[Discussion] Is Standstill too slow (except in merfolk)

I read a post by someone today and they were like I couldn't play Standstill all day at the GP because of all the first (and second if drawing)turn nonsense.

Let's think about a classic Landstill squaring off against common matchups:

Landstill: It's a crap shoot who does better under one. The versions with white often have DoJ so they SHOULD have a leg up on the non-DoJ versions.

Dreadstill: Probably actually better for the Landstill player but that makes the Dreadstill player's Standstill's crap.

Storm Combo: I personally don't like to tap out on my second turn when I only run FoW even if I do get an ancestral recall. If I live until my fourth turn I am winning.

Goblins: Waste, Port (sometimes), Lackey, Vial...not that hot.

Merflolk: Vial, Mutavault, Wasteland....not so hot

Thresh: If you want to take the chance on the second turn to get spell snared, dazed, or FoWed and then have a Tarmogoyf or Counterbalance dropped on your face.

Your opponent having an active top also lets them hit land drops under standstill and sculpt their hand to murder you as well.

The more I look at the card, the more I think I might want to run something as (weird?) as Ancestral Visions. Fix up my manabase by getting rid of the manlands and cutting a couple of lands and taking some board control cues from the MUC and the deck played by Andy Probasco in the GP.

Both Visions and Standstill do not affect the gamestate immediately. Standstill is premised on you not being behind and staying that way. Visions is premised on you surviving for 4 turns for a serious boost...

Ancestral Visions has almost as many problems as Counterbalance really weakens it. It doesn't help that Standstill beats AV.

If we take something out of PT:C about draw engines, it's that Bob is great. There were 10 Bobs in the T8, compared to 8 Counterbalances and zero Standstills/Ancestral Visions. Only the ubiquitous Brainstorm beat Bob soundly in card count. There were only 12 Force of Wills in the T8.


The data seem to indicate that Bob was one of the best possible deck decisions, assuming Chicago had a similar number of Bobs. Maybe Bob is the replacement draw engine in every deck?

He seems to have all the advantages and more of Standstill, a borderline-broken interaction with SDT, and he chumps himself endgame to counteract much of the life loss (and can cash in for a faster clock in the early game).

Hmmm... Dark Confidant. Well this I know, he affects the gamestate in a positive direction for you regardless of what your opponent does (besides kill him before you get your first card).

I have very rarely ever lost with him out...maybe he should be in almost everything...

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Originally Posted by Forbiddian

If we take something out of PT:C about draw engines, it's that Bob is great. There were 10 Bobs in the T8, compared to 8 Counterbalances and zero Standstills/Ancestral Visions. Only the ubiquitous Brainstorm beat Bob soundly in card count. There were only 12 Force of Wills in the T8.

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24 Tarmogoyf.

I think a lot of Landstill players have quietly come to the conclusion that Standstill is too slow. If you read the tourney report by Dahcmai, you'll notice that he's not running Standstill. Neither is the version of UBGW that I was running for Chicago, and now, after the GP is over (GP buddy, not PT), I'm absolutely convinced that it was the right choice. Standstill had reached a point for me where it's greatest value was in pitching to FoW. After I had cut down to 2, I realized that it was just worthless and cut it entirely in favor of Extirpate, which I now love. The only time it's good is late game after a board clearing Deed(i.e. I can wait til EoT to crack Deed and have the counter to stop a Stifle or the return of the SDT the next turn), but at that point, I've generally got the game anyway. I'd rather have cards that are applicable in the early game, and Standstill is not.

Too many decks run cards that are absolutely nuts under Standstill. Loam doesn't care, they'll hit all their land drops and eventually sculpt a hand that will be so broken that you can't stop it. Thresh will play with their top and 8 fetches until they've drawn every land in their deck. Goblins will drop Vial or Lackey on turn 1. That's really the clincher. Standstill used to be bad against Gobbos because of their powerful turn 1 plays. Now every deck has a turn 1 play on par with Vial or Lackey. If you're on the draw, it's even worse. You certainly don't drop Standstill with Bob on the table.

I think Landstill needs to take a page from Thresh and run SDT. It's disgusting, especially with a Crucible on the board and a fetch in the yard. You get to cherry pick your whole damn deck. Although, I suppose at this point, we're talking about Nostill.

*clearing throat*
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I'm still positive Standstill's power level ranks among the top 10 2-drops in Legacy.
I see where you're coming from when you say Standstill is a tad too slow in todays meta. The only card that's giving me headaches once in a while is Vial, though - the addition of Vindicate doesn't entirely solve that problem but clears the "Draw-EE-or-I-win-Sign!" of its forehead.

I read that one guy's post, too, stating all those Nacatls and Kird Apes make Standstills dead draws. First off, I love dropping Standstills on top of 2/2, 2/3 and sometimes even 3/3 creatures, I just love it. 90% of the decks packing those critters (Zoo, Sligh...) don't play any Wastelands, meaning Mishra will stop them for sure.
Just 15 Minutes ago I dropped a Standstill in the face of an opposing Goyf+Top (opp. playing something ITF-ish had 4 cards in hand) without even holding a manland! Goyf was 1/2 (fetchland in the yard) and I figured: either my opponent has to hold back all his land to be able to discard cards to pump his Lhurgoyf (he was at 2 land then), resulting in an assymetrical mana development, while costing me merely 4 life in the meantime. I could've BS-broken the standstill eot as soon as Goyf had grown to 3/4 and gone crazy afterwards. But what happened was that I drew a Factory stealing me enough time to find yet another which had him break my enchantment later.
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Also, PtE has made LS faster, see Jaime Canos GP list (he's one of the more respectable LS players out there and he's pleased with that card, though I still think 2 is the perfect number).
Anyway, I've adopted a speedier overall approach (2 Elses are my only 4-drops now). Lots of spot removal filling those Wrath and Humility slots and I never once regretted that change.
Adding 3 Spell Snares sped up the setup, too, as did Jace over FoF.
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I don't see a speed problem in Standstills being dead draws once in a while, I'm of the oppinion that those 4-drops (WoG, Humi, FoF, Else, Disk...) make the archetype slow and too "dazeable".
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For reference: here's a slightly dated list of mine:
'click'

Well, you're running U/W, I'm running 4c. I suppose it could be different, I'm a little more susceptible to mana disruption and need solid cards to deal with the "threat and protect it" strategy employed by gobbos or thresh.

I can understand standstill's integration into a deck that has a good level of one for one trades that they will make with the cards they get off standstill blowing up, but as far as slower control decks are concerned, I don't think standstill is necessarily worth the hassle in that the most common interaction that I see with breaking a landstill against traditional variants of landstill is FOW, which is nice, but a shitty deal for them when everything is said and done in my humble opinion.

Keep in mind that I am an outsider looking in regarding these thoughts on the archetype.

Speedstill seems like a promising approach to the archetype though.

Standstill is the best draw card in the format so far in terms of slowing down the game. Hands down.

Yeah, but against who though? I haven't played anything that really standstill is anymore than a two cc draw spell.

Judging by a lot of the up and coming decks, the old standstill strategy seems fairly antiquated. Drawing a bomb, a possible counter and more than likely a land or some combination seems worse in many respects than three definite answers for whatever broke the standstill.

That opinion/observation of mine may be mostly a result of my playstyle and a "strategic bias" or something like that.

After some more consideration, a control deck in this format wants to make its first 4/5 land drops. At that point we can start playing an answer and a low cc threat (Tarmogoyf?)/draw card both in the same turn.

Aggro control has a remarkable advantage over us with their dazes, and to a point spell snares until we get up enough mana to circumvent their dazes and other early disruption (thoughtseize/stifle). Somewhere around that 4th or 5th land drop we should start to/ or be fully stabilized.

It seems like our draw should support our objective to make it to the late game. Thus standstill becomes more attractive, yet in some ways it's too slow.

Assuming my above statements are generally correct the value of something like Nimble Mongoose should go up not down...yet more and more Thresh lists are cutting him.

The more I explore this topic the more I confuse myself.

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Originally Posted by jazzykat

Assuming my above statements are generally correct the value of something like Nimble Mongoose should go up not down...yet more and more Thresh lists are cutting him.

The more I explore this topic the more I confuse myself.

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It's because more and more Aggro-control players are realizing Nimble Mongoose isn't necessary vs control and it's a handicap in the mirror, if they are running Nimble Mongoose and you are running Tombstalker, Quirion Dryad or Bitterblossom etc. you're a leg up.

The aggro-control decks are metagaming vs themselves, that's why you see Nimble Mongoose hitting the bench and Tyrgon Predator MD.

Boy it sure would have been cool if someone had posted this exact topic before the GP. Oh, wait. I did.

http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...ad.php?t=12648

While I think your discussion is a supplement and was a much better set up than my initial thoughts/statements this has morphed into a less focused discussion on draw engines in general and metagaming the metagamers.

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Originally Posted by morgan_coke

Boy it sure would have been cool if someone had posted this exact topic before the GP. Oh, wait. I did.

http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...ad.php?t=12648

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Also, your pro/con list is a joke.

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- Takes you from zero to four cards in hand (with draw step)
- Not dependent on opponent
- Can be played on turn 1
- Insane turn 1 play vs. discard/disruption/sui-type decks.
- Sorcery speed

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Uh... yeah. That's just taken from the Ancestral Visions part. The 4 cards in hand thing is hilarious.

Do you know how to make Swords to Plowshares into card advantage? Swords a creature during your upkeep!

Your thread was Visions vs. Standstill. I don't like Visions either, it's just as bad as Standstill is for my deck.

If your playing Standstill in a late game deck like Landstill then wouldn't you be happy that it could possibly slow the game down?

As long as your deck is the control role in whatever match-up your in then draw-going for a while is very good for you. Because by the time somebody breaks Standstill even if nobody got card advantage from it you should win that game because you've passed the early-mid game and thats the only part where you can really lose.

Now sure its bad in mirrors well unless you go Naught/Goyf Standstill go. But you really need all those extra cards to handle decks like Goyf/Sligh or something.

Goblins; I like it in this match-up, they have so much card advantage that you really need to get the upper end on them late game to really beat them. Clearing there board and being in the late game isn't enough. You have to do that and then play Standstill to ensure you keep your advantage. Sure they have Vial and Lackey but if you don't deal with those you'll probably lose anyways. But FoW their T1 vial and then playing Standstill is a pretty good start for you against Goblins.

If you are finding Standstill to be lacking against Threshold (and other CounterTop decks), you're doing something wrong. Being able to draw three cards for :1::u: is a big reason that Landstill is favored in those matchups, which in turn is one of the best reasons to consider playing Landstill in the first place.

Standstill is not too slow, other decks are just learning to incorporate it into there schemes themselves, hence the rise of Merfolk. It's still the best CA engine in Legacy without question IMO.

Also, I feel like I should state the obvious and say that Vision can also be Stifled while Standstill can't (well, it can, but it's not any good).

I've been testing without standstill in my 4c landstill deck, and i find it better without standstill actually, but instead i play 2 jace and counterbalance/top

It works very well in Merfolk. You just slip a little ankle bitter like cursecatcher down or get a mutavault. You can get it online by turn 2 it works great for me and my opponent almost always pops it. So in that case I think it works better then visions and is just short of an ancestral recall. with force and daze as backup. It gives you card advantage often during your opponents next turn. Allowing you to counter. I would run 4 no matter what. Getting an early one can be the KEY to the game.

I actually did run 2 Standstill, but I still hate them. It's for the rare occurrence that you get the drop on someone and can drop it with a Mishra on the table and force them to break it. I cut them to two since the majority of the time it's true that it becomes FOW fodder. Especially against the newer aggro decks. Merfolk seems to be the only deck aside from Landstill itself that can really use a full set.

I never minded people sculpting a hand too much since I played Moat and Humility and would nullify anything that got out there. I enjoyed it for the land drops more than anything. My fourth land drop was vital in the deck I played hence the oddball Chrome Mox.

Personally, I think Standstill is amazing, but it really has to be in a deck that can play around it while it's on the table. Most of the time there's going to be a threat early enough to not want to drop it second turn. It's just devastating if they don't give you one.

AV is good, but I still think Standstill is better due to the style of deck you play it in. It's getting to the point of needing a replacement in some decks though. Jace is starting to shine now it seems. The fact he can take a hit to the face from an early Goyf usually if you used the top ability first is worth thinking about.

If I was still playing my W/U Landstill, I think I'd be leaning towards the Jaces. Sadly, I moved on to Bob also. I was entirely too frustrated with how people took me to time in Chicago and needed a faster kill.

Part of Standstill's decline in power is that it is played in decks that just can't make it asymetrical enough (duh). People try to barely build around the card, making it just asymetrical enough that random.dec would always be forced to break it. But Legacy isn't really random.dec; some of Legacy's commonly played cards are fantastic adaptations to Standstill, and that means that decks built around Standstill need to break the symmetry even further to keep that edge.

Playing a 4c Landstill deck may not be the best home to break the symmetry of Standstill; and if you're finding the card less useful, then build a deck that is better at breaking the symmetry. You'd just need to have substantially better odds of breaking the symmetry than your opponent, and the requirements to do that may be increasing.

There still are decks (or even possible decks) that break the symmetry of the card enough to make it a viable draw engine. Standstill isn't too slow, deckbuilders just have more work to do.

Although, in the end, Fish-type decks use of Standstill may be the natural evolution of the card. "Is Landstill with Standstill too slow?" is a different question than "Is Landstill too slow (except in merfolk)?" though.






peace,
4eak

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Originally Posted by dahcmai

I played Moat and Humility...I was entirely too frustrated with how people took me to time in Chicago and needed a faster kill.

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Oh, cry me a river :laugh: