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That's right give me credit!
I can say that I talk to mossivo on an almost daily basis and we literally bitch back and forth about match ups, cards, "flex" slots, not playing counterspell, and everything to playing W thresh with Rhox War Monk (cuz he's sexy.) I obviously disagree with him on some points but when it comes down to it I respect his opinion and always question his choices and he usually has a solid response with testing to back it up.
Mossivo, solid post. Lots of good information in there and you shut me up pretty good. Again, sorry that my post was pretty harsh, but I guess it resulted in some good information, so thanks.
It's not even a big deal.Quote:
Originally Posted by Misplayer
thanx for the props Micheal. As stated Mike crys like a baby because he can't stand the immense pressure it is to play Relic in the maindeck :), even though it literally crushes about half of the metagame in one way or another; or at worst kantrips. Other then that we debate back and fourth on card choices like winey children as stated. I have a feeling one day he and I will go to the same tournament and play the same deck; and on that day the world will explode.
I really feel like if you don't get defensive about your card choices in your deck, then you truly arn't comfortable with your deck. it is in this research and developement that I realized that you not only have to be defensive; but on the opposite end of the spectrum you need to be open minded and patient. Without this defensive-openminded- ness you are gaurenteed not to be able to find what you want as far as card selection.
One thing i'd really like to point out to all pilots on this thread is that if you are making points and getting nothing back; then your mind-set IS wrong. You need to be able to take what you dishout and I gaurentee you that theres atleast 5 of you in the last month who have made me think about certain aspects/ card choices i've made. As a player this is soo fucking difficult to let go that my deck isn't already amazing (which it is) but what could I do to possibly improve it ( I mean really, its amazing.)
I do need to test that delta 61 slot again with jace, because I do believe jace is the correct answer, but I didn't want to skew my testing results either by playing a card that not might be there, so I wanted to start without and work its way back in.
Hm, intresting discussion. Ok, since I'm playing Vindicatestill for a while now, and obviously have nothing to add to the wishstill discussion, can we take a look at how the different landstillaproaches perform in different metagames? What build is the right shot for what metagame? I think we can state there three UWx models:
Wishstill (see Mossivo's latest list),
Vindicatestill (Rockout I believe has posted some lists, as did I)
Lists that finds room for Counterbalance.
Different metagames:
Bluedominated ones (Threshold, Dreadstill, NLU, see chicago)
Aggroinfested (burn, goblins, elves, aggroloam)
Loamcontrolled (rock, survival, aggroloam)
Comboinfested (10-15% ANT/TES or Ichorid)
That's about what I can find within an hour or two of driving..
At the moment, I've two tourneys coming up:
10 May, Mol, Belgium: probably some Aggro/Loam infested metagame, maybe some blue since last tournament was getting owned by my team running ANT. I would love to play landstill, but I need a decent plan. Otherwise, I better be off with ANT.
17 May, Nijmegen, my own tournament. A lot of combo, some black stuff and most times there's some blue as well.
What builds would better suit those metagames?
Your question is which landbase is better for what metagame. The answer lies is wether your prefer wasteland or dustbowl/toolbox. Obviously in control meta-games toolbox is going to prove to be more solid because opponents cannot counter dust-bowl, tolaria west, or academy ruins. They can stifle them, but its still stronger. I'n metagames where theres alot more combo or aggro wasteland is hypatheticly stronger because of its aggresive nature to color screw and randomly remove problems like mishra's factory.Quote:
Different metagames:
Bluedominated ones (Threshold, Dreadstill, NLU, see chicago)
Aggroinfested (burn, goblins, elves, aggroloam)
Loamcontrolled (rock, survival, aggroloam)
Comboinfested (10-15% ANT/TES or Ichorid)
It comes down to what do you like playing. In the combo metagame sac my engineered plagues for meddling mages and your whole game should center around being very aggresive "3 mage, 2 vendillion, 3 mishra, 2 elspeth, 2 decree" which is excellent in the ant matchup, back that up with force of will/ cunning wish and relic and you should be about 65-45, closer against skilled combo pilots because of their elusiveness to choose a standard model.Quote:
That's about what I can find within an hour or two of driving..
At the moment, I've two tourneys coming up:
10 May, Mol, Belgium: probably some Aggro/Loam infested metagame, maybe some blue since last tournament was getting owned by my team running ANT. I would love to play landstill, but I need a decent plan. Otherwise, I better be off with ANT.
17 May, Nijmegen, my own tournament. A lot of combo, some black stuff and most times there's some blue as well.
What builds would better suit those metagames?
Quote:
Originally Posted by mossivo1986
Moss, our lists are quite similar, and mana-base wise, we're almost identical. I'm a huge fan of Intuition, and I've been testing 2 Intuition + 2 Wish for a long time. It's been good as a Wish/Tutor box.
Here's my list:
UWb Intuitive Wish-Still
Lands: 24
1 [B] Underground Sea
1 [B] Scrubland
4 [ON] Flooded Strand
2 [ON] Polluted Delta
3 [B] Tundra
2 [GUR] Island
3 [GUR] Plains
4 [JGC] Mishra's Factory
1 [FUT] Tolaria West
2 [TSP] Academy Ruins
1 [MM] Dust Bowl
Win-Con: 3
2 [ALA] Elspeth, Knight-Errant
1 [FD] Crucible of Worlds
Draw/Tutor/Cantrip: 14
1 [MI] Enlightened Tutor
3 [FNM] Brainstorm
3 [CHK] Sensei's Divining Top
3 [OD] Standstill
2 [JU] Cunning Wish
2 [TE] Intuition
Permission/Board Control: 20
3 [DIS] Spell Snare
2 [B] Counterspell
4 [AL] Force of Will
2 [TE] Humility
4 [FNM] Swords to Plowshares
3 [FD] Engineered Explosives
1 [B] Wrath of God
1 [B] Nevinryal's Disk
// Sideboard
1 [ALA] Relic of Progenitus
1 [DS] Pulse of the Fields
1 [PLC] Extirpate
1 [TSP] Return to Dust
1 [INV] Fact or Fiction
3 [PS] Meddling Mage
3 [ALA] Ethersworn Canonist
2 [LRW] Ajani Goldmane
2 [7E] Engineered Plague[/QUOTE]
My arguments for Intuition is simple. It is not a loss of card advantage, and it's a tutor for an answer, a setup card for a long-term engine, and like the singleton Enlightened tutor, it is a golden tutor to search out many silver bullets to answer a wide diversity of problems.
Landstill has a diversity of answers, and I'm a huge fan of Wish-still since you have answers for almost any type of meta, making it one of the more flexible decks in Legacy. Intuition provides an alternative source of answers, which are not limited to instants, but are the golden-targets in your deck.
I don't believe Intuition as a tutor for 3 cards with the same name. Many old-school players wish to believe that Intuition for 3 Accumulated Knowledge is the best play in Magic. I disagree, since that is in fact a card disadvantage in the long run. Firstly, there is redundancy in copies of cards that get wasted in the deck. What do the 2 copies of Accumulated Knowledge in the GY do? Nothing. In designing a deck to use Intuition, one wishes to get a long-term return, which is why Intuition for Crucible + Academy Ruins is a good choice since you get to recur any artifact resources for the long run. The only times where I Intuition for 3 copies of a spell is when I'm in a very tight corner.
The flexibility of Intuition is amazing. You play it EOT, and it's like a mini FoF, giving you an answer. It comes a turn earlier than FoF although providing less CA but it's a tutor, not a filter card. For creatures, Landstill's answer will provide with any combination of StP, Shackle + Wrath + Humility. For Enchantment/Artifacts, any combination of EE/Ruins/Crucible would leave your opponent with a headache. If your opponent chooses to give you the answer, then you solved your problem. If your opponent chooses to give you the recursion engine, you solve the problem in the next 2 turns, risking some losses, but if you ever stabilize, you're fine.
Running Intuition allows you to run singleton answers such as 1 Relic of Progenitus, which can be recurred through academy ruins etc. My list runs Disk as it can be tutored via Intuition and recurred via Ruins. Disk has some synergy with a late-game Elspeth, but mostly it's there to answer a board of artifacts/enchantments/creatures (my meta has Enchantress, which is a hard MU game 1 since 10 cards are dead in my deck).
The thing I dislike about my list is 2 Academy Ruins but there are arguements to this. Running 2 Ruins allow me to be able to have one consistently throughout the course of the game if one gets wastelanded. Not to mention drawing a Ruins early in the game allows you to Intuition for just about any artifact answers without the fear of losing any cards. Usually, when I have a Ruins in play, I'd Intuition for the best answer + 2 Artifacts. E.g. against creatures, I would EOT Intuition for Swords/Humility + EE/Disk. My opponent would usually hand me EE/Disk since it would involve me spending mana but this choice is precisely what I meant by building an engine for the mid game. StP is the best answer at that instant, but if you can afford a turn, setting up that engine for a turn would save you a lot more pain than trying to top deck another answer. Secondly, I run 2 Ruins + 1 Crucible so that in cases where I don't have to Intuition for anything, I can proceed to set up my engine. If either Crucible or Ruins is in play, you can Intuition for solutions without fear of losing any resources (as mentioned above).
The singleton Enlightened Tutor MD has been amazing. Against certain decks, I would proceed to tutor up Standstill and offset the 1card disadvantage. The argument that ETutor is card disadvantage is true, but it's not too justifiable in a deck that has access to so many card advantage. Landstill is all about card advantage and board advantage, and 1 ETutor serves as a tutor for silver bullets. It's almost as if I'm running 2 Disk, 3 Humilities, 4 Standstill, 4 Tops, 4EE, 2 Crucibles when I'm actually running 1 Disk, 2 Humilities, 3 Standstill, 3 Tops, 3 EE, 1 Crucible. ETutor provides that immediate answer that you need. Not to mention against fast combo, it ups your answers by 1.
So far, I've been satisfied with my list above. I do find Counterspell more and more annoying with the UU requirement. Spell Snare has always been a happier joy when I see it. What I like to think of this deck is a mono-white control with access to top-tier draw/tutors and permission. I feel that Counterspell is still necessary, but I've not been too happy with it. It almost always pitches to FOW. Landstill is about the mid-late game, and stabilizing in the early game is crucial. Counterspell has annoyed me sometimes since I can't cast it reliably, not to mention the risks of getting dazed. Currently, I have not dropped it at all since I feel uncomfortable with less than 8 hard counters and sometimes spell snare does not counter key spells. For the people with experience on Counterspell, let me know if it's worthwhile to cut it and run 4 Spell Snares. If so, I will run 4 Spell Snares and the last slot would go to Jace.
My sideboard is tuned mostly for my weak matchups, namely combo, Enchantress and burn. Goldmane has been good against sligh and burn, and Ethersworn Canonist is simply a house against ANT. It's perhaps the worst creature next to Teeg for ANT players. Canonist is a natural choice for me since I run Intuition + Recursion engine, so the ANT player almost gives up after wasting resources to kill it, and only to find me recurring them again. Intuition also helps grab the Canonist much faster than relying on drawing into them. Meddling Mage + Canonist also slow down Enchantress/ANT/TES by many turns. Landstill usually does not cast more than 2 spells a turn, since we play draw-go in the early game, and proceed to play bombs on Turns 4 and later. Canonist is a natural choice for me since it fits into that playstyle. I was testing Sculler earlier before Canonist, but I liked Canonist much better as an answer against TES/ANT/Enchantress especially when I'm playing Intuition + Recursion.
And lastly, I run 61 cards. My deck is a toolbox kit, both manabse and MD solutions. I found that 23 lands was optimal but I ran into problems hitting the 4th land about 15% of the time due to bad luck/opposing LD. I'm comfortable with 24, and 24 lands in 61 card is justifiable, especially when it's a toolbox manabase.
So My predictions were right with this new model running jace has been a complete success up to this point. I actually beat fae stompy today 2-3 :). Sb Path to exiles really helped alot too :)
Doesn't jace+top feel like doing a brainstorm every turn ?:smile:
I still have som problems with the number of jaces. Atm I still run:
4 BS
2 top
3 Standstill
2 jace
(1 etutor)
Going down to 1 jace really makes me feel like I merely substitute fof for Jace, while Jace is a good (not amazing, but very good) card advantage generator. The problem is that it begins to work in mid-late game (before that it's merely a "1UU: cycle"), so going to 1 might be the right call. On the other hand, I'm trying to move towards a speedstill approach, with diabolic edict instead of wrath, so in midgame the horizon should be fairly clear to use jace as earlier as possible. So jace needs the board clear to work well, while the speedstill approach has fast means to keep the board clean. But a full working jace means plenty of removals, so it seems like the speedstill approach has a (virtuous?) circle that calls himself for 0 or 2 jace, withouth any compromise. A full working jace provides itself, by the means of drawing removal (board control element in general) the way to protect itself (and, insofar, to protect us) in a way not so much different from the way elspeth protects itself (and, at the sime time, us) by creating soldier tokens. I really feel strongly that the speedstill approach has deeply understood the real nature of jace (implying by "nature" it's philosophycal meaning), and has found a way to truly abuse of his power (from the weakest of the PW's to one of the strongest). This thoughts really fascinate me, it's like a charming spell I have to break. Any suggestion?
I kind of like the intuition approach but I was wondering, I saw ethersworn adjudicator pop up in this thread a while ago, but has any real testing been done with this guy?
He might fit in neatly along with intuition, being able to get him back with academy ruins and all that. I bet 9 out of 10 opponents would forget he's actually an artifact :)
Thats incredibly interesting and expensive. I'll test it in the sb. but I dont think its better then anything currently in the works.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ectoplasm
I've tested it briefly in the slot of eternal dragon (as I was wondering to do with the artifact akroma). The main point against him is that he gets the first stp that comes in play, and ofc that has not shroud, though it's mortify ability is quite good. But maybe I missed something.
Well yeah, neither do I, since the man is 5 mana. Then again, I've hardcasted eternal dragon often enough for 7 and I'd say this guy is better when he's in play even though they both serve different purposes.Quote:
Originally Posted by mossivo1986
The main arguement against him would be the manacurve-issues, landstill plays enough 4-mana bombs to dominate the game, we're not going to need a 5-drop IMO.
But then again, he looks cool enough to try, he *does* fill a niche and the guy above actually made me 'remember' intuition which should at least make him more playable which is why I'm bringing this up. I have played around with him a bit, but perhaps some of the more experienced landstill pilots could give their opinion.
Edit: @Gustha: I've tried him too, not alot though and yes he's a big fat lightningrod, but if he survives a turn or 2 he's a house. It's a bit like a planeswalker that, if left unchecked, wins the game on its own.
To make him work I think you would play something like this:Quote:
Originally Posted by Ectoplasm
4 force
3 cs
3 spell snare
4 swords
3 ee
3 wrath
3 bs
3 top
3 standstill
1 jace
1 crucible
1 adjudicator
2 intuition
2 decree
1 elspeth
1 ajani
4 flooded
2 polluted
4 tundra
2 underground
1 scrubland
2 island
2 plains
3 mishra
1 academy ruins
2 wasteland
sb:
3 path
3 blast
3 plague
1 ajani
4 relic
1 shackles
This seems like a fairly balanced list.
I tested Ethersworn Adjudicator when he was first spoiled and I'll be honest, I got a little happy in the pants. Turns out, he is really clunky. Unfortunately he is a little over costed but can end the game fairly quickly. He recurs with academy ruins and kills everything in the format besides mongoose.
I was not a fan in the limited testing I did with him but I'm moving back to humility main deck so there is no more Ethersworn slot.
In my meta, Canonist is important against ANT and Enchantress. Given that I run Intuition + Wish, Canonist as an artifact is a natural answer for me. I usually don't rely on Academy Ruins for Canonist since I run 3 Canonist + 4 Meddling MAge, all of which will slow ANT and Enchantress down when backed by Counterspell. Even then, ANT will sneak a win with Wipe away after tutoring. I know that Canonist makes it the hardest for ANT since they can only play 1 spell at a time, either to cantrip or tutor for answer, so by then, you know when and what he's tutoring up.
I've tested Adjudicator as an Intuition target but was not impressed. I would rather have Call the Skybreaker (MUC approach). Landstill takes the late game, so that would be a better win-con. I'm glad people like the Intuition list. I'm a huge fan of it since it provides with 4 Wishable/Tutorable solutions, and one of the Wraths can be replaced by Disk which fits the 4cc slot well, and with the additional benefit that it's recurrable and tutorable, and in the lategame with Elspeth, is win-more-win-more :P
Disk is preferred as a one-slot for me due to my meta of Enchantress, Countertop, Vials, equipments etc. Wrath alone does not solve the problem but disk does, albeit you risk a turn that it gets destroyed. Some might prefer Oblivion Stone. I'm a fan of Stone with the exception that it's within range of Counterbalance. I want my deck to be as immune to CB as possible, and our answers to CB are mostly immune (EE we can set at 3-4 even if we sunburst for 2, Wish + Return to Dust + Wrath + Humility + Elspeth are all out of CB range).
So i've been doing alot of testing against anti blue; blue aggro decks. The recent success i've had is due to replacing engineered plague with additional removal aka path to exile. Here is the current configuration:
The extra paths have proven themselves and i'm really greatful to geoff for bringing this to my attention.Code:// Sideboard
SB: 1 [ALA] Relic of Progenitus
SB: 1 [SHM] Fracturing Gust
SB: 1 [DS] Pulse of the Fields
SB: 1 [6E] Enlightened Tutor
SB: 1 [PLC] Extirpate
SB: 1 [TSP] Return to Dust
SB: 1 [IA] Circle of Protection: Red
SB: 4 [CFX] Path to Exile
SB: 1 [IA] Hydroblast
SB: 1 [B] Blue Elemental Blast
SB: 2 [LRW] Ajani Goldmane
No problem, If your opponent is beating you with creatures you need to change your deck or your strategy against them.Quote:
Originally Posted by mossivo1986
Exactly how good is ethersworn canonist in stopping tes/ant? I reckon them still being able to drop all their leds/petals/chrome moxen will make it a kind of inferior card?
Canonist or tidehollow sculler as anticombo tech?
Of course in tandem with a playset of meddling mages and a couple of runed haloes.
In my testing and tourney experience Tidehollow Sculler (THS) has proven to be as effficient at hosing combo.dec as Meddling Mage (MM).Quote:
Originally Posted by Ectoplasm
Dropping MM against ANT, naming Ad.N. can be the winning move, slowing them down and granting us enough time to establish CA, CQ and thus control.
More often than not however the combo player will be able to opt for plan "B" (Iggy, Grape Shot...) making MM almost worthless. "Belcher" may go for ETW, Ichorid just goes plain beatdown (without Dread Return)...you get the picture.
-
THS always has an impact, unless your opponent has run out of cards which pretty much spells gg anyways. First of all we get to see their hand, which is golden - allowing us to tap out for stuff if we see them having no tutor and no Duress/Chant effect, while holding FOW for instance.
He's very versatile always grabbing what's most dangerous - mana accels in the earlygame, tutors/chants... in the mid/late game.
What sets THS over the top is his superiority regarding control mirrors. Control mirrors are won via CA/CQ and he's really good at that - MM just doesn't do much against non-combo decks running BS and fetchlands, allowing them to simply shuffle away MM's target at some point.
-
THS's only real downside is that he doesn't pitch to FOW, which sucks in my current versions for my U count is rather low already. That's the reason why I still run the 3/2 THS/MM split. And I'm really happy with it.
So I top 2 split a tournament getting 2 tundras and 2 trops yesterday. I beat Aggrom loam twice, ITF, landstill, and MUC losing to hypergensis cascade.dec (I couldn't find my 2nd white source for the wrath in my hand and g2 he gripped my humility and forced my wrath) and drew against Rock Control. I split with merfolk.
I ran Jace for the first time in an actual tournament and I take every negative thing I've ever said about him back. In testing he was god awful, but in an actual tournament setting he was just amazing at keeping a constant stream of awesome flowing. I don't care to hear I told you so.