Could a crucible make this job intead dragon??Quote:
Originally Posted by Felidae
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Could a crucible make this job intead dragon??Quote:
Originally Posted by Felidae
It can, but dragon is better and you'll need to cutt costs in other places I feel.
DTB again, eat it.
I personally have liked Crucible more and more (Reverting back to old-school lists). I personally view Crucible as a source of card advantage (ignoring the obvious wastelock potential). If you have crucible on board and draw non-land cards, you have basically accessed another card in your hand via the land in your graveyard. If you have drawn a land in your hand, then it's alright since you are still recurring lands in your yard while saving the drawn lands for future use and potentially improving brainstorms by returning those lands back.
Wastelock is a big plus with crucible, and crucible is good again right now against the meta filled with Wastelands and Stifles. I am currently running 2 in my list, and I am satisfied upping 1 Crucible to 2. Everytime I've drawn a Crucible with a top in play, I am netting more cards than I had without Crucible. Top ensures you draw non-lands and you reuse lands in your graveyard, making your card/board advantage at a +1 everyturn.
My meta is a little annoying again right now, lots of Loam, black decks, some Sinkholes, Merfolks, Wastelands.dec, Imperial Painter, so I'm pondering if I should not be playing this for my meta for the next few weeks, but after piecing up newer lists of Dreadstill, MUC, I find that Landstill is still the superior control deck. It has the potential to win faster than those decks, and has much better chances at stabilizing and a diverse answer in the MD (contrasting to Dreadstill)
Tweaking a list for tomorrow, this has been strong in testing so far, being consistent and having a good game 1 against many forms of decks:
Deck: UWbr Scepter-Wishstill (61 cards)
Lands: 24 (24th land as the 61st card)
1 Academy Ruins
3 Wasteland
4 Mishra's Factory
4 Flooded Strand
2 Polluted Delta
3 Tundra
2 Volcanic Island
2 Underground Sea
2 Island
1 Plains
Removal: 8 (+2 Scepter, +2 Chant, +2 Wish)
3 EE
4 StP
1 Path
Card Advantage: 12 (+2 Scepter)
2 Top
4 Brainstorm
4 Standstill
2 Cunning Wish
Counterspells: 8 (+2 Scepter)
4 Counterspell
4 FoW
Win-Condition: 9 (+4 Factory)
2 Isochron Scepter
2 Orim's Chant
1 Crucible
2 Jace TMS
2 Elspeth
Sideboard: 15
2 REB
3 Extirpate
1 Diabolic Edict
1 Pulse of the Fields
1 Enlightened Tutor
2 Negate
1 Orim's Chant
3 Firespout
1 Dismantling Blow
Sideboarding and Maindeck
Zoo: StP, Path, EE, Chant-lock (not too effective), game won via Wish-> Pulse or Elsepth. Sideboard you board in Firespout for 2/3, 3/3 and save StPs on Goyfs/Knights.
Merfolks: StP, Path, EE, Chant-lock (effective since they have no MD bounce), game won via ScepterChant + Jace/Elspeth. Chant-lock actually solves the weak Merfolk matchup that Landstill has. You no longer get islandwalked, and your Planeswalker become even more powerful since they don't have reach to get rid of them. Sideboard you have Firespouts and REB (stickable), board out Standstills on the draw (since Vial on the play is a huge problem).
Goblins: StP, Path, EE (not too effective), games won via Elsepth + ScepterChant and dealing with Vial/Lackey. Same as merfolk, Chant-lock solves the weakness of swarm aggro if you fail to deal with Vial. They have little MD answer aside from tin-street holigan (not in all gob lists). Ports and Wastes are a problem to stabilize though. Sideboard you have Firespouts and more Chants to help stabilize.
CBTop + Goyf.dec StP, Path, EE, Planeswalker, Scepter all win games. Your removal > Creatures. If they resolve CB, just stall out and take some pain from Goyf and blow CB out with EE@2 sinking factory/waste mana to dodge CB. Natural Order is a problem, but as usual ScepterChant provides another way to avoid it, while Wish->Edict helps mitigate it. Pulse can help stabilize against PRogenitus if you can cast it twice a turn, and probably race the hydra with Elspeth. Postboard take out some removal, board in more negates and Extirpates
Combo EE, FoW, Counterspell, CHANTS! Take them by surprise game 1. This build is not as dead against combo as other Landstill builds.
Post board: REB (cantrips in combo), Extirpate (on rituals, tutors), Chant, Negate seals it up hopefully
Enchantress Problematic, chokes dont help, but Chant takes it again and steals wins. Post board: Extirpate, Negates, Chants, out goes removals.
Dredge They win game 1 unless you're lucky with timely StP on Ichorids and resolving Chant-lock or stabilizing with EE. Game 2, extirpate GG.
Emrakul/Progenitus/Iona.dec Chant and counters win this one. Iona naming white stops Chant but just Jace or Wish->Edict her back, Progenitus and Emrakul are stopped by Chants.
Loam Toughest matchup in my opinion. Chalice@1 hurts so don't let that resolve. They have a fast clock (once again don't let Chalice resolve or EE dealing with Chalice is too slow and you would have dropped to 10 life by then). Wish->Extirpate as soon as you get the chance to hit loam (careful they can dredge it back to hand by cycling lands), Wish-> Pulse if they don't have loam. Scepter-StP buys you huge time and works against them (no more Stronghold-recursion) but they have Maelstrom Pulse and EE against Scepter so don't be too reliant on it. Scepter-Chant wins this game preboard (no grips). Postboard: Extirpate v.s. Loam, and Scepter-Chant lock or Jace attempts to seal it up (Grips become a problem so don't rely too much on Chant-lock).
Control Mirror: Decree.dec beats you, you beat most control with Scepter imprinting Counterspell/Chant. Scepter + Brainstorm is also huge since control mirror games drag on and drawing the best card of 3 every turn gives you huge reach. Chant + Planeswalker dodges counterspells. Postboard-> Extirpates + Negates + REB (all stickeable) shores up your matchup.
Lands: Extirpate v.s. Waste/Loam, FoW/Counterspell v.s. Manabond/Exploration. Deal with that you are cool. MD is dead game1, postboard Negates, Extirpate comes in, out goes Chants. Negate/Counterspell on a stick is brutal against lands (deals with Loam), then try to wastelock them out when they can't cast spells, or win with Planeswalkers
So far, the deck has been treating me nicely playtesting. I'm back to 2 Tops and they work incredibly well with Crucible, ensuring I don't draw lands, while Crucible gets lands (akin to drawing/playing 2 cards a turn). I really want to make room for the 2nd Crucible, maybe cut the 4th Standstill for the 2nd Crucible? I tested 3 Chants, 2 Scepter and it works super (unclunky) but MD is very tight now. I've been liking Jace more and more in the Scepter build (Scepter-Chant/Counterspell + Jace's bounce clears the board and stabilizes board position very fast). And paired with Crucible + Top, Jace's Fateseal and Brainstorm abilities become very strong digging. I'm tempted to go to 3 Jace, dropping 2nd Elspeth, and perhaps drop another Elspeth to fit another Path (6StP effects total, enabling turn 2 Standstills).
What I noticed in this deck:
Stall and hit lands, remove relevant threats, drop standstill, win with card advantage (planeswalkers, crucibles, wishes, standstills).
I conclude that games that I have lost are games where I had no card advantage, everytime I had card advantage (standstills, crucibles, scepter, planeswalkers) I won games. The secret is to hitting that card advantage, and I'm starting to see the power of Chant (even without scepter) since there are many times from playtesting where I would just Chant to get an extra turn/land drop to dodge daze and be a turn ahead (not in terms of landdrop but in terms of board advantage) to resolve Scepter/Standstill daze-free.
Another route that I'm interested in taking is to skip on the Standstills, and go Treasure Hunts with 4 Maze of Ith on top of 24 lands (Check out the CAB JaceTM decklist on N&D. Seems strong, but I think it has a much weaker combo game1 matchup). But that's another deck to discuss. Standstills realy have not failed me, I don't really see the complaint. There are situations where I cannot cast it at all due to unfavorable board position, but that's usually about 15% of the time. Treasure Hunt/Predict would not have helped too much too if the board position is THAT unfavorable. That's why I'm reconsidering on cutting 2 Elspeth for 3rd Jace and 2nd Path to strengthen the early game.
I think Maze is an interesting solution to the aggro problem right now (big fatties). It doesn't stop Emrakul/Progenitus which is a big pain, but it is solid against New Horizons, Loam etc. Wastelanding Maze will detract from wastelands on your colored-manabase, but even then you're still behind a turn with land drop (maze doesn't tap for mana). I feel that my list has a decent aggro matchup, and Maze might be overkill since it doesn't solve the problematic aggro matchups game 1 (emrakul, progenitus, zoo still has burn). So weighing the pros of CAB JaceTM decklist v.s. the scepterchant Landstill list, ScepterChant actually solves a ton of game1 weaknesses that control decks face (emrakul, progenitus, enchantress, combo, loam). I think this is the reason why I'm having interest again in developing this form of control deck in today's meta.
Let me know on what you think, the issue with Landstill v.s.other control decks, and dropping Elspeth for more Jaces and StP-effect MD
Tell me, you really want me to play scepter-still, do you? :p
Thanks for the deep analysis, some questions:
-i really miss the spell snares. really, i would never leave house without them. With new cb.decks featuring jace, counterbalance has become THAT pain in the ass. That's why atm I feel I have to stand on the green splash, krosan grip is really powerful right now. Yeah, I weaken my loam/lands mu (all in all, I always see only 1-2 players play those decks even in bigger events here, thought one of those regularly top8's with lans).
-i'd cut the 4th standstill for the 3rd jace, though at my last tournament I felt I wanted the 4th. Badly. But jace is too good and elspeth too.
-tops: yes and no. Yes, they are cool. No, maybe we don't need them. You know I'm a fan of tops, but like konsultant and other said the problem here is never missing a land drop. I think we don't need library manipulation after jace sticks: we usually wins, when this happens. I think we don't need mid-game manipulation, since by then we'll have some form of CA engine/wincon, otherwise we are pretty much already dead. I think the problem is hitting safe the land drops of the very early game, something analogue to baneslayer control. I think top is not suited for this work, as it requires too much mana in the first turns to actually do the job. I think a there are cards bettere suited for this job, namely ponder and, I don't have it pondered that much yet, preordain. I know DIF once played ponders and I had the chance to play with him on mws once, he told me that ponder were simply awesome in landstil. Maybe this is right again.
Some points about this two cards...Crucible needs 3 lands to be cast while Dragon will give you, for sure, your 3rd land. Once put in the yard, dragon looses some utility due it "buyback" cost. With crucile, once you put it onto the bfield you'll have "fresh lands" every turns.Quote:
Originally Posted by mossivo1986
Wait, why wouldn't this deck want a top or two? It does more than just find land drops: it enables use to have a virtual hand size of +3 and lets us look for answers with the combined use of fetchlands for shuffle effects.
Agree with this. I've played both with and without them and the deck just feels strictly worse when you don't play some number of them.Quote:
Originally Posted by DragoFireheart
thats because your not playing with enough redundancy in your builds. While top is excellent in SOME match-ups; in other ones it's strictly a mana sink and you'll never dig yourself out of it. + By running top your stop running cards like Fact or Fiction, Jace 2.0 and the like. While I understand that top is sick, I also understand the reality that top isn't the end all.Quote:
Originally Posted by kikoo
And for that matter I would like to referance Mastershakes build for some key points.
4x Counterspell: I finally agree with this.
3x Wish: Absolutely necessary if you choose to run wish.
7-8 STP's between main and sb: Qunitisential as your cutting snare, you have to make up for it somewhere.
I think these things need to be implemented into a new shell, as they are all things I agree with. While I don't agree with everything Mastershake runs, I deffinately agree with his playstyle for most match-ups, and I also believe that the deck needs this kind of playstyle to thrive in the current metagame.
I'm one of the people who suggested running three or even 4 tops, long ago, so I know the ups of top. The thing is: where is the weakness of the deck? In the first couple of turns, where you HAVE to make sure you hit all of your first land drops. Top does, in my opinion and testing, a little more different job, i.e. stabilizing your midgame draw. In the first turns, where the most part of the field will start to try to kill you very fast (that's what aggro and combo decks are trying to do...), you have to stay open and counter/remove threats to stay alive, you tipically have little to no time to have fun with the wonderful things top can do. As an answer to the early game, many of us use spell snare. Crz87's list does not, but I would never drop spell snare for top. I would drop them for ponder, for those cars cover the same role, i.e. survive trhough the early game: the former, by countering threats like counterbalance and other; the latter, by making sure we hit our land drops and stacking the top of the deck for the subsequent plays.
As for the virtual, I don't believe this is time for handy things like counterbalance, and I prefere to go straighforward with card advantage (fact or fiction) if I had to fill those 2 slots. I don't really care of spending 4 mana and some fetches to find an answer right now, where fof just does a better job (and is better vs many other decks, even those packing daze). If crz87 list (as all of landstill lists) has an early game problem (hitting every land drop), the he shouldn't "replace" spell snares (he didn't even use them, I mean: "early game defense slots") with top, but rather with ponder.
EDIT: moss came first. Nice to see you too point out the lack of spell snare as the matter here.
I don't see the problem with having Counterspell, Spell Snare and Top in the same deck. This combination of cards didn't seem to hinder Tom Martell's success at the GP.
In my experience, the 3 most common ways of losing with Landstill are:
1) getting mana denied hard and only drawing more 4cc bombs that I can't cast.
2) going into a topdeck war with the opponent and only drawing blanks.
3) drawing the "wrong" parts of the deck against a specific matchup (e.g. creature control cards vs storm combo)
Top fixes these problems and in addition to that it makes Standstill infinitely better. When you are under Standtill and you don't have top in play, the opponent will just wait untll you start missing your land drops and crack it when you are on 8 cards. Sure, you get to filter your hand, but in the meantime they have been drawing a lot of gas too so there will be almost no card advantage gained. If you are under Standstill and you have top in play, they will have to crack it immediately or get really far behind since you will never miss a land drop.
It's also one of the key cards in any kind of control mirror. In my opinion, 4x Brainstorm is just not enough to control your early game draw steps with a control deck like this,
SDT is great in the control mirror, but right now is it really warranted in the metagame? The problem with running SDT is that you need to devote 3-4 slots (no, the builds running 2 are not going to be consistent) to have the card in the first place. As Joel pointed out, you are still making a sacrifice by running the card, as you lose a large amount of redundancy.
Honestly, with a SDT-less build which I've advocated for a long time, by using your draw engines carefully and especially Brainstorms judiciously (it is one of the most skill intensive cards in the deck, after all), the problems you pointed out should be reduced. Of course you are not going to be beating Storm Combo with your MD, you need to shift the percentage of role cards, in this case the "W" portion of the deck that is better against creatures and the "U" portion of the deck that is better against control + combo, to combat whatever matchup you're playing. That's why the sideboard is there to shore up those matchups.
Wait, Tom Martell was playing UWx landstill at the GP? Didn't notice that... ... ... ... ...Quote:
Originally Posted by kikoo
Of these problems, the really relevant one is the first one. If you run out of gas, than like mossivo says your build probably lacks of redundancy, or you are using your deck uncorrectly, or you are facing a bad macthup in which standstill is irrelevant like merfolk e.g.. Landstill is a deck that is (should be) designed around card advantage, what else? We don't have a clock, we don't race and don't combo, we have to incrementally generate CA and make the opponent run out of gas and then counterattack, that's always been the general plan (although speedstill approach it's a little different post-sb). Getting mana early to cast all of our bombs it's not one of the problems, it's MANDATORY. Top is too slow to do this work reliably in the very early game, and often you'll find yourself manascrewed of unable to counter threats/look for mana in the same turn. Top is a solid mid-late game card, but don't we have enought cards to work at that stage? You said top is one of the key cards against control mirror. True: but here, don't we have enought time to set up defense, top or not top?Quote:
In my experience, the 3 most common ways of losing with Landstill are:
1) getting mana denied hard and only drawing more 4cc bombs that I can't cast.
2) going into a topdeck war with the opponent and only drawing blanks.
3) drawing the "wrong" parts of the deck against a specific matchup (e.g. creature control cards vs storm combo)
In my opinion too, 4x braistorm is just not enought to control your early game draw step. But unlike you, I believe top is not the right asnwer, it's too mana intensive in turns when we desperately need mana. In a deck like crz87's one, that misses important things to do @t1 except for brainstorm, I think ponder would be a good choice, as it comes online the same turn you cast it, hope you draw into force, sets up a land for the next turn and the subsequent play. The way ponder cantrips into mana in the early game is something top just can't do. Too bad his list doesn't have spell snares.
EDIT: oh wait, are we coming in and out of the established section like crazy frogs?!?
I never said he did. My point was that it was very much possible for those cards to work just fine in the same control deck. His Supreme Blue build had many elements of a Landstill deck, anyways.Quote:
Originally Posted by gustha
Personally I believe that Marius Hausmann's hybrid of UWb Landstill and Counterthopters is the strongest approach. Counterbalance is too good not to play in a blue control deck and it's much better to depend on 2cc thopter combo pieces than to rely too heavily on the clunky 4cc bombs that will never resolve through any combination of Daze, Pierce and Wasteland
Aggrocontrol decks are not control decks, they put together a control shell AND a clock, that is something we can't do (though I'm atm playing vendilion cliques and I played tarmo in UWg as well, but that's another matter). Though I agree that Martell's deck has some resembance to a control deck, it's still a different concept to landstill, I think.
However, like I said before you don't like to prove me that counterspell top and snare can work in the same list, as you can notice by yourseld, if you scroll pages back, that my lists of this last year I have abused of this configuration. I also don't like to depend to counterbalance maindeck and, while I stilistically like Hausmann's hybrid approach, it does not fit my playstile.
But that's not the point, again, you're not listening. I said: look at crz87 list. He dos not use spell snares, thus lacking of early defense. If he wanted some, and not in the form of spell snare, he should lean towards ponder rather than top, because top is not an early but a mid-late game engine. Landstill first turns are the most difficult to manage, and top does not help here. Yes, I don't believe top is strong in landstill today, as it was before. The decks are generally grown faster and we can't cover the field all around. Decks growing faster will probably mean less adaption to mid-late game, so that we have to focus more on the first turns and end as usual the late game. Top does not the job, I think. Ponder and snare are much valuable cards right now. Reconsidering top means, for me, to reconsider fact or fiction as well (and probably cunning wish).
E.Dragon ensures early landdrops, recurring landdrops under Standstill, colourfixing in the mid- or lategame or sometimes 5 points of damange that win the game. Crucible on the other hand is pure card advantage if it sticks for some turns. However I like cards that give me early landdrops to enter the midgame safely.Quote:
Originally Posted by GoldenCid
On a sidenote: I played against Hypergenesis/Show and Tell.dec at a local shop last week and he Show'n Telled Form of the Dragon into play game 2 where I got Eternal Dragon, now that was fun ;).
About the issue with Top:
At first we should be awared that once we talk about Top we'll sooner or later talk about Counterbalance as well and for this topic we have the awesome U/W/x CounterTop Walker thread.
Top on its own is a great card in any kind of control deck, but Landstill in particular has better options for these slots, i.e. FoF, Wish or Jace.
You can't compare Landstill with something like CounterTop, as we have card advantage in the form of Standstill (card advantage that actually draws cards), while they got Balance/Top lock, which is only virtual CA and therefore need to be established as soon as possible.
I'm going to play at the Legacy Sideevent@ Pro Tour Amsterdam, any chance I'm going to see some of you guys there (Reagens and crew :)? )
My list for the event:
4 Flooded Strand
2 Delta
4 Tundra
1 Glacier Fortress
1 Underground Sea
1 Scrubland
2 Island
2 Plains
4 Mishras Factory
2 Wasteland
1 Eternal Dragon
4 Force of Will
3 Counterspell
3 Spell Snare
4 Brainstorm
4 Standstill
4 Swords to Plowshare
2 Path to Exile
1 Wrath of God
1 Day of Judgement
1 Humility
3 Engineerd Explosives
2 Elspeth, Knight Errant
2 Jace, the Mindsculptor
2 Decree of Justice
1 Crucible of Worlds
Side:
2 Preacher
3 Meddling Mage
2 Negate
3 Hydroblast
2 Relic of Progenitus
1 Tormnonds Crypt
2 Vindicate
Why do you run 4 Factory + 2 Wasteland and not a 3/3 split? Against Merfolk Wasteland is superior to Factory because it gets around opposing Wastelands.
I'm not sure what to expect in an unknow Meta like Amsterdam, but Mishra is overall a better card in the deck (at least in my experience), being able to block any kind of random creatures, while being a game ending clock as well.
Also they tend to work great with Humility they said.
@Felidae: Dragon and crucible together in the same list?? Nice, but why??
He JUST answered that question in the post above. Like, literally when you last asked the same question.Quote:
Originally Posted by GoldenCid
I do have a question for Felidae: how relevant has the one-of Glacial Fortress been? How consistently do you get to have it out? You stated you couldn't fetch it, but has it made a difference?