better, I run 4 Top 0 CW. Just the way I feel, I guess. CB MD has nothing to do with it, though I think CB MD is the way to go due to the 4 Top's that I do run.

I tested CB main/sb and I was never really satisfied. Since we really lack pressure without Elspeth it´s not that hard for the opponent to resolve some stuff if we don´t have cc2-3 permanently on top. And it makes you even more vulnerable to grip postboard where I tend to take humilitys out.

@NQN:

I think you're missing the boat. As others have said, Counterbalance is not meant to be a hard-lock in Landstill like it is in "Thresh". Even if it's a one-sided Chalice of the Void for 1, it still improves many of your poor matchups. Landstill has the tools to answer whatever they're playing at CMC 2/3 even if you can't 'balance it.

How is Landstill with CounterTop not just going to turn into a slower and less nimble version of Dreadstill? You're using anywhere from 6 to 8 new permanents in the deck and something has to come out. That something is likely to be the majority of the removal that Landstill features. In turn that's going to make Landstill into a deck that doesn't do anything particularly impactful early on (except drop SDT or Counterbalance) and that also has many fewer ways to react to the opponent after the fact.

I'm looking at the discussion, and while I respect the people making the arguments and the arguments they are making, what it's boiling down to for me is the danger of cool things. In this case the addition of SDT as a stand-alone is now pushing people to morph the deck by adding Counterbalance also. I don't think the deck is getting better in the process, in fact I think it is losing some of the qualities that make it so good right now.

Here's the problem in a nutshell:

What Landstill does so well is to just drop land and prevent/react to the opponent's plays until it has reached critical mass on turn 4 to 7. At that point it grabs the opponent's plan, does one more flip to put it out of commission and then casts a 4cc spell and starts to win.

Counterbalance is going to come in for something else that makes the plan above work. It's going to lower removal to the point that things can begin to reliably slip through in the critical early midgame, and threats that were cast in the very early game will remain on the board when they should not.

Basically, the deck is going to look like a slower version of Dreadstill with no insta-win to cover up the fact that an opponent got a couple of significant assets landed early and they're sticking around.

This is just my opinion, but I think if the addition of SDT inevitably results in the inclusion of Counterbalance due to synergy then SDT is a bad idea. It may help the deck but CounterTop won't in the long run.

If you just want to put Counterbalance in the sideboard for the matches where it is clearly better then I think you need to ask yourself if the number of matches you have against those decks warrants taking up a fifth or more of the sideboard. Landstill has very good uses for the sideboard, more so than most other decks.

Chalice of the Void is also an option I would guess. Granted it can slow us down, it would still be better for us against the matches we'd board it in against. Storm and burn; and possibly Zoo but probably not since we'd need Swords. It works almost the same as Counterbalance but sacrifices versatility for a sure thing. Only problem is its not amazing against the mirror and some other matches.

I don't really like adding the countertop engine since it seems to detract from the redundancy that makes landstill good :)

@ FoolofaTook

I posted my list a page or so back, if you want to look at that as a reference. What is the deck dropping significant amounts of to add Counterbalance? I run 9 removal spells in total, with 3 additional removal spells in my sideboard. Looking at most Landstill lists, that's very similar to what everyone else is running, so I fail to see your point. Essentially, what I'm dropping for Counterbalances are what most seem to be running as Spell Snares. There is no major loss of early game via retooling the deck to fit it; you lose a minor amount of early game without Spell Snare and replace it with a much more powerful effect in Counterbalance, which is good not only in the early game, but throughout the games entirety. Rather than act as a tempo tool, it acts as a card advantage engine.

I also don't understand how it slows the deck down. I clearly see the speed difference between Spell Snare and Counterbalance, sure, but it's not so major of a difference that the deck now becomes slow. It's a one-time 2 mana investment; after that, you're using Top (or Brainstorm) like you normally would. With 9 removal effects and FoW, anything that lands before CounterTop is in effect is answerable. I fail to see how a 4 card change to the maindeck makes such a drastic change for the rest of the Landstill shell, as far as redundancy and consistency goes. If anything, Top itself as a 4-of greatly improves that. Even Counterbalance adds to the redundancy by being a reusable Counterspell, which the last time I checked, is an important effect to the Landstill shell.

The deck doesn't need Dreadnought to cover it's ass for an insta-win. The deck has 9 removal spells. The point of Dreadstill is that removal is replaced with an I-win combo. I haven't replaced any removal. Once I clear the board, I either drop CounterTop or Elspeth and win the game.

What needs to be looked at moreso than these arguments are what actual matchups improve and which ones don't. Two of our worst matchups, Burn and Aggro Loam, are both won off the back of Counterbalance. It improves the Thresh/CounterTop match some, it improves the Zoo matchup some, it basically improves every matchup to some degree. The few matchups where it is not fantastic would be decks like Goblins, Merfolk, and Dragon Stompy, where it's still mildly useful... and funny enough, Spell Snare runs into the same issues against those matchups.

For reference, I'll repost my list. Use this to highlight what I'm sorely lacking from every other Landstill list by adding Counterbalance.

// Lands
4 [ON] Flooded Strand
2 [ON] Polluted Delta
2 [ON] Windswept Heath
4 [U] Tundra
4 [7E] Island (3)
3 [P3] Plains (2)
4 [AQ] Mishra's Factory (3)

// Spells
2 [ALA] Elspeth, Knight-Errant
2 [SC] Decree of Justice
4 [IA] Brainstorm
4 [OD] Standstill
4 [CHK] Sensei's Divining Top
4 [CS] Counterbalance
4 [ST] Counterspell
4 [AL] Force of Will
4 [CST] Swords to Plowshares
3 [REW] Wrath of God
2 [ALA] Oblivion Ring

// Sideboard
SB: 1 [REW] Wrath of God
SB: 2 [ALA] Oblivion Ring
SB: 4 [B] Blue Elemental Blast
SB: 4 [PS] Meddling Mage
SB: 4 [ALA] Relic of Progenitus

Also, rather than discussing why it would or would not work, and for what reasons, it's also helpful to try something before knocking it. Sometimes, ideas in theory sound bad but end up being good and vice versa, and what something looks like on paper also does not dictate the actual strength of a deck. I've been playing this exact version for some time now and I very rarely lose with it, no bullshit. I'm not asking everyone to conform to it, I just hope that some of the community at least respects the fact that Counterbalance Landstill is in fact a great version of the deck.

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Originally Posted by Hanni

@ FoolofaTook.

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Maybe you answered it before... but why don't you play any Humilities? I really loved them against nearly every deck.

I'll start out by saying that your list *does* look solid, Hanni, just that I think you're building a different deck which shares some of the things that make landstill good.
Landstill, in my opinion, is about drawing alot of cards and answering your opponent's threats with those cards. Once you reach a certain point in the game, you're so far ahead of your opponent through x-for-1 plays and carddraw that he has no hopes of ever getting back into the game, simply because you've drawn so many all-purpose answers to whatever he might be up to (vindicate, EE, plow, counterspell) that he won't even be able to play.

What this list seems to be lacking, in my opinion, is first and foremost the 'big' carddraw which allows you to comfortably cruise into the endgame and just reload your hand and win from there, I'm talking about fact or fiction and jace mostly. The deck's redundancy allows you to dig 5 with a FoF or keep filling your hand with a jace and know you're getting any answers you'd ever need to keep your opponent out of the game.

This brings me to the second point: the answers. While CB/Top could be viewed as an answer by itself, once you get into the lategame, even when resolving multiple standstills, you're going to draw into shit you can't use (like extra tops/balances) instead of stuff you could, such as engineered explosives, disks etc.

It *does* look like a strong deck, simply because the 'drop standstill, cycle decree/play factories and stall til the cows come home' strategy is a good one and you're still playing the bombs that everybody knows and loves, but I personally gotta say I prefer just playing the answers instead of asking cb/top to handle the situation.

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Maybe you answered it before... but why don't you play any Humilities? I really loved them against nearly every deck.

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I stopped running Humility a long time ago, before I even started using Counterbalance. It just wasn't doing it for me. Unlike WoG and other similar spells, Humility isn't an answer on its own. Even if you drop one against Goblins or Merfolk, they can still smack you in the face with several 1/1's. At the time I was still using it, I lost several matchups against aggro with Humility out cause I couldn't find an answer to the 1/1's. Of course, this was before Elspeth. I realize the power level of the card, it is in fact very powerful... I just didn't like the fact that it isn't a stand-alone answer like WoG and requires other spells to actually save your ass. Again, this was way back when, it is possible with my new configuration that it could be sensational. If anything though, I'd make it a SB card, not a MD one. I'm very content with my current removal package in the MD.

@ Ectoplasm

I agree with you that card advantage is a huge deal for Landstill, one of the most important strategies the deck uses. You have more answers than they have threats, therefore you win. I'm still packing card advantage. I tested FoF a long time ago and just wasn't satisfied with it. I'm not gonna go into huge detail why, since it's not a bad card. Jace on the other hand, I think is very solid, and in a different version I'd definitely run him.

For me, the deck has sufficient draw. Also, keep in mind that CounterTop itself actually is card advantage. If you counter 3 spells with Counterbalance, you're essentially looking at +2 CA.

Top itself is gold, while not creating actual CA, enables the deck to draw the cards that do. Of all the possible draw engines the deck could possibly have, Top is my favorite one.

Also, drawing extra Tops/Balances isn't as bad as you think. First of all, if you do have CounterTop assembled, you float CB on the top of library for your 2cc spell. Worst case scenario is that it ends up in your hand and you pitch it to FoW. Secondly, multiple Top's shuffle themselves away, if for whatever reason you do get two in hand/play (via a Fetchland). Also, don't forget that many opponent's will destroy either Counterbalance, Top, or both, if they can. Multiples are sometimes valuable for that reason.

Oh, and simply playing extra cards like Disk/EE is great, but those don't answer everything. By this, I mean Instants/Sorceries that hurt us, whether they be Life from the Loam or something else, where Counterbalance can act as a catch-all.

@Hanni - That's not a bad list but it is severely lacking in ways to remove non-creature permanents. You have two answers for those and both of them are grippable, leaving you potentially at a loss.

That list IS like a slower version of Dreadstill. It's much slower in fact, because it does not have Spell Snare and Daze to manage fast threats early on. It doesn't have any real answer to land-based recursion either. Academy Ruins is going to make it miserable.

I see what you're trying to do there. The question is whether the matchups that Counterbalance helps against, which are definitely there, were bad enough to justify opening up the kind of weakness that removing EE, Cunning Wish/Vindicate, Nevinyrral's Disk, and the overall concept of 10+ removal now creates.

That's a heavy hybrid list and I'm not sure it gets the best of both worlds.

BTW, it occurs to me in looking at it again that one of the big problems is that you're relying on removal, yet at a lower density than normal and with only slow ways to dig it out. It's really got elements of Ugw Threshold in it as well but minus the Ponders that make that work somewhat well. The archetype problem you'll run into is the one where you are loaded for bear on creature removal in the early game but the permanent you need to deal with is not a creature. That's where the cracks in the concept will come in because your dig for your O-rings is going to be slow and painful and probably not successful often enough.

I will agree with you on the non-creature permanent thing. I tend to rely on my countermagic for those particular spells. Counterbalance can still help against unresolved non-creature permanents too, but yes, there are times when an early resolved Chalice@1 or something can be annoying. I tend to bring the 2 O Rings in from the SB quite often, usually for DoJ, but it does vary.

I wasn't saying that this deck isn't slower than Dreadstill, I know it is. However, you cannot directly compare the two. Dreadstill is more closely related to an aggro/control deck than a board control deck, and my deck is clearly not aggro/control. You need to compare how much slower it is to other Landstill decks, not Dreadstill. In that comparison, the speed difference is negligible.

I'm also not really worried about Academy Ruins. If they get recurring EE going, that's fine. There are ways to play around that... and if they are wasting their draw step each turn to try and stop Elspeth tokens, let 'em. Worst thing it does is neuter DoJ.

I run 9 removal spells. The average lists I've been seeing run 10. Not much difference there, at least to me. Plus I can just as easily toss more removal into my SB if needed. I mean honestly, we're only discussing 4 card spots here. Top's would be in there as a 4-of regardless, since it's the best spell in the deck. I'm not sacrificing large amounts of removal, large amounts of draw, etc to fit it. Like I've said, in comparison to many lists, Counterbalance in my deck is just a replacement for Spell Snare... not removal, and not draw.

Additionally, I prefer the stability of the U/W manabase. But just as easily, you could splash black and swap O Rings for Vindicates. I just choose stability and consistency over power.

@ CB:
I have tinkered with CB as a 4-of SB addition for a shell with 3 MD Tops (thanks for the inspiration, Marius).

CB was meant to improve the following MUs in particular: Combo, Burn, Control.
Those SB slots were formerly occupied by T. Scullers (improving the Control as well as the Combo MU).
After some testing, I have to say that CB not only is more versatile (also golden VS Burn), it is also better at fighting Combo (kinda obvious) and less vulnerable and still oftentimes more efficient VS Control than my still beloved Scullers, or any similar substitue, while boasting a more convenient casting cost.

That being said, I'm positive CB is not fit for MD material.
The main goal of my MD (read: G1s) is to have as many efficient answers to a maximum of relevant archetpyes, and also as few bad topdecks as possible. Unfortunately, about 50% of the decks that one faces in a diverse meta are not properly answered by Counterbalance: Against Aggro strategies (a big chunk of most metas) it can be a neat tool, but only AFTER you have aquired board control*, at which point it tends to be win more.
* Sadly, it's a bad topdeck before that.

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Against Aggro strategies (a big chunk of most metas) it can be a neat tool, but only AFTER you have aquired board control*, at which point it tends to be win more.
* Sadly, it's a bad topdeck before that.

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How is that any different from, say, Spell Snare? Regardless, how is that relevant when Landstill tends to have a good aggro matchup anyway? Counterbalance is actually really good at improving the Goyf Sligh matchup, and while less attractive against Zoo, still pulls its weight. It definitely doesn't weaken the Zoo matchup, that's for sure. I can see it being arguable for both Goblins and Merfolk, which Counterbalance is mediocre against. The thing is that most decks do, in fact, fall into CB range. If they didn't, why would CounterTop be so successful in the other decks its played in?

I think it's more a matter of people not being used to it. Landstill has been around forever, and most lists haven't adapted the shell enough to use it. Yet when a new deck emerges, like ITF, Counterbalance is not argued about whether it's effective or not in a board control strategy. Counterbalance is a reusable Counterspell, which at some point, is going to advance the decks gameplan. Obviously it doesn't change the board state when the opponent has a few guys on the ground: that's what WoG is for. Does that mean we should drop Counterspell too?

The best reason to not run it that I've heard is the metagame: if you have alot of decks in the metagame that are either only minorly improved or not improved at all by it, then obviously don't run it. However, it does improve matchups against the majority of decks out there, with several of them being very bad matchups for us in the first place (like Aggro Loam).

Maybe going in the SB is the right call for some. Either way, it should be within the decks 75. I have yet to see a great enough reason why I wouldn't run it MD, though.

As klaus mentioned Counterbalance comes in against the following:

Burn, Combo, Control

Apparently marius mentioned it comes in against zoo as well, which is going to take some testing to get used to.