[Deck] UW(x) Landstill

I personally don't see so much problems about having so many grip targets, if we resolve elspeth against any aggro-aggrocontrol deck. Recently the meta here in north-east italy has sharply changed from control to heavy aggro-aggrocontrol and combo, and I was obliged to get a 1x humility back in my deck because I had enough of losing to gobbo at the last swiss round due to bad draws and the lack of humility preboard :frown: (also, astral slide and zoo/sligh know a period of flourishing, and protreshold too). Elspeth is quite good to stall the board in MU's like threshold, but is a little weaker against swarm and tribal if you don't find (and resolve) your wrath. In all of these Mu's (except for gobbos with bolts) elspeth ALWAYS (or nearly so) has the chance to resolve it's ultimate ability. Once it is done, cast all the humilities, disks and plagues you want, the game is a cakewalk...no more grips, no more wastes, etc. Just a little patience to stabilize, and when the indestructible disk is online, there's nothing more to do (against decks not packing enough burn spells to finish us off with those, obviously). I do not see the point in boarding out humility against decks packing grip: we have a lot of good targets to let our opponent use his 2/3 grips on, all of which are serious threats. Just try not to resolve humility before elspeth (though sometimes you're obviously forced to). For reference, here's the list i'm playing atm:

// Deck file for Magic Workstation (http://www.magicworkstation.com)

// Lands
3 [AQ] Mishra's Factory (1)
1 [TSP] Academy Ruins
2 [ON] Polluted Delta
3 [B] Tundra
3 [TE] Wasteland
1 [R] Underground Sea
3 [ON] Flooded Strand
1 [TSP] Swamp (1)
1 [R] Scrubland
2 [APL] Plains (3)
3 [RAV] Island (4)

// Creatures
1 [SC] Eternal Dragon
2 [ALA] Elspeth, Knight-Errant
2 [LRW] Jace Beleren

// Spells
3 [MM] Brainstorm
1 [A] Nevinyrral's Disk
2 [FD] Engineered Explosives
1 [10E] Crucible of Worlds
2 [R] Wrath of God
3 [OD] Standstill
4 [AL] Force of Will
2 [SC] Decree of Justice
2 [AP] Vindicate
4 [A] Swords to Plowshares
3 [DIS] Spell Snare
2 [A] Counterspell
3 [CHK] Sensei's Divining Top
1 [TE] Humility

// Sideboard
SB: 1 [AP] Vindicate
SB: 1 [CH] Tormod's Crypt
SB: 2 [ALA] Relic of Progenitus
SB: 3 [7E] Engineered Plague
SB: 3 [PS] Meddling Mage
SB: 2 [6E] Perish
SB: 3 [SHM] Runed Halo

I recently cut a jace for the 3rd top (amazing, no really, brainstorm become a mere pitch...). The monosb vindicate was moved away from the MD to make room for humility, but i'm not fond of it. Maybe i could move away from halo to put in 4 counterbalance, but i already tested them and i wasn't so happy (losing to burn at 5th round with my 4 cb on the bottom of the deck, 3 standstill resolved, 4 brainstorm used - old list - and 3 mulligan with top-fetch, is quite annoying...).

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Originally Posted by Citrus-God

which also implies you're still giving your opponent's Krosan Grips targets.

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I recently found out that giving opponents "good" targets is a real good strategy :tongue:

If we were talking of airwarfare, Landstill had to be considered a kind of bomber.
The plan is REALLY similar: reach your altitude, set the route, go for the theatre, do your ops.

And quite no active defensive weapons, but just countermeasures.
Chaffing is good also if you're playing Magic!

Oppo is boarding 3 KGrip?
Board in 4 more targets!

With dreadstill playing most of the same control cards and having the ability to actually win on turn 4, what's the benefit of playing traditional landstill over dreadstill?

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Originally Posted by zulander

With dreadstill playing most of the same control cards and having the ability to actually win on turn 4, what's the benefit of playing traditional landstill over dreadstill?

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They play entirely differently, dreadstill is aggro-control, landstill is traditional control. From my point of view their respective weaknesses are:

Dreadstill:
1.Less hard counters (daze over counterspell)
2.Heavy reliance on countertop
3.Phyrexian Dreadnought dies to more cards than most other creatures i.e. grip, explosives at 1, shattering spree, dismantling blow and more I don't care to remember.
4.Usually reliance on red for the board control which isn't always good (like having pyroclasm instead of wrath, fire/ice instead of swords).

Landstill:
1.Quick to establish control but slow to kill, even with a playset of goyfs.
2.Poor countertop curve (could be good or bad depending on meta).
3.Without countertop and daze, recursion and combo can be very difficult to handle preboard, even with cunning wish.


I prefer landstill because it's more versatile. I don't want to play the aggro role so it works perfectly for me. Here's my newer list, by the way;

4 mishra's factory
3 wasteland
4 flooded strand
4 tundra
1 underground sea
1 scrubland
4 island
3 plains

4 standstill
4 brainstorm
1 fact or fiction
4 force of will
4 spell snare
2 counterspell

4 swords to plowshares
3 wrath of god
3 engineered explosives
3 vindicate
2 elspeth, knight errant
1 decree of justice
1 crucible of worlds

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Originally Posted by zulander

most of the same control cards

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4 Standstill, 4 Force, 4 Brainstorm. There are Landstill lists running CounterTop, but there isn't a consensus on how to build the deck and in general they have had very little tournament success (there's something like seven or eight total such lists at DeckCheck.net).

The advantage of classic Landstill over Dreadstill is the access to board sweepers (Wrath, Humility, Moat), more card advantage (FoF, Crucible, Jace), usually more spot removal (StP, Vindicate) and countermagic (Counterspell, Spell Snare) and win conditions that are in most cases harder to answer than Dreadnought (DoJ, Elspeth, Dragon). What you lose are the Dreadnought-no-Grip easy wins, the Stifle-Waste-into-oblivion easy wins, and the CounterTop lock. In other words, they have two completely different game plans.

To me, dreadstill feels like a deck that tries to 'cheat' their way into victory. Woops, I stifled a nought into play and if you're not going to answer it in your next 3 turns it's game, because I happen to hold a FoW as well.
Whereas landstill feels like one big, long synergy that plays like rolling a snowball down a mountain, piling one advantage on top of another until you're left with an elspeth, 11 lands and a standstill on your side of the table while holding 7 cards, staring down the opponent with his empty board and 2 card hand.

Can't say I really like pile.dec aka dreadstill, it seems like a mishmash of good stuff that somehow wins games.

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Originally Posted by Ectoplasm

To me, dreadstill feels like a deck that tries to 'cheat' their way into victory. Woops, I stifled a nought into play and if you're not going to answer it in your next 3 turns it's game, because I happen to hold a FoW as well.
Whereas landstill feels like one big, long synergy that plays like rolling a snowball down a mountain, piling one advantage on top of another until you're left with an elspeth, 11 lands and a standstill on your side of the table while holding 7 cards, staring down the opponent with his empty board and 2 card hand.

Can't say I really like pile.dec aka dreadstill, it seems like a mishmash of good stuff that somehow wins games.

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I have a slightly different take. Nihil laid out the advantages of Landstill pretty well so I won’t rehash it too much. Don’t shortchange Dreadstill though, in the hands of a skilled pilot it could very well be the best deck in the format. It’s one of the most versatile decks I’m aware of: it runs manlands, it runs wasteland, it runs 3 colors WITH a ridiculously stable manabase, it runs counter/top, it runs Goyf, it runs FoW, it runs Trinket Mage to tutor some of the most powerful artifacts in the game, it has access to stifle effects which can be used proactively (dreadnought, LD plan) and reactively (opposing EE/Deed), and it has no glaring weaknesses. I play against it almost every week and the pilot rarely misplays, and always has an answer – and if he doesn’t he always has outs that he can find with fetches/top/brainstorm/trinket. The ability to stifle-nought-FoW-autowin is pure gravy. I beat him in less than 20% of our matches, and I know his list every single week. Bottom line: Dreadstill deserves a TON of respect. I think too many unskilled pilots with subpar lists have diluted the deck’s success in the past few months.

Back to Landstill (sort of): based on comments by NQN and others, I think that Elspeth is quickly becoming the card around which to build this deck, rather than Standstill. A Landstill shell is a good starting place for this, but I’m unsure of the best direction to move from there. I really think Elspeth-control could become a powerful archetype, is anyone else interested in developing it?

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Originally Posted by VonDoom

I recently found out that giving opponents "good" targets is a real good strategy :tongue:

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Runed Halo isn't a particularly great target, mainly because if Counterbalance resolves, you have to make the decision to either blow your own Runed Halo up or risk leaving Counterbalance on the board. With decks running more diversified threats, it's becoming worse of an idea boarding in more targets.

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If we were talking of airwarfare, Landstill had to be considered a kind of bomber.

The plan is REALLY similar: reach your altitude, set the route, go for the theatre, do your ops.

And quite no active defensive weapons, but just countermeasures.
Chaffing is good also if you're playing Magic!

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Magic is also in some ways like politics; bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki had HUGE repercussions.

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Oppo is boarding 3 KGrip?
Board in 4 more targets!

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Make Grips dead and you will win in the long run. But if you were to hypothetically bring in extra Targets, better make them dangerous. Like Counterbalance; bring those in, then leaving Humilities in is a valid play. besides that, you have 7 extra targets (3 SDT, 4 CB). Running Tops also allows you to replace yourself.

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Originally Posted by Ectoplasm

To me, dreadstill feels like a deck that tries to 'cheat' their way into victory. Woops, I stifled a nought into play and if you're not going to answer it in your next 3 turns it's game, because I happen to hold a FoW as well.
Whereas landstill feels like one big, long synergy that plays like rolling a snowball down a mountain, piling one advantage on top of another until you're left with an elspeth, 11 lands and a standstill on your side of the table while holding 7 cards, staring down the opponent with his empty board and 2 card hand.

Can't say I really like pile.dec aka dreadstill, it seems like a mishmash of good stuff that somehow wins games.

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That about sums it up. You also have to say you are gripping double force, double cs, double vindicate, and an ee with academy ruins recursion.

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Originally Posted by rockout

That about sums it up. You also have to say you are gripping double force, double cs, double vindicate, and an ee with academy ruins recursion.

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That's downright obvious :rolleyes:

Woo Hoo for all those ugb landstill fans you have recieved your in color vindicate :) Maelstrom Pulse. Now it doesn't pop lands, so that may be a downer, but you still get LFTL, Deed, and some sweet looking dual lands hahaha.

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Originally Posted by mossivo1986

Woo Hoo for all those ugb landstill fans you have recieved your in color vindicate :) Maelstrom Pulse. Now it doesn't pop lands, so that may be a downer, but you still get LFTL, Deed, and some sweet looking dual lands hahaha.

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They should just print a black Swords to Plowshares and we can remove White from the Magic color wheel. :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

IMO stp and wog are too good to drop white for, so...
The card looks pretty good but I'm sticking with my vindicates :)

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Originally Posted by Ectoplasm

IMO stp and wog are too good to drop white for, so...
The card looks pretty good but I'm sticking with my vindicates :)

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Deed can also get Stifled.

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Originally Posted by from Cairo

They should just print a black Swords to Plowshares and we can remove White from the Magic color wheel. :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

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Agreed.

citrus: I know deed can be stifled, I've played 4c for long enough to know the arguments of wrath vs deed. I also know that deed, LFTL, EE@4, STP, and access to some of the most powerful sideboard cards in legacy are avalible in 4c landstill's sideboard. So with that said, I am making the argument as cairo even further pointed out that this new card in a sense adds to ugb by replacing what would be a destroy x permanant slot. It's pretty good when you think about it. The lack of land distruction kind of sucks, but it punishes players who overextend, while also being efficient enough to take out teeg/plainswalkers/ and is also stifle proof.

Ectoplasm- "IMO stp and wog are too good to drop white for, so...
The card looks pretty good but I'm sticking with my vindicates :)"

While I agree it is difficult to replace stp as any landstill player who's played non-white versions, it is not at all impossible. Deed is quite powerfull and right now spell snare is soo god damn rediculous that I think it's fair to say that a u/g/b list spotting g/b vindicate/ deed/ spell snare/ force of will/ and some other 1-2 drop removal spell aka chainers edict maybe would absolutely be sufficient enough to play without STP.

Hello everybody!

I read this topci for a long time, and now it's time for me to ask you some questions.

here is my current list :

23 lands

3 mishra
6 fetchs
4 tundra
2 island
2 plain
2 waste
2 underground sea
1 scrubland
1 academy ruin

2 elspeth
1 eternal dragon
2 decree of justice
1 crucible of world

4 force of will
3 spell snare
3 counterspell

4 brainstorm
2 fact or fiction
4 standstill

3 vindicate
3 EE
2 wrath of god
4 stp

Sb is composed by
4 meddling
3 plague
3 runed halo
2 ajani
3 tormod's/relic



I want to introduce humility. So my recent changes are

- 1 vindicate
- 1 fact

+ 1 humility
+1 sensei (to search bombs).

But I think the third vindicate is must have... So have I to remove a spell snare for the third vindicate?

Thx for your advices! It's cool to read your argues on different cards. (scuse for my poor english lol).

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Originally Posted by tafit

Hello everybody!

I read this topci for a long time, and now it's time for me to ask you some questions.

here is my current list :

23 lands

3 mishra
6 fetchs
4 tundra
2 island
2 plain
2 waste
2 underground sea
1 scrubland
2 underground sea

2 elspeth
1 eternal dragon
2 decree of justice
1 crucible of world

4 force of will
3 spell snare
3 counterspell

4 brainstorm
2 fact or fiction
4 standstill

3 vindicate
3 EE
2 wrath of god
4 stp

Sb is composed by
4 meddling
3 plague
3 runed halo
2 ajani
3 tormod's/relic



I want to introduce humility. So my recent changes are

- 1 vindicate
- 1 fact

+ 1 humility
+1 sensei (to search bombs).

But I think the third vindicate is must have... So have I to remove a spell snare for the third vindicate?

Thx for your advices! It's cool to read your argues on different cards. (scuse for my poor english lol).

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Do you have 62 cards on purpose? Maybe cut one EE if you don't want to cut Vindicates? I would cut also Eternal Dragon instead of Fact or Fiction.

Maybe there's 2 more underground sea in the list... :wink:
I'd NEVER cut the 3rd spell snare, it owns the format, really...Also, I did'nt like the 2 wasteland...if you want to go heavy with LD then run at least 3, if you want a soft lock them go back to dustbowl + tolaria west. With humility i don't think the 3rd MD vindicate is a must have, you have plenty of solutions to deal with aggro. However, if that is your problem, cut the 3rd counterspell instead, or the 3rd EE and insert academy ruins!!! I would also cut a brainstorm for a SDT (play at least 2, it's insane!), and maybe a standstill for the fof you pulled off.

I write two times underground sea. It's academy ruins instead of the two more US.

E-dragon is my 24th land. I can't cut it. So with some advices I will test this list :

23 lands

3 mishra
6 fetchs
4 tundra
2 island
2 plain
2 waste
1 academy ruin
1 scrubland
2 underground sea

6
2 elspeth
1 eternal dragon
2 decree of justice
1 crucible of world

Permission : 10
4 force of will
3 spell snare
3 counterspell

Draw and manipulation : 10
3 brainstorm
1 fact or fiction
4 standstill
2 sensei

Remove : 12
2 vindicate
3 EE
2 wrath of god
4 stp
1 Humility


I think the 2 sensei will help me to find bomb. I'm affraid to play only 3 brainstorm...
Instead of fact or fiction, what do you think about include Jace?

I like the list. Don't worry about 3 brainstorm, you are running brainstorm on steroids in the form of top x2.

There's a lot of back and forth about jace or not, so flip back a few pages and you'll see the comments.