Re: [Deck] UW(x) Landstill
Quote:
Originally Posted by
The Treefolk Master
With UW Landstill being my first competitive Legacy deck, I'm always thrilled to try new things that might get the deck to work again.
I really like your list (Intuition control decks are awesome), just a couple of things:
Bant Charm: Why? It isn't really that versatile, seems overcosted. I think I'd just rather have another Engineered Explosives, which has historically proven itself to be awesome. I could be wrong, so I'll give it a try, but I don't like. I also notice your running quite few mass removal spells. Just 1 EE and 1 Verdict. The Landstill decks of old used to average at 3 EE and 2 Wraths, do you find yourself wishing to be able to clear the board more often?
Bant Charm is this deck's instant artifact removal spell for Batterskull. It also acts as creature removal in most cases. I needed a Snapcastable "catch-all" and Bant Charm is it. I play less sweepers because I have 4 Snapcasters with 4 StP. The deck has a constant stream of counters and removal so sweepers arent that focal.
Isn't 4 Snapcaster Mages too many? When playing similar, pure control decks with 4 Mages, I often found myself with too many (namely 2 in my opening hand) clogging my hand, just doing nothing (be it due to a lack of targets, not enough mana, etc). I could be wrong, but it might be better to shave 1 Mage.
Mage is important because he will grant value no matter what. It is an effective way to blank your opponent's removal while having creatures. Any flash creature is important when you play Standstill, it is the quickest way to board superiority when you want to draw 3 cards ASAP.
You're only running 2 green sources, so a timely Wasteland could really ruin your day. You might consider squeezing a Savannah somewhere in there.
There is only 1 LftL and a single Bant charm as green cards, 2 Duals is enough. It is very hard for an opponent to cut you off of LftL if you have 2 Trops in your deck and use them wisely. I don't want to play savannah because I really want to hit my double blue on turn 2. When you look at it, the deck is really blue heavy with a splash of white and an even smaller splash of green, it just happens that 2 of the 6 white spells require double white mana.
You probably want a singleton Tormod's Crypt, to lock out Graveyard dependent decks (Intuition for Loam, Ruins, Crypt. Your move, sucker.)
I had Crypt in the initial build but couldn't think of a scenario where I would need recurring GY hate over 2-3 turns after turn 3, whereas I can think of many scenarios where I would want to Intuition for 3 Surgicals for immediate use or GY hate during turn zero.
You can also consider 1 Celestial Purge in your sideboard. I've been loving it in miracles, as it takes care of annoying creatures like shaman, confidant, bloodbraid elf, etc, in addition to killing Liliana.
Celestial Purge is a great card to consider indeed. I had a singleton in Stoneblade but I honestly don't know what I would take out for it in this list.
Anyway, kudos for the decklist, definitely looks awesome, I'd really like to be able to bore the crap out of people with Landstill again (they seem to loath UW far more than any of the BUG builds).
Thanks, I will definitely look into including a single Celestial Purge and maybe a second Supreme Verdict
Re: [Deck] UW(x) Landstill
Another tourney, another short report ( same list as last time)
R1: Junk
G1.: He leads with a turn 2 Bob, who instantly gets plowed to lead the way for my own turn 2 play: a good old Standstill. He immediately breaks it with his Lilliana, who gets an arrow to the knee ( someone might also refer to this as Force of Will). A couple of turns later I resolve a Jace and ride him to victory, while his attempts to stop me get answerd by a shitload of removal spells.
Boarding: nothing
G2.: He mulligans down to 5 and never gets into the game, as I was able to trade an early Terminus 3 to 1 and yet again Jace fateseals to victory.
1-0 / 2-0
R2: Maverick
G1.: We trade so early blows, untill I topdeck a lucky Entreat to create 4 tokens, which are more than lethal for him, to seal the deal.
Board: +2 Detentions Sphere +1 Timely Reinforcment -1 Stndstill -1 Jace -1 FoF
G2.: After a couple of early blows the game turned out into a long drawn out one, as he hit all 3 of his Surgical Extractions, in order to get rid of my Terminus, Swords and Jace, which lead to a race of me, grinding for Elspeth, Entreat or Manlands against him, trying to kill me before this happens. He won, meh.
G3.: Another long game that I throw away in a single turn, as I fail to realize that the following turn of plays wont work: play Explosive on one, blow it up to kill Noble Hierach and Sylvan Safekeeper, bounce KotR with your Jace and win comfortably from that moment on. Yeah, I suck....
1-1 / 3-1
R3: Nicfit
G1.: Another boring game where I resolve an early Standstill and simply grind him out via Jace and Terminus, nothing to add here.
Sideboard: +1 Timely Reinforcement +2 Detention Sphere -3 Spell Snare
G2.: Do you know what's good against a deck that'll likely throw a couple of creatures onto the board? Terminus. What's even better? A Terminus followed by a Standstill. Do you know what's even better ? Play a FoF, follow it up with a Terminus and then play Standstill. Yeah, good times.
2-1 / 5-1
R4: U/B Tezzeret Control
G1.: He struggles to find mana and can't really handle my ongoing 4+cc bombs, leading to a really one sided game.
Sideboard: +2 REB +4 CB +2 D.Sphere +3 Clique -4 StP -3 Terminus -1 Verdict -1 Humility - 1 Snare -1 Standstill
G2.: Turn 2 Balance, one blind flip, one Brainstorm and double Redblast, it was a really grim day for him.
3-1 /7-1
Re: [Deck] UW(x) Landstill
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Qweerios
Are there any cards I should be heavily considering for this shell? Any really good Intuition piles I am missing?
I'm not a landstill player, but I've ran Intuition for Moat, Replenish, Replenish or Moat, Humility, Replenish against tribal metas before.
Re: [Deck] UW(x) Landstill
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Wizened Cenn
Sorry, but that's not a good plan :-S. Maybe in some weird UWG Enchantress deck, but not here. You're adding 4 4CC cards to your deck to answer a slice of the metagame which is currently very small. If you have lots of Tribal decks in your metagame, there are other, better ways to answer them than that.
Re: [Deck] UW(x) Landstill
Quote:
Originally Posted by
The Treefolk Master
Sorry, but that's not a good plan :-S. Maybe in some weird UWG Enchantress deck, but not here. You're adding 4 4CC cards to your deck to answer a slice of the metagame which is currently very small. If you have lots of Tribal decks in your metagame, there are other, better ways to answer them than that.
Fair enough. There would also be the potential difficulty of returning a standstill that you'd rather not.
Re: [Deck] UW(x) Landstill
Or get like 2 or 3 stand stills back! Add in an Opalascence (sp?) And you've got yourself a terrifying army of enchantment s!
Re: [Deck] UW(x) Landstill
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Megadeus
Or get like 2 or 3 stand stills back! Add in an Opalascence (sp?) And you've got yourself a terrifying army of enchantment s!
If you have 2-3 standstills in your grave, you should already be up a ton of cards and be able to close the game without a random combo. Opalesence isn't very good, and the standstills couldn't attack under the moat if we're still talking about the same scenario
The reason I suggested it was that some decks have a really hard time dealing with a moat/humility, and if you're already running Intuition, it is a pile you could consider.
Re: [Deck] UW(x) Landstill
Yeah I was talking about a ridiculous awful combo. But Standstills attacking under themselves with an Opalescence does sound like a good time.
Re: [Deck] UW(x) Landstill
Won a small event at my LGS. I didn't get to play much of the field but one of my goal matchups to improve was nailed in particular.
R1: Bye (2-0)
R2: Tinfins (2-1)
R3: Burn (2-0)
R4: Burn (2-0)
If you wish to see the list it is posted on the previous page. I took out the Bant Charm from the main in favor of a second EE that I traded for during round 1. I won every G1 against burn using Jace's ultimate and G2 using the Zuran Orb Intuition pile. I don't think the Timely Reinforcements are needed that much so I cut one in favor of a Celestial Purge (wich also works nicely against Burn). After the event I also took out the singleton Supreme Verdict from the main in favor of a 3rd EE, I might move it to the SB over the now singleton Timely Reinforcements. I don't think timely is needed when the soft counters buy you enough time to start jacing or to get an Intuition online.
Another idea I have been entertaining to improve this deck is the addition of a 4th splash color, either black or red. By removing Elspeth from the deck (double white cost), all of the spells are mainly blue heavy and there is only green for LftL and white for StP left. Adding a 4th color in that regard does not weaken the manabase by any means and only makes EE better. Red allows REB and Pyroblast in the SB as well as Firespout in the main or side. Black opens up Darkblast, Raven's Crime, Thoughtseize, and some SB cards like Perish and Virtue's Ruin. Any feedback on this idea?
Re: [Deck] UW(x) Landstill
Congrats.
Glad to hear you upped your Engineered Explosives count, the card's still as awesome as when I first started playing landstill. However I'm not sure you want to cut Supreme Verdict entirely, having an emergency reset button is always nice. What was your reasoning on taking it out?
@Adding a 4th colour: That actually sounds nice, and I think black has more to offer than red does. I was wondering how this list fared against combo decks, and the addition of Thoughtseize (3-off?) to the SB should be really good in the match up (and also in the control mirror). We can run 3 Surgicals, 3 Thoughtseize 2 Vendilion Cliques to shatter combo decks when combined with all our permission. We can also run some random 1-offs like Perish or Vindicate as a catch all (although the latter is probably unnecessary). With these changes in mind we probably want 2 Underground Seas in, so I'm thinking -1 Island -1 Tundra.
Darkblast sounds nice too, but Raven's Crime doesn't work so well when you're running very few black sources.
On a completely unrelated note, I've been thinking of running an Esper Landstill build featuring Baleful Strix, similar to Team Eternal's most recent list, although I must wonder if BUG isn't just a strict upgrade to UBW at that point.
Re: [Deck] UW(x) Landstill
I took out Verdict for the 3rd EE because I thought it was a strict upgrade. It is very rare that I manage to Snapcast a Verdict but it is a good spell to draw naturaly. I guess I wanted to see how it would go if I choose to splash a 4th color because that would mean no more Verdict and Elspeth. I also like the idea that I can Intuition for 3 EE when I need to get rid of something ASAP. I think Darkblast and Perish are probably the best tools against Jund as it will kill everything they have.
Re: [Deck] UW(x) Landstill
This weekend I played at SCG Philly piloting a Landstill deck, similar to the one that Felidae posted on the last page, to a top 64 place going 5-3. Normally I play UWr Miracles, but I decided that I was tired of getting all my shit Abrupt Decay'd, so I figured I'd just play a deck with only one real Decay target. This was also my first large event so I didn't get very good notes in regard to sideboarding, but I'll do my best to remember what happened.
My list was:
4 Mishra's Factory
4 Flooded Strand
3 Scalding Tarn
3 Island
2 Tundra
2 Plains
1 Celestial Colonnade
1 Karakas
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Tolaria West
1 Academy Ruins
1 Maze of Ith
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Brainstorm
4 Standstill
4 Force of Will
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
3 Terminus
3 Sensei's Divining Top
2 Counterspell
2 Spell Snare
2 Chrome Mox
1 Supreme Verdict
1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Engineered Explosives
SB:
4 Counterbalance
3 Vendilion Clique
3 Rest in Peace
1 Timely Reinforcements
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Misdirection
1 Seal of Cleansing
Rd 1: Matt Costa playing Deathblade
Game1: I win the die roll and Matt mulligans to 5 while my opening hand is 2 lands, 2 brainstorm, chrome mox, standstill, something else. I go in the tank whether to go all in on the turn 1 standstill plan or not, I figure since he mulled twice that it would be sweet. So I pull the trigger and exile a brainstorm to the mox and play the standstill. We play draw go for awhile with me making land drops every turn and him stopping at two. He decides to break the standstill when he has 7 cards in hand. Long story short not playing with a fast win condition is stupid and he eventually gets a Geist (A fair and interactive magic card that I enjoy playing against!) down with Karakas up and kills me after getting him to 6 with a factory. This game also took around 35-40 minutes.
Boarding: I take out Moxen, which I decided later was a mistake since I was on the play (I blame early day jitters), and something else for V. Cliques.
Game2: Is equally as grindy and not fun, I almost kill him with Colonnade but he plays to the clock and I lose because I can't kill him. Turns out he was slowrolling a wasteland in his hand so it didn't really matter I don't think.
This round is where I discover that I really wish I owned a few wastelands to put in the deck and that while I really hate Entreat the Angels it's pretty much crucial to ever winning at a reasonable time.
0-1/0-2
Rd 2: Stiflenaught with Varolz
Game1: I don't really remember game one to well, but I do recall letting his Bobs live so that he would take more damage and I could kill him faster. Eventually I kill all of his dudes and peck him with Factory for awhile, finishing with the Colonnade.
Boarding: I bring in the Rest in Peace's and the Engineered Explosive for Moxen and a Standstill I believe.
Game2: The second game was ridiculous. I do absolutely nothing to him for several turns while I try and stave off all of his creatures for many turns. Eventually he hits me down to 2 life and I crack a fetch going to 1 to shuffle my library since he has no reach apart for D. Shaman. I very skillfully top deck a Terminus in dramatic fashion getting rid of a Death's Shadow, a Goyf, a Bob, and 2 D. Shamans that were summoning sick. I play a Standstill and pass the turn to him since he has manlands but thank god that they were Inkmoth Nexus so I didn't have to worry about actually getting killed by it. He does nothing for a few turns while I poke him with Factory which eventually becomes even more pathetic when he chumps it with his Nexus making it a 1/1. I get him all the way to 10 before he plays something to break the Standstill, then he says that this might be really funny, and proceeds to attempt to Stifle the Standstill trigger which I trigger again probably crushing his dreams. I told him I thought that play was fairly insulting, but he disagreed. Meh. He plays a Dreadnaught and stifles it leaving him with lethal on the board. End of his turn I brainstorm to find an answer and he Seedtimes me. At this point I was extreme nervous since I had tapped my factory to attack. Luckily brainstorm showed me a Swords to get rid of his threat, leaving him very disappointed on his extra turn. However this put him back to 22 which made me think I'd never kill him. Luckily a timely Colonnade made quick work of him.
Note: This game is where I was very pleased with my deck to choice to play around Decay, his land card in hand against my Factory and Colonnade was a Decay that he couldn't use to clear my Factory out of the way of his Death's Shadow for lethal.
1-1/2-2
Rd 3: Timur Babakol (6th place finish) with "River Rock"
What he said in his report sums it up nicely:
Quote:
Round 3: UW Miracle Landstill
These games were heavily in my favor. Between my fast clock, Daze and Stifle, I was able to keep my opponent off of plays for most of the game. Stifle hit about 2-3 Terminus in this match and I was able to sink his life low enough that a single threat was able to kill him very quickly.
2-1
I felt like I was on the back foot the entire time, this match was awful and he attacked me from every angle. I really didn't feel like I could do anything against him. I don't know if it is just me, or if this match up is just generally pretty bad.
1-2/2-4
Rd 4: Omnitell with Release the Ants
This was another awful match where he got to do whatever he felt like since I didn't have a real clock and he had infinite counterspells to stop mine. Game 1 and 2 were very pretty quick (But not quick enough for me to go get food! :( ) and unexciting for the most part. I boarded in Counterbalances but even when it landed it did nothing since I didn't have a top and I don't have a lot of 3/5/11/12 drops to stop his spells. Maybe I'll try siding in Dracos to get them with this Release the Ants clash plan!
1-3/2-6
Sweet start to my first tourny. At this point my stomach is eating it's self since I didn't have any breakfast and my head feels like it's going to explode from 50+ minute rounds each time. To make it better I learn that x-3 is needed to make top 64.
Rd 5: RUG Delver
Game1: I must have swept away 6 Nimble Mongoose this entire game, I spent all my time trying to deal with these stupid shrouded dudes since his other threats were easily killed and Maze of Ith did a lot of work against the ones I didn't Plow. But alas I finally draw a Verdict for his 2 goose in play and then I remember that his deck has 6 or so Bolts in it and he proceeds to toss one at my face and win.
Boarding: I bring in the Counterbalances, the Rest in Peaces, and the Explosive taking out the Standstills, Fact or Fiction, Counterspell or Spell Snare, and Moxen.
Game2: I don't recall this match to much, but apparently he gets me to 12 life and then scoops at 20. I believe I got out Counterbalance, Top and RIP. So I appreciate him not wasting time making me peck him with Factories.
Boarding: No change
Game3: About the same as game 2, I get down a RIP for his Goyf and Goose then proceed to stabilize at 13 life with a Jace, Maze, Counterbalance and Top. Jace fatesealed all potential red sources to the bottom of his deck stranding the bolts in his hand. He lets me Jace ultimate him which was fun I suppose. I also noticed he played an island to play around wasteland which I thought was pretty sweet.
2-3/4-7
Rd 6: UR Delver
Game1: Is long and grueling since his creatures suck against me since Factory negates any ground guys and Plows get Delver. On the plus side I must of drawn at least 4 cards off his Goblin Guide. The down side was after I placed him on not having wasteland or stifle I proceeded to crack all my fetches and get my non basics. This was unfortunate when he proceeded to Price of Progress me for 12 damage for lethal. Now I understood why he thought his deck was good against the more recent top decks. However, I still think that deck is just worse than other tempo decks.
Boarding: I bring in Counterbalances and RIP, since he has Snapcasters, and can't recall what I board out. This is the match where I was extremely mad that I didn't include a Zuran Orb in my sideboard, but I suppose that is what I get for making the sideboard during the car ride to the event on Sunday.
Game2: I start on the play and start with island, he then starts with Goblin Guide which I Force(lol) so that I can play a Standstill on turn 2 ahead on the board. This is met with some draw go for awhile while I make land drops and he doesn't (big surprise). He breaks it end of turn with a brainstorm. He then leads with a delver that hits me once, but I play a counterbalance with a top out and he scoops at 21 (sweet deck).
Game3: He plays more bad creatures against me and I take care of them, however he does get me all the way down to 1 life. We end up going to time and hitting the extra turns. On turn 5 my board state is 2 factories, 6 other lands, a Jace, a Top, and a RIP. He asks me to concede, which I found ridiculous, I told him no and asked him to concede to me and showed him a 2 in my hand and pointed to the top in play saying that he wasn't going to resolve any spells again. Thankfully he was nice enough to give me the concession keeping me alive for top64.
3-3/6-8
Rd 7: Dredge
Game1: Opponent says he's new to legacy, except for the games that he played to learn,and I congratulate him for doing this well in his first tournament with his experience. He does a lot of dredging the first two turns and around turn 4 he has a 9/9 Troll and about 16 zombie tokens. On my turn I play a fetch and spin my top to see if there is any hope, no terminus there. I crack and give it a second look and see one putting it on top and passing the turn with a Tundra up. He mistakenly brings two Ichorids back and attacks me with everything, I draw the Terminus and put all his dudes in the best possible place. He then bricks on dredges for a few turns (deserved since his first 4 dredges showed him all of his bridges) and decides he is going to deck himself so he starts drawing and eventually plays an Imp to try and hit me for 1 to death. I eventually swords it and kill him with Elspeth jumping a Factory.
Boarding: Bring in RIPs and the E tutor, take out Standstills.
Game2: I was praying for the nuts hand of RIP, Mox, land, anything but I didn't get it sadly. That didn't matter since his dredges all came up blank and he showed me that he brought in some Grizzly Bears for shits and giggles, at this point I realized he was just having fun for his last game. I kill him with some factories and he hard casts Bridge from Below and then Golden Bear, killing himself with City of Brass. I may have won the round but he won the real prize since he got to leave and go eat.
4-3/8-8
Rd 8: Mono Black Legends Enchantments (more commonly know as pox)
Game1: He leads with Summer version Factory which puts my white boarder ones to absolute shame. Next turn he casts dark ritual and I realize that I'm playing against Pox, this leads into a Liliana. This game was sweet because my opponent had the nicest looking deck with all black boarded cards including: The Abyss, Nether Void, Sinkhole, Chains of Mephistopheles, Tabernacle, etc. However, sadly that deck isn't actually that good and I draw my Elspeth and fight through his various edict effects on my single token killing his Lili and then him after quite awhile.
Boarding: I bring in Misdirection and Counterbalances for Terminus, Verdict and a Standstill.
Game2: He leads this time with a swamp and nothing. I play land and pass back. He goes Urborg into Sinkhole your land, I get to live the dream and Misdirect it to his Urborg. This felt pretty awesome since me, him, his friend and mine all had a good laugh claiming he got blown out. I then play Counterbalance on turn 2 (which ended up doing absolutely nothing in this game). We play an extremely grinding game for awhile which includes him playing Engineered Plague on soldier and one on Assembly Worker. This meant that I couldn't actually kill his Lili that he kept ticking up. Eventually he plays a third Engineered Plague on Assembly Worker stopping me from doing actual anything. I get to play my Crucible of Worlds which let him keep playing my fetch and see a lot of cards with my top until I found a Jace which proceeds to fateseal him racing against his Lili. At this point almost all of his cards are dead since we are both hellbent and he has no actual way of stopping my Jace with his factories now. He gets Lili to 7 before I get Jace to 13 and splits my stuff with Jace in one pile and all the rest in another. Naturally I take Jace and bin the rest, talk about value. I get Jace to 13 and ultimate him out of the game for a very sweet looking board state to finish the tournament.
5-3/10-8
Overall, I really liked the deck but there were glaring issues with it. The most noticeable was the lack of a good fast win condition. The second was a lack of a third color, I would have killed to own red duals so I could get Explosives to 3 and probably to splash for Lightning Bolt for additional removal and some reach. Throughout the day I was extremely happy with how Tolaria West performed, as well as Chrome Mox. In the future, if I stay 2 colors, I'd like to test with some amount of wastelands since I definitely like the idea of being able to just lock someone out of the game under the Standstill and get rid of problematic lands. As well as adding a Tamiyo and Decree of Justice and replacing Fact or Fiction with Gifts Ungiven so I can make a pile that consists of must answer threats as well as just being able to make value piles, as well as fitting some number of Snapcasters in. I also doubt that I played my absolute best. Not getting a full nights sleep, or eating in the morning, or at all during the day, not keeping hydrated through out the tournament made for a very long and miserable day of going to time more than I wanted to.
Re: [Deck] UW(x) Landstill
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Zllig
Overall, I really liked the deck but there were glaring issues with it. The most noticeable was the lack of a good fast win condition. The second was a lack of a third color, I would have killed to own red duals so I could get Explosives to 3 and probably to splash for Lightning Bolt for additional removal and some reach. Throughout the day I was extremely happy with how Tolaria West performed, as well as Chrome Mox. In the future, if I stay 2 colors, I'd like to test with some amount of wastelands since I definitely like the idea of being able to just lock someone out of the game under the Standstill and get rid of problematic lands. As well as adding a Tamiyo and Decree of Justice and replacing Fact or Fiction with Gifts Ungiven so I can make a pile that consists of must answer threats as well as just being able to make value piles, as well as fitting some number of Snapcasters in. I also doubt that I played my absolute best. Not getting a full nights sleep, or eating in the morning, or at all during the day, not keeping hydrated through out the tournament made for a very long and miserable day of going to time more than I wanted to.
Congratulations on your finish!
I agree with you in that Landstill can be grueling because your matches have more turns per game than most other decks.
Not going to time comes with experience. You have to play much faster than the average player.
Some feedback on your list:
- I like the addition of Maze of Ith to the Tolaria West package--it's interesting.
- I'm not sure if Terminus suits the Landstill archetype. The issue is that when Standstill is cracked you might draw your Terminus. Now you either have to tap six mana to cast it or use a Brainstorm effect to put the miracle card back. Sensei's Divining Top keeps the miracle cards on top of the library for the miracles decks, but there is no way prevent yourself from drawing a miracle card when Standstill is cracked. An alternative is to play more Supreme Verdict and Engineered Explosives.
Good luck in your future Landstill matches!
Re: [Deck] UW(x) Landstill
I have always liked landstill so I've never given it up. That is my landstill deck list, it's similar to Miracles. I have not played this deck yet.
4 Tundra
4 Flooded Strand
2 Polluted Delta
4 Mishra's Factory
2 Wasteland
5Island
2 Plains
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
2 Counterspell
3 Spell Pierce
4Swords to Plowshares
3 Terminus
3 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Decree of Justice
1Crucible of Worlds
4 Standstill
1Enlightened Tutor
2 Cunning Wish
1 Entreat the Angels
1 Humility
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
//Sideboard
SB: 1 Yelmo de obediencia
SB: 1 Pithing Needle
SB: 2 Rest in Peace
SB: 2 Celestial Purge
SB: 1 Enlightened Tutor
SB: 1 Misdirection
SB: 1 Noxious Revival
SB: 1 Dismantling Blow
SB: 1 Surgical extraction
SB: 2 vendilion clique
SB: 1 Pulse of the fields
SB: 1 Path to exile
What do you think?
Re: [Deck] UW(x) Landstill
MtG and particularly Legacy have recently caught my interest again and I'm planning to participate at tournaments in the future again. When I quit, my deck of choice was Landstill and as I'm still in possession of the respective card pool, that shall remain so.
First of, I concede that I have followed the discussion on the last few pages and have noticed that the users 'landstillmaniac' and 'TakeYourTime' have caused a lot of controversy with their seemingly oldish lists. Generally I always tended to agree with's Piceli89's train of thought because I considered 4cc spells and even Counterspell as too slow and I used to strive to lower the mana costs to enhance the matchup against troublesome matchups like RUG and other tempo decks.
However, I now tried to be more open-minded and gave the CC4 bomb approach a try. I came to the conclusion that running a lot of high-costed spells isn't necessarily bad. The more you try to lower your overall costs, the more you will probably end up with weakening your late game, which should actually be the strength of the deck. The issue has always been how to reach the point where you can afford to tap out for bombs like Elspeth, Jace, Humility, Wrath of God (Supreme Verdict!). Once that pointed has been reached, chances are good that you'll win. Delver and Tempo Decks have supposedly made that impossible and we all tried out things like more point removal, tops, terminus and low costed spells to address this problem. Doing so, I and I surmise a lot of others had watered down their deck and significantly weakened their late game.
However, this has to be avoided and I'm convinced that recent printings actually gave us the tools to fight those problematic matchups. Supreme Verdict is a fairly strong card as it's both uncounterable (which makes it a reliable answer to Delver, Mongoose, Merfolk etc. ) and blue (which means that it's pitchable to Force so it doesn't clog up your hand). Engineered Explosives is as good right now as it has never been before. This card makes the RUG matchup significantly better as it can get rid of Mongoose and Delver quite cheaply. Notice that Delver has a CC of 0 so dropping EE for 0 will suffice! These two cards and the general high prevalence of Delver decks allow us to survive quite easily until we get to the said point of late game bombs (Jace, Elspeth, Humility). This should definitely be taken into account when experimenting with this deck.
Furthermore, I propose to run a 1-of Geist of Saint-Traft as a win condition. With the exception of Liliana (which is admittedly a problem), he can't be handled by most decks and he represents a pretty fast way to win games so you can avoid draws. Not having as fast win condition, which is also a issue against combo decks, has always been a reason to stay away from this deck, but I could imagine that Geist can alleviate this problem. On the other hand, one has to concede that he doesn't play well with your own mass removal, but as you'll drop him mostly after you have gained control of the game, this shouldn't be that much of a problem.
Last but not least, I'd like to question Crucible of Worlds validity in the current state of the format where you'll find Abrupt Decay's everywhere. Since your opponent won't find other targets most of the time, it's almost guaranteed that it'll get destroyed pretty fast.
I hope I can stir up a discussion about this deck!
Re: [Deck] UW(x) Landstill
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Erdvermampfa
The more you try to lower your overall costs, the more you will probably end up with weakening your late game, which should actually be the strength of the deck.
Yes, I 100% agree. The main strategy is to counter combo decks or sweep creature decks and get to the late game. At that point you have a plethora of big CMC drops to out class whatever your opponent puts onto the board.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Erdvermampfa
Delver and Tempo Decks have supposedly made that impossible and we all tried out things like more point removal, tops, terminus and low costed spells to address this problem. Doing so, I and I surmise a lot of others had watered down their deck and significantly weakened their late game.
I feel that the tempo versus landstill is the same as tempo versus any other deck--sometimes they draw exactly what they need at the right time and flat out win. Something that helps a lot with this matchup in the UWx landstill shell is simply playing more basic lands. If you go UWb then innocent blood is a thing too.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Erdvermampfa
The issue has always been how to reach the point where you can afford to tap out for bombs like Elspeth, Jace, Humility, Wrath of God (Supreme Verdict!).
I usually don't do anything until I'm forced to. This includes being extremely conservative with Brainstorm.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Erdvermampfa
Furthermore, I propose to run a 1-of Geist of Saint-Traft as a win condition. With the exception of Liliana (which is admittedly a problem), he can't be handled by most decks and he represents a pretty fast way to win games so you can avoid draws. Not having as fast win condition, which is also a issue against combo decks, has always been a reason to stay away from this deck, but I could imagine that Geist can alleviate this problem. On the other hand, one has to concede that he doesn't play well with your own mass removal, but as you'll drop him mostly after you have gained control of the game, this shouldn't be that much of a problem.
Geist might be worth a shot. If you try him out I'd be interested in hearing about your findings.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Erdvermampfa
Last but not least, I'd like to question Crucible of Worlds validity in the current state of the format where you'll find Abrupt Decay's everywhere. Since your opponent won't find other targets most of the time, it's almost guaranteed that it'll get destroyed pretty fast.
Crucible wins games. If your opponent has artifact removal then only play crucible when you can make a land drop from your graveyard on the same turn. Yes, crucible is a target for abrupt decay but if you make sure you get at least one land drop out of it then you're still even on cards and your opponent is down by one card when the crucible is killed. In games 2 and 3, if the opponent keeps abrupt decay in the deck for your crucible then that's fantastic--those abrupt decays are card slots that could have been more threats or answers to your big 4CMC win conditions.
I commend you for wanting to try Landstill. It's a very difficult deck to pilot and the slightest mistake will cost you the game--more so than most other legacy decks. You also have to play much faster than the average player, but it's so fun to grind out your opponent and beat them for 2 damage every turn! :tongue:
Re: [Deck] UW(x) Landstill
Take your time could you reveal your deck list and explain it? Do you think Uw is better than Uwb(both playing cunning wish) ?
thank you :P
Re: [Deck] UW(x) Landstill
The problem with Crucible of Worlds is not Abrupt Decay, but Deathrite Shaman. CoW was very strong because in combination with Academy Ruins, Wasteland, Mishra's Factory, Engineered Explosives (and the last piece is Tolaria West) you could create an nearly unstoppable inevitability lock. But now, I think, it is unplayable (Deathrite Shaman...)
Re: [Deck] UW(x) Landstill
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Iron Buddha
The problem with Crucible of Worlds is not Abrupt Decay, but Deathrite Shaman. CoW was very strong because in combination with Academy Ruins, Wasteland, Mishra's Factory, Engineered Explosives (and the last piece is Tolaria West) you could create an nearly unstoppable inevitability lock. But now, I think, it is unplayable (Deathrite Shaman...)
Where does that leave other cards with graveyard interaction such as Life from the Loam, Snapcaster Mage, and Reanimate?
Re: [Deck] UW(x) Landstill
If you ask me they all suffered. "unplayable" was probably too strong, but you definitely have to consider the impact of Deathrite Shaman on every card that needs the grave.
