[Deck] Landstill - Former DTB

Ok, new list time:

4 Mishra's Factory
2 Janky Conclave
4 Wasteland
2 Plains
4 Island
4 Flooded Strand
4 Tundra
1 Eternal Dragon

4 Standstill
3 Fact or Fiction
4 Brainstorm
4 Counterspell
4 Force of Will
3 Teferi's Response
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Moat
3 Akroma's Vengence
2 Decree of Justice

Sideboard:

4 Disenchant
4 Sphere of Law
4 Arcane Labratory
2 Wrath of God
1 Decree of Justice


After a crushing defeat at our local GPT playing Solidarity and being able to borrow 4 Moats I got to work on Sunday playtesting this version of Landstill vs. Vial Goblins. We played 5 matches and I took Landstill on a winning streak vs. Gobs. I only lost 1 game where my opponent went Lacky that I couldn't answer into SCG + Wasteland. Granted, this is heavily metagamed against current goblins builds but it still retains almost all of the elements that it had before. Moat does almost everything WoG does but better and is a more permanent answer against gobs. Granted, WoG is better against matchups where opponents really don't swing with their creatures, like ATS comes to mind, but Goblins is the most played deck in the format at the moment.

As a sidenote - I would probably change the Teferi's Response to Stifle (but definitely NOT a white card to keep the blue count up for FoW) in a more varied metagame. Response is just very specific to the 4 wasteland 3-4 rishidan port metagame. That and I couldn't find my stifles after looking for like 20 minutes while my playtesting partner was sitting and twiddling his thumbs.

P.S. For reference, this is the goblins version I tested against:

4 Goblin Lackey
4 Mogg Fanatic
4 Aether Vial
4 Goblin Piledriver
4 Gempalm Incinerator
4 Goblin Warchief
4 Goblin Matron
2 Goblin Sharpshooter
2 Goblin King
4 Goblin Ringleader
1 Seige-gang Commander
1 Kiki-jiki, Mirror Breaker

4 Wasteland
3 Rishidan Port
2 Bloodstained Mire
2 Wooded Foothills
2 Plateau
9 Mountain

Sideboard:

4 Disenchant
4 Red Elemental Blast
4 Pyrostatic Pillar
3 Blood Moon

Maybe if you can't afford Moat, you could use a Ghetto version of Moat, that can also be pitched to FoW; Teferi's Moat.

That is the card I am currently running to deal with Goblins! It can't be played earlier, but at least it can be pitched...


And Linkxwing. I think your Goblin build has a problem against Landstill, because it's missing S2P, and Pithing Needle, in the SB. IMO, I think it's very important that it runs those cards in the board, against Landstill. I know it might not sound a lot, but I've friggin lost to RG Beatz because of those damn Needles...

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And Linkxwing. I think your Goblin build has a problem against Landstill, because it's missing S2P, and Pithing Needle, in the SB. IMO, I think it's very important that it runs those cards in the board, against Landstill. I know it might not sound a lot, but I've friggin lost to RG Beatz because of those damn Needles...

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So Goblins is going to side in REB, Disenchant, Pithing Needle, Blood Moon and Swords to Plowshares?

Obviously this is an exaggeration, but I removed Pithing Needle from the goblins board last week to test the white version with Needle being replaced by Disenchant. Every one of those five cards is good in the Landstill matchup. Which 2 or 3 are the most useful? I don't have the answer to that, but that is to be discussed in the goblins thread.

Congrats on the interesting deck LinkXwing. I think Moat is a natural evolution for Landstill in this Goblin dominated environment, but I have have some questions about your build that I think need to be addressed and I hope they could possibly improve the build after more testing (I want Gobos to lose to my manlands just as much as the next control lovin fellow). Also, let me add I have not tested this version but I have consistantly dominated my local legacy scene for the past couple months with a Landstill version slightly modified from the one on the first page (-1 ED, -1 FoF, and -1 Wasteland cause nonbasics are harder to come by in my meta and +2 Crucible, +1 Island)

First I think some of the cards in the deck need to change for synergies sake... The first one is Mishra's Factory. I know this may sound silly cause its landstill but Moat will stop the assembly workers all day while the conclaves' fairies can fly right over. This means when you are relying on moat to hold off an enemy army, you will have to wait for a Vengence to destroy your own moat before two-thirds of your manlands can attack. Whats worse, what if the enemy just builds up his own hand while waiting for you to destroy your own Moat then attacks once the Moat is out of play. Of course the Landstill player can just hold off on the Vengence until they have another Moat in hand, but this seems like more waiting than Landstill wants to do. Also, destroying your own cards with more cards isn't the best of synergy either.

Also, how can enough pressure effectively be put under a standstill so as to force the oppenent into breaking it if two thirds of your manlands can't get over Moat. Whats more, even the DoJ can't cycle to create a threat over the Moat. This means you will have to play around the Moat even more because only three of your threats can get over it. In testing did you ever find this to be a problem?

If it is a problem, I would suggest using only threatst that can get over the moat to make the most out of each and ever one of your cards... even if this means upping the count of "janky conclaves" or some other flyer... Ivory Gargoyle is coming to mind because he can get over Moat and come back from the dead. Of course the drawback is devestating (espically if they get a cursed scroll or lavamancer going). Eternal Dragon might be better for the same reason but he is just so expensive...

Also, three FoF? IMO FoF is one of the least nesscessary cards in Standstill. It is very powerful, but I think Standstill has plenty of draw with just the four standstills. You are also running Responses which are even more card drawing... I understand the want of blue cards, but I think sometimes ppl can be a little FoW trigger happy. I personally run 13 blue cards other than FoW and I don't have a problem with it. Sure, more blue cards are always nice, and FoW is damn hot, but adding in cards that are not hot in the majority of the matches to pitch to FoW is not so hot. I think this also forces me as a player to make sure everytime I use FoW it is on a card that really cannot come into play.

Plus even my pal Zvi (who is not really my pal, but I like to pretend we are on a first name basis) thinks FoF is unnesscessary... not that his word is gold or anything.

I don't know. I think your decklist is a large step in the right direction. But I think we are not at the mark yet. Please resond to my questions and tell me if I'm way off. Thanks.

P.S. Oh, and sorry for any spelling mistakes... I looked it over a second time, but there has to be some...

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Moat will stop the assembly workers all day

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True, Moat stops Factories from attacking, but that is really not the point, Factories block as 2/2s and 3/3 the vast majority of the time compared to the times they are attacking. When I play a Moat against goblins, I'm playing it to stop a lethal attack from happening next turn. In all of those situations I wouldn't be attacking with a factory or two into an army of gobs to begin with, they'd be on defensive duty like they are most of the time. Plus if for some reason Moat does get destroyed by your opponents, the factories can at least help a little quelling the onslaught. Moat acts as a win condition in itself against gobs. You just cast and protect it and you'll eventually win. In those games I won it was mostly win an extremely late game hardcast decree of justice for 3 or 4 angels. I never cast vengence destroying my own Moat just to swing a time or two with my factories.

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Also, how can enough pressure effectively be put under a standstill

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You don't need to be swinging for four under a standstill (though it's cool) to put pressure on your opponent. Just the fact that inevitably you will swing for 20 under a standstill if they never cast another spell should be enough. You'll kill them before you deck yourself. With a Moat in play goblins can't win unless they get Siege-gang commander (which they only have 1-2 of and you can swords even if it's vialed in) and activate it several times. Or sharpshooter you out, but that is pretty unlikely w/o skirk prospector in gobs anymore. Just sit on a moat for infinite turns until you win. It isn't that hard.

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Also, three FoF? IMO FoF is one of the least nesscessary cards in Standstill.

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Yes, personal preference, but I'm a HUGE fan of having ten million good draw spells in a deck. In addition I wish for the blue card count to be at least 20, and even then I don't think that is enough. In the past few months UW Landstill has evolved into Mono-white control with a couple counters and a couple draw spells. This seems counter-intuitive to last year when I played UR or Uwr Landstill with 30+ blue cards in the deck. I frequently find myself with a FoW and no other blue cards in hand, this makes me feel like my deck is built very poorly and even when have another blue card in hand I never want to pitch it. Choices to pitch for FoW in most current builds right now are: FoF, Standstill, Brainstorm, Counterspell and other Forces. I don't know about you, but I never really want to pitch ANY of those to Force of Will.

For any given matchup some cards are stronger than others. Well, when choosing what to ditch for Force ideally I'd like to pitch whatever is a dead card in the matchup. I wish I could toss WoG/Moat in the High tide matchup but I can't because there are SO damn many white cards in the deck. I'd like to brainstorm for the dead card and pitch it to force rather than have to ditch the brainstorm itself because most likely Brainstorm won't find me the dead BLUE card in the matchup. I want to have 2 FoWs in my hand and have it mean that I can tap out and have 2 counters up, not just one because I have to pitch force to itself. In Zvi's tournament report from Gencon he mentioned having to FoW twice on turn 2 to prevent a survival from resolving. Well, with only 17 blue cards total in the deck that seems extremely highly unlikely that he'd have 2 forces AND 2 othe blue cards to pitch. In 99.9% of games that just doesn't happen.

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Plus even my pal Zvi (who is not really my pal, but I like to pretend we are on a first name basis) thinks FoF is unnesscessary... not that his word is gold or anything.

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If FoF is unnescessary then what blue card can replace it? Every time I cast FoF it practically wins me the game. The only downside to FoF is the 4 mana casting cost.

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I don't know. I think your decklist is a large step in the right direction. But I think we are not at the mark yet.

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I agree. This was just a test run to see if Moat was as good as I thought on first inspection. In short:

-white cards (which ones? I don't know.)
+blue cards (I don't know which ones, but more is good, or why not just play Wombat.)
Moat is good

My thoughts.

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Originally Posted by LinkXwing

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Also, three FoF? IMO FoF is one of the least nesscessary cards in Standstill.

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Yes, personal preference, but I'm a HUGE fan of having ten million good draw spells in a deck. In addition I wish for the blue card count to be at least 20, and even then I don't think that is enough. In the past few months UW Landstill has evolved into Mono-white control with a couple counters and a couple draw spells. This seems counter-intuitive to last year when I played UR or Uwr Landstill with 30+ blue cards in the deck. I frequently find myself with a FoW and no other blue cards in hand, this makes me feel like my deck is built very poorly and even when have another blue card in hand I never want to pitch it. Choices to pitch for FoW in most current builds right now are: FoF, Standstill, Brainstorm, Counterspell and other Forces. I don't know about you, but I never really want to pitch ANY of those to Force of Will.

For any given matchup some cards are stronger than others. Well, when choosing what to ditch for Force ideally I'd like to pitch whatever is a dead card in the matchup. I wish I could toss WoG/Moat in the High tide matchup but I can't because there are SO damn many white cards in the deck. I'd like to brainstorm for the dead card and pitch it to force rather than have to ditch the brainstorm itself because most likely Brainstorm won't find me the dead BLUE card in the matchup. I want to have 2 FoWs in my hand and have it mean that I can tap out and have 2 counters up, not just one because I have to pitch force to itself. In Zvi's tournament report from Gencon he mentioned having to FoW twice on turn 2 to prevent a survival from resolving. Well, with only 17 blue cards total in the deck that seems extremely highly unlikely that he'd have 2 forces AND 2 othe blue cards to pitch. In 99.9% of games that just doesn't happen.

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Plus even my pal Zvi (who is not really my pal, but I like to pretend we are on a first name basis) thinks FoF is unnesscessary... not that his word is gold or anything.

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If FoF is unnescessary then what blue card can replace it? Every time I cast FoF it practically wins me the game. The only downside to FoF is the 4 mana casting cost.

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I agree with the FoF thing. FoF Wins Mirrors. The card has a great digging power, and ends games really fast.

Currently, I'm running 19 Blue cards, plus FoW. I have always ran 3 FoF, hoping to make space for 4, because of so many Mirrors in my meta...

I have had the same problems you did. Can't being able to find a Card to Pitch to FoW. Among all the Games I played, I pitched FoF like twice in my lifetime, Standstill dozen of times, a lot on another FoW, and a lot on Counterspell, and the most of the things I ptich; Brainstorm...

I was just wondering why you would be playing Moat, when we now have access to a tool that I think is better than Moat, Reverance. It still lets your own creatures attack while still shutting down Joblin decks . It doesnt shut down some of the other agro decks, but landstill can already deal with many of those and Reverance will atleast slow them down.

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Originally Posted by lyle h

I was just wondering why you would be playing Moat, when we now have access to a tool that I think is better than Moat, Reverance. It still lets your own creatures attack while still shutting down Joblin decks . It doesnt shut down some of the other agro decks, but landstill can already deal with many of those and Reverance will atleast slow them down.

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In most situations when you would play Moat/Reverence the opponent does have critters on the board, generally lots of them. In these situations which happen alot, why would you want to attack with a factory?

When would wanting to attack with a factory like that outweigh the advantages of having moat shut down 90% of random aggro decks too. Not that Landstill has a bad matchup against random aggro but I like having a single card that says "I win" when resolved against RGSA, Suicide, Burn/Sligh's critters, 1/2 of fish decks, 80% of the critters in Gro decks, Elves and other random crap.

Besides the price of Moat (which is considerable), I really don't see where Reverence is better than Moat.

It just appears to me that after you play a wrath, Moat considerably hinders your ability to start swinging with factories to end the game.

.......Ok wow, I just realized you are not playing Wrath, sooo, that makes sense and it makes me feel a lot stupider for not noticing that.

Has anyone considered MD humilty yet? I know it's not as powerful as moat but it sure as hell ruins goblins. Shut's down there whole deck so they can't sharpshooter/ siege gang commander you out. This was just a thought due to moat being expensive, and Teferi's Moat being extremely crappy. Also why not take a different route with landstill make it an E.tutor friendly deck, humilty, reverance, cruicible, standstill, maybe moblization over decree (just a thought becuase you can tutor for it.) Landstill needs to change for the better since the deck lost it's dominance, lets look for a new way to revive it instead of adding 1-2 cards to the deck.

When discussing attempting to find an optimal decklist, honestly, we need to ignore a cards cash value. Now, Humility, Reverance and other such cards may prove to be actually better than Moat after considerable playtesting and certainly cards like those may easily be excellent replacements for Moat if Moat indeed does turn out to belong in this deck. People can substitute Adarkar Wastes or other such cards if they can't afford a playset of Tundras and fetchlands. In those cases replacements work, you just are playing a sub-optimal deck until you can get your hands on the real thing.

The idea is simply to find the optimal decklist for the current metagame in all circumstances.

Now, as for your suggestions, Elightened Tutor has been tried and dismissed several pages/threads/months ago, not to say it doesn't warrent more testing/discussion. Some people liked Enlightened Tutor, most dismissed it. The problem I see with E. Tutor is that even though it provides nice silver bullets, the idea is that we are playing a control deck that wins through slow, grinding actual and virtual card advantage. I see the mirage tutors as great cards for combo-esque decks, but Landstill in it's nature is built on redundency and that grinding card advantage to find the specific answer it needs at any given time.

@Wasted Life. Haha, actually I have tried MD Humility in one of my most recent landstill builds. You are very right about it hurting goblins. Not to mention it is nice against Survival decks. My current build doesn't run Humility and it runs more board removal. For some reason, i was still getting overrun even when Humility was in play, and also, with enough board removal, I can beat goblins either way and the board removal cards Ie.) disk,vengeance,wrath are also very good in other matchups. I am still currently testing builds with Hummility in it though.

I agree with LinkXwing that money should not be a consideration when it comes to finding the optimal list. However, there is something I would like to point out:

While Reverence and Moat serves idential functions, Humility is quite different. While it does not "lock out" Goblins, it does slow them down considerable via the removal of Matron and Ringleader's come into play abilities, and Warchief's haste. It also allows for Factory to swing, (whether as a 1/1 or 2/2, I'm waiting on some huge rule's clearification, everything just seem screwy after they changed the layer system.) and most of all it prevents "combo win" via Seige-gang or Sharpshooter, something that both Moat and Reverence cannot do. So it should be tested throughly before dismissing it as a cheap sub for Moat.

I agree, Humility is slightly different in function than Moat and Reverence and should be tested.

In the playtest games I had with goblins when Moat hit the board Goblins only option was to go disenchant it (only post SB) and go for the sharpshooter/SCG plan. Keep in mind though that the 'combo' plan for gobs is now very difficult to achieve for them because gobs now doesn't pack Skirk prospector which means they run out of mana for SCG real quick and most likely don't have enough mana to kill you the instand SCG is dropped into play, therefore it gives Landstill an oppotunity to Swords it even if it was Vialed in.

With Moat in play and knowing this was goblins only win condition left I just changed my gameplan accordingly and eventually got the HUGE DoJ off for the win alot faster than they could draw into SCG and vial it in with 10 million mana open.

What really stomps goblins is running Ghostly Prison/Propaganda in the main, backed up with spot and mass removal. My friend who played MWC did that to me. I tried to wait it out and just go Sharpshooter/Seige Bang but a Wrath just made me pick it up.

Ok, if he had Wrath AND Ghostly Prison MD, what did he cut?

This seemed more relevant in this thread:

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Originally Posted by midnightAce

Sorry, LinkXwing, I did saw your list in the Landstill thread, your list was one of the ones that I liked very much, because it ignored money issues, added the Moat, and went straight for what should be done, and that is protecting the mana base.

However, the problem I have with ALL enchantment based answers is the fear of Disenchant/Naturlize. It breaks down to the following:

Assume you got Ported and Wasted, finally manage to cast a Wrath on turn... 6. The only possible way they can kill you is Warchief + Piledriver or some combination of Goblins, or Ringleader to refill the hand.

Now the same situation applies, finally cast a Moat on turn 6. Probably tapped out by then, if not, Ported out, a timely Disenchant pretty much seals the game unless you have a FoW to back that up. That's my beef with enchantments as opposed to Instants and Soceries. Enchantments can be killed... and they have bad interaction with Vengeance and Disk.

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Keep in mind they still have no answer to it game 1. In game 2 this becomes much more relevant. However, in game 2 I side in 4 Sphere of Law against gobs so they now have 8 enchantments to disenchant/naturalize/anarchy away. Also against Gobs and most ground based aggro decks Moat is a catch all answer. Now, Disk and/or Vengence has exactly 0 synergy with enchantments but when the enchantment has already hit the board you've won the game. All 8 of your counters go towards protecting that enchantment because they can't win with it on the board. All the card draw and dig in the deck goes towards finding and resolving that catch all answer. I really don't waste my counters (especially FoW) on anything short of a lethal swing from a recently cast Warchief in game 2 because I have 8 copies of a card that simply win me the game.

Also keep in mind Goblins must top deck every disenchant effect it has. Their draw engine, though powerful can't find the cards they need to break out of my 'lock'. I have 14 card drawing effects to find my 4-8 enchantments. After a Wrath effect, gobs still have 30 cards left in the deck to kill you. After a Moat they have 2-4 preboard and 2-4 + 4 disenchant effects to your 8 counters. By the numbers any way you cut it Moat seems like an infinitely better card that wrath against Goblins.

To sum up and answer your question, when I do cast Moat early game turns 4-6, yes I do tap out, but in the vast majority of games I do have FoW back up becasue off all my draw and not wasting it on the early gobs/vials plus by that time they only have a 50% chance or so to have the disenchant effect.

I'm certainly not a Landstill expert, and this might be heresy to suggest, but I was wondering about the high casting costs of Decree of Justice and Akroma's Vengeance.....

Everybody always complains about this deck being too slow for goblins.....

What about

-3 Akroma
-2 Decree

+3 Propaganda
+2 Blinding Angel

I know Blinding is an unconventional choice, but once it hits, and attacks for the first time, that shuts your Goblins/Random Aggro opponent down big time.....It's basically like a neverending Wrath because they don't ever get an attack phase....Plus it helps you win.....

Just some food for thought.....

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Blinding Angel is 5 mana (WW3) for a 2/4 flyer, that becomes active on Turn 6...just Like Akroma's Vengeance...except it doesn't actually destroy anything, can be Sparksmithed, Gempalmed, Siege Ganged away and suffers the same double white problem that all of Landstill's spells seem to have versus a modern goblins build running Wastelands and Rishadan Ports. It is an interesting idea, but doesn't seem particularly viable. Propaganda (instead of Ghostly Prison to keep the blue card count up?) seems like a much better idea, especially since it is cheaper (therefore easier to cast, with only a single colored mana), permanent, and not removable Game 1. Removing actual win conditions, though, seems like a poor plan.

@LinkXWing - How is Teferi's Reponse working for you? I was thinking something along the same lines to protect vs. Wasteland.

Has anyone here tried 3 or more Stifle in the maindeck? Stifle seems like a good counter to Wasteland, works against Storm, stops the Goblin Ringleader effect, and counters the "X" effect in DoJ.

The problem I'm having against aggro is getting to 4 mana. Sinkhole, Wasteland, and Rishadan Port all keep me under that 4 mana flashpoint. Landstill has answers to Sinkhole and Port, but nothing for Wasteland. Is Stifle a good answer?