u both play Lands MTGO or just real?
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u both play Lands MTGO or just real?
I only play lands for paper magic, I don't really understand how this deck wouldn't just time out in game 1 on modo.Quote:
Originally Posted by The_Tutor
The OP was updated with cuthberts/Malacodas primer. It is very good.
I don't really have experience with this but as far as I know the opponent will also use a lot of time due to controlling all Tabernacle triggers.Quote:
Originally Posted by cuthbertthecat
I'm not sure, activating ports and the like seems like it would use up a lot of time over the course of a game.Quote:
Originally Posted by Serbitar
The first page is now awesome, loved the update.
I disagree about the Burn matchup, I think it's quite easy in games 2 and 3 with Chalices and maybe some dedicated hate like CoP: Red. Also, I don't feel myself like the underdog in Maverick matchup, even without Cursed Totem.
I'm recently traumatized against Snapblade playing with Leylines of the Void, I don't know how good is the matchup, but I don't like facing it unless I'm playing Krosan Grips.
And finally: Feeling bad, my Bant list isn't there. :frown:
Burn is bad if they draw smash to smithereens and price, but its not impossible. Against blade with leylines, o stone is clutch. If you post your bant list, im sure it can be edited into the opQuote:
Originally Posted by Fuzzy
I'm planning on trying out this archtype to see if it's a good fit for me. Just a few questions:
I have been goldfishing with living wish as a way to get the exact land I need from my sideboard (a few slots devoted to creature / land silver bullets). Has anyone tried this and has it worked with any success?
Also, I threw in a limited resources to get with the enlightened tutor package... anyone try that yet?
Now I had access of two Tabernacles, maybe I could give Living Wish a try. Also, Meloku looks INSANE in the board. Also, Oracle of Mul Daya.
But I don't really like the Limited Resources.
Meloku does seem nuts, I will try that in the wish-board today.
I have two tabernacles, so that is the main target, however being able to get Magosi game one for show and tell, or Bog for dredge, or any other utility land seems great.
Also access to bob, canonist, and needle beetle.
I will try out the meloku and let you know how it works.
I feel that limited resources can be an absolute blowout in certain scenarios. Turn one fetch into e tutor eot getting resources. Turn two land resources, manabond. You can just lock them out of the game on turn two or three, and slowly waste and ghost quarter away their lands while playing multiples of your own each turn.
The only problem with living wish as a tutor is that it doesn't find loam/crucible, although oracle of mul daya is pretty close. Its worth testing I guess, but the heavy use of sideboard slots might make it an ineffective choice as well.
I guess it would make the sideboard half wish-board style and half other stuff. I will test it out this Sunday at our legacy event and post a tournament report on how it did. Just trying to put a fresh spin on it and try new ideas.Quote:
Originally Posted by cuthbertthecat
I should be playing this deck for SCG Des Moines, the field seems pretty soft to Lands right now. The only thing I'm unsure about is the Punishing Maverick matchup and board plan. The G/W and G/W/u matchups are still as easy as ever with the maindeck Cursed Totem, but the red splash usually has too few cards to board in which leaves them with Punishing Fires still in the deck postboard, which is bad for the Bob plan. I'm not sure if having the 4th E Tutor in the board to just try to get Bridge+Totem ASAP for this matchup is correct, or if there's something I'm missing, or if I should just change my default board plan of -4 Intuition, +4 Bob for this matchup. Thoughts?
After taking a three-month hiatus from Legacy, I decided to head down to a small local tournament last Sunday with Lands, one of my favorite and most appreciated decks in the format. Though I have given the deck a lot of serious thought, researched it online and ran it a few times against select decks on Workstation, I have admittedly not played it in any tournaments. My inexperience was apparent, resulting in a horrible 0-2-2 performance at the 16 person, 4 round event. However, I was able to gain a lot of playing time and invaluable information for future endeavors with the deck. I was running the following list:
4 Exploration
2 Manabond
4 Life from the Loam
3 Enlightened Tutor
1 Entomb
4 Mox Diamond
1 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Zuran Orb
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Smokestack
1 Glacial Chasm
1 The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
4 Maze of Ith
4 Wasteland
4 Rishadan Port
1 Ghost Quarter
3 Windswept Heath
2 Verdant Catacombs
3 Tropical Island
1 Savannah
1 Bayou
1 Scrubland
1 Forest
3 Tolaria West
2 Tranquil Thicket
1 Creeping Tar Pit
1 Karakas
1 Academy Ruins
1 Mishra's Factory
SB
4 Dark Confidant
2 Krosan Grip
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Engineered Explosives
2 Chalice of the Void
1 Pithing Needle
1 Cursed Totem
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Mana Maze
1 Oblivion Stone
Even though I used to disregard the Enlightened Tutor builds of Lands, I have since been convinced that it is the most consistent of the current incarnations. Being able to tutor for a silver bullet first turn and then lay it down the next is much faster than grabbing a clunky pile with Intuition. Additionally, the tutor avoids the graveyard altogether and can find an Exploration first turn. Ultimately, these three reasons were the selling points of replacing the Intuitions, and so far I haven't missed them.
One important deviation of my list from most others is the single Scrubland. Most lists I've seen tend to run 11-12 white sources and never more than 11 black sources. The addition of Scrubland to the other BW Standards (5 Fetches, 4 Moxen, 1 Bayou, 1 Savannah, 1 Karakas, 1 Creeping Tar Pit) provides 12 ways of producing either crucial color. I figure, in games where Dark Confidant is sided in, he will always want to be played second turn at latest if in hand. The extra black source will make this more likely, and I recommend it to anyone who has had trouble with being color-shorted. Also, I wanted a simple way to be able to cast Enlightened Tutor on turn 1 and Dark Confidant on turn 2. Because of these color requirements, I never side out Karakas.
I'm not entirely sold on the Grips and the Mana Maze in the board. There were a couple of times during the tournament where I would have loved to have Extirpate, but I don't know if Extirpate is impacting against enough decks to warrant inclusion.
The single Mishra's Factory in the main is a flex spot.
Here is a brief report from what I remember last weekend:
Round 1 - Aggro Loam
Game 1 - He gets a Countryside Crusher on the board early but my Ensnaring Bridge in hand prevents it from ever swinging. Even though he can never play more than one land per turn, he is able to find a Loam much earlier than me. Eventually he has more lands than me and I still haven't found my Loam, so he is able to Wasteland away everything but my basic Forest. A Liliana of the Veil that he gets out would probably have gone on to force me into choosing between my Ensnaring Bridge and what little else I still had left, but since I knew that he also had Punishing Fire to kill me over time, I opted to go to Game 2.
Game 2 - I side in Crypt, the second Explosives, Oblivion Stone as well as Pithing Needle and Cursed Totem for his Scavenging Oozes. The two Manabonds, Entomb, Mishra's Factory and Top are sided out. He plays an early Scavenging Ooze, but I have an Explosives in hand to deal with it. He is able to Extirpate both my Wastelands and my Loams, and a later Confidant provides him with too much advantage for me to overcome. I really would have liked Extirpates here, to take away the same cards he did from me. But otherwise, I feel this matchup is determined by who gets their Loam engine going earliest.
0-1-0
Round 2 - Sneak & Show
Game 1 - He plays first. On his second turn he Show and Tells an Emrakul. I have no Bridge or Karakas.
Game 2 - I Wasteland a Volcanic Island that he plays first turn. We both play lands for a couple of turns and I am lucky that he has no sol lands or Lotus Petals. The only tutor that I have is a single Tolaria West, to search for either Karakas or Glacial Chasm. I choose Karakas and a Progenitus follows a Show and Tell next turn.
0-2-0
Round 3 - Eva Green
Game 1 - He opens with Bayou, Thoughtseize and nabs an Enlightened Tutor. The following turn, he plays a slew of Confidants, Goyfs and a Vampire Nighthawk. I have a Loam and am able to find two Maze of Iths to survive for a while, but I eventually just die to the beats. He had too many lands to make finding a possible Tabernacle relevant (I would have transmuted for Engineered Explosives if I had a Tolaria West anyway), and most were basic Swamps.
Game 2 - This was the first matchup where my Scrubland proved its worth. My opening hand contained a fetch, Tropical Island, Enlightened Tutor, Confidant, a Loam and some colorless-producing lands. I was able to Tutor up an Exploration my first turn and get the Confidant into play the following. My Loam engine gets going and I eventually get Academy Ruins and Engineered Explosives to continuously destroy any creatures he plays. The Creeping Tar Pit then beats him. I did see Nihil Spellbombs, but they only remove a single Loam and nothing else of much importance over the entire game.
Game 3 - I get three Mazes down a few turns into the game and then find an Explosives to blow up his accumulating mass of creatures. At this point, time is just about up and no one is close to winning, so it's a draw.
0-2-1
Round 4 - Maverick with Red for Punishing Fire
Game 1 - He plays nothing the first turn and I play Exploration on my first. Thalia on his second. I have a Karakas in hand on my next turn to later bounce the Thalia. After a couple of more turns, he only manages to play a Scryb Ranger and a Punishing Fire. I notice that his manabase is entirely dependent on dual lands; an Enlightened Tutor thus gets a Crucible and I waste away three of his lands with two Explorations in play. I tutor for a Tabernacle shortly thereafter and he concedes.
Game 2 - This game, he gets several more beats into play much earlier. He also fetches up a Bayou and Extirpates my Wastelands. I am able to stabilize behind Mazes for a while before I am able to Engineered Explosives away his creatures. I am at 4 life. With my Explosives in the graveyard along with Academy Ruins and several other lands in play, I eventually become fearful when he Green Sun's Zenith out a Scavening Ooze. Luckily, he only has one mana open to activate it, and by Porting it, I am able to force him to activate the Ooze and respond by saving my Explosives. I Explode it away the next turn. After we both topdeck for a while, with him drawing neither a Punishing Fire nor another Extirpate, I feel that I am in good shape until I am able to tutor up a Zuran Orb and put myself out of burn range. Then out of nowhere, he drops an Armageddon. I did not know that Maverick played the card and did not see it coming at at all. Just goes to show how much about Legacy I've missed over the months. I am stuck with only a Creeping Tar Pit and Tolaria West in hand, and he drops a Forest and Noble Hierarch. The Hierarch is able to finish my last 4 life before I am able to rebuild again.
Game 3 - There are only 8 minutes left in the round now, so my best possible outcome is to stall him enough for a draw. I had an Enlightened Tutor in my hand and was able to search for the Cursed Totem from the sideboard. I played it second turn and effectively made all of his creatures vanilla. He is not able to pressure me enough before I set up Mazes and we quickly call it a draw. Cursed Totem is just such a hoser for Maverick, and I'm surprised it hasn't shown up in more winning sideboards.
0-2-2
Conclusions:
Despite the poor finish, I thoroughly enjoyed playing the deck. There are so many decisions to be made and tight play is crucial. But if the opponent is not prepared for it, the deck can capitalize on their errors as well. In the games that I did manage to win or draw, especially the Maverick matchup, I often felt like the game was well under my control. Because of the prevalence of Maverick and Esperblade as of late, with their slower-than-combo approaches and extremely greedy manabases, I think that Lands could be well-positioned in today's meta.
The greatest challenge of the deck, as several others have already known and mentioned, is the slow pace of actually winning the game. In the older Intuition lists I used to run, even including just three Mishra's Factory alongside the Creeping Tar Pit made it seem so much faster to pull of victories. I miss the factories, but am almost certain that nothing can be cut from the list to fit a couple more in. How do you other players approach the time aspect playing Lands? Do you always try to win a single, extremely long Game 1? Once you lose Game 1, unless your opponent combo'ed out in a couple of minutes or you had the foresight and nerve to concede early enough, you are almost certainly not going to win the round, and could be lucky to even get a draw. Perhaps this deck is best thought of as an "only Game 1" deck?
I felt much more confident in the deck's color fixing running the Scrubland alongside five fetches. Enlightened Tutor and Dark Confidant need to be played early, and running less than 12 of either of the two color sources is too greedy for my tastes. Engineered Explosives was always a pleasure to see, and was one of my most searched for cards. I could see myself possibly even running a third (in the sideboard) for its sheer versatility.
The single Mishra's Factory seemed kind of useless; I will most likely replace it with a second Sensei's Divining Top. I am also not sold on the Grips, and have considered swapping them with Extirpates. Does anybody still play either Grip or Extirpate, or have any arguments for or against either? I could maybe keep the Grips and put Extirpates in the place of the second Chalice and the Mana Maze. Has Mana Maze proven to be a good piece of combo hate for anybody? Is it worth including Null Rod or Circle of Protection: Red? The silver bullets are my last pieces to settle on, so any thoughts or advice you might have are appreciated.
Despite the deck's slowness, I have been itching to play it competitively as of late and am thinking of running it at SCG: Phoenix. The Waste-Loam lock is a sweeping advantage against some of the top tier decks of the moment, and I think if I can manage the time in the round well enough, I could pull off a lot of Game 1 victories. I hope you enjoyed reading and hope you will give me some suggestions!
I hear every player who plays and complains about lands talk about this, and I just don't get it. Granted, I play the deck pretty fast, but even if I were playing it at a slower pace I still feel game one is about impossible to lose against creatures assuming you've made proper deck, mulligan, and play decisions. I feel like a lot of lands players just durdle around in a fashion that doesn't advance the game or board state at all, and take a long time to do so. The next time you play this deck, evaluate how much advantage is gained from late game life from the loams. If the answer is only +2 cards, you need to re-evaluate how you're playing this deck.Quote:
Originally Posted by into_play
Maverick usually doesn't play Armageddon. Also, splashing black for Extirpate and red for Punishing Fire is really loose for that deck. Then again, you were basically in the 0-3 bracket of a small local event, so anything could have happened.Quote:
Originally Posted by into_play
On sideboarding, the Grips are primarily there to beat Leyline of the Void, although they're flexible enough to bring in for some other matchups. Extirpate is important in the mirror (basically nonexistent these days), against Reanimator, and against other decks running graveyard strategies. I tested Mana Maze long ago and didn't like it. Null Rod turns off your Mox Diamonds, which is bad. I have played Circle of Protection: Red in the past and won games with it.
I will definitely work to speed my play up, although I feel that my turns and decisions are made fairly quickly. I do not like to overly Loam; if I have enough lands to make my Exploration-allotted land drops, I will instead draw instead of dredging, in hopes of finding one of the nonland spells. If you have at least two Explorations in play, you do not make it a point to play all three lands a turn, right? Maybe drawing business is more important at a certain point. For me, the hardest decision seems to be at the point when I want to get to the Smokestack. I could draw it or a tutor, or keep dredging three cards a turn until it shows up to be retrieved by Academy Ruins.Quote:
Originally Posted by cuthbertthecat
I like having the Grips there for Pithing Needles as well. Do you bring the Grips in versus the Blade Control decks (to deal with Batterskull)? Or are Maze of Iths and mana denial usually enough defense?Quote:
Originally Posted by ESG
The Extirpates feel necessary simply to have more than a single card to combat graveyard strategies, even though the Crypt is the go-to graveyard hate for the deck. I think they will stay in.
I think the Mana Maze will be taken out. I like that it is two mana, so it can be played the turn after a tutor, but this requires the difficult starting hand with a white source and blue source. Being an Enchantment also makes it appealing as well, to avoid the random Hurkyl's Recall and Rebuild in wishboard. But a good storm player should be able to get around it anyhow, and some storm decks could probably just throw in zero-mana artifacts in between their rituals and blue draw to simply get around it. Those combo decks are such a hard matchup anyway, so I might as well just strengthen other matchups with the Grips.
Thank you both for the help!
I usually find myself dredging at every opportunity if there's a Tolaria West in graveyard and I don't have one in hand. It's like you draw business every turn, what's not to like? Obvious exceptions are when none of your zero drops can help you and academy ruins's extra turn of waiting will result in death.Quote:
Originally Posted by into_play
On the issue of waiting to naturally draw a tutor over dredging a silver bullet, you have to a) look at how many tutors have been used up, then do the math and see if you're more likely to draw one of your remaining tutors or if dredging three to five random cards will give you a better chance at your silver bullet, and then b) evaulate if not dredging every turn will hamper your ability to advance the boardstate. Let's say that you have three intuitions and two enlightened tutors along with the one silver bullet you want to find left in a 45 card deck, a loam in trash, a t-west in trash, and an exploration in play. Here, you're more likely to hit a tutor/the bullet (6 cards total) in a draw step than you are to dredge a single silver bullet (about 13% v. about 7%), but dredging every turn allows you to t-west every turn, locking up the board against a creature deck and wrecking their manabase while still having a decent chance at dredging the silver bullet you need and increasing the chance you hit your silver bullet. There are exceptions, like when there's a scavenging ooze/other assorted yardhate in play, or you're staring down lethal and an ensnaring bridge found from an enlightened tutor with your in-hand tranquil thicket locks up the game, etc.
^ Sounds like a good idea to just use the statistical chance of drawing a tutor or the artifact versus dredging to the artifact. Of course, there are most likely thousands of different scenarios where one way would probably be better than the other, so I guess that just comes with experience. I too like to dredge every turn once a Tolaria West gets to the graveyard and I have the mana to abuse it.
I have in the past. The Mazes are great for defense, but you really don't want them to park a Batterskull in front of a Jace. (Factories are good vs. planeswalkers as long as they don't have a bunch of blockers.) You might play around with Beast Within, since turning Jace into a Beast is pretty great. Plan A is obviously for them to never reach 4 mana to cast Jace, but things don't always go according to plan.Quote:
Originally Posted by into_play
As for the speed of the deck, Lands is really slow even if you're playing quickly. There's also the challenge of having an opponent. Even if you're playing fast enough, it's not a guarantee that you'll have enough time. Some opponents agonize over Tabernacle and Smokestack triggers, some get out a Top Turn 1 and spin it whenever you Port them, some don't know when it's better to concede than to play on. Some opponents are just always slow.