I play 10 fetches, so I can't say for sure, but I kind of like playing 4 Misty 4 VC and 2 PD. Just because if we have a basic forest online we can actually fetch Underground Seas into wasteland some of the time as we play 4 seas. But with Liliana I'm unsure, then maybe a larger % of black fetches are better.
I've been reading this thread and looking into standstill strategies. I've noticed many people commenting on standstill as a bad card / strategy. Why is this card so undervalued and underused? Non biased comments most welcomed!
It's undervalued and underused because it needs to be set up. You can Dig Through Time at any time you can cast if: it doesn't really matter too much what creatures and lands are on the board. Standstill, however, is a different beast. You can't play if if there's a creature on the board you can't deal with under Standstill. You can't play it if opp. might have a Flash creature to play in response and you can't deal with it. You can't play it if opp. has a manland you can't deal with. You can't play it if you don't have any way to pressure opp. to break the Standstill in your favour. It is these difficulties that make it undervalued and underused. However, there are some of us who realise that you can build a deck around the card, and that it is, without doubt, the strongest "draw 3" in Legacy. It should see more play (especially now, because Standstill decks match up amazingly with some of the DTBs right now).
The other thing about Standstill is that the list needs to be built around it to make best use of it. The things you really want to do with it aren't in vogue right now and it takes a certain mindset to use it.
It also doesn't play all that well with the full cantrip shell, which is a factor that contributes to its outlier status.
Can you "morph" a creature into play without breaking Standstill?
Kagu-Tsuchi カグツチ (Jund NicFit)
Rhino's Abbondanza (Junk NicFit)
4c Aggro Loam
Originally Posted by Chatto
702.36. Morph
702.36a Morph is a static ability that functions in any zone from which you could play the card it’s on, and the morph effect works any time the card is face down. “Morph [cost]” means “You may cast this card as a 2/2 face-down creature with no text, no name, no subtypes, and no mana cost by paying 3 rather than paying its mana cost.” (See rule 707, “Face-Down Spells and Permanents.”)
So no, the rule specifically uses the verb "cast" to describe the act of putting in the 2/2 for 3.
As for Standstill, I've only just rediscovered the card (and this deck) although I used it in the context of Merfolk in the past. It is a beautiful thing, and what it does is fundamentally very powerful. The drawbacks and setup that it asks us to go through are what allow it to exist. Drawing 3 is crazy.
Nonetheless, there are good reasons why not everyone is playing with Standstill. Playing the card is a big commitment. It bets that the opponent will not be able to maintain board control throughout the decisive portion of the game, in a format where plenty of decks built to immediately sieze and maintain board advantage exist. It wants us to build a deck with a lot of instants, especially countermagic. It creates this tricky inflection point where the Standstill player has to nudge ahead on board and then slam Standstill, as with the classic T1 Disfigure your DRS T2 Factory, Standstill. Clearly plenty of things could go wrong there.
Comparing this to Miracles, none of the same hoops exist. I can drop Countertop while behind on board, take some more hits from whatever, and Terminus away my problems at a later time. Of course, Miracles doesn't get to draw 3... and as the best builds have more or less been discovered, tinkerers like myself turn to the alluring Standstill. It does a great job fueling Dig Through Time!
10 fetches seems like too much. You're not resetting Top like in Miracles. Maybe if you have Deathrite but 8 to 9 seems right especially with any land recursion i.e. Loam or Crucible.
For basics, I've also considered the forest / swamp to make AD live through Moon but it seems like a downgrade. Island with Blue Blast and getting Usea and Trop out first is my take with BUG control. With this configuration, the fetches are more straightforward (U/X gets you anything).
You can't have everything and play Control. You're going to have a weakness somewhere due to the nature of a reactive strategy and so many potential vectors for attacks to flow from. Moon effects is a good weakness to have right now because so few lists are playing Moons main and almost nobody has more than a couple of Moons in the sideboard.
In a meta where Moon effects were much more numerous than they currently are BUG would be a secondary player. Jund is a secondary player right now because you have to be able to beat Burn to be a tier list and Jund just can't beat that often enough to make the cut. If Blood Moons were as ubiquitous as Chain Lightnings BUG would be in a similar place.
Whoa, hold your horses my dear sirs.
First off, 10 Fetches is pushing it yes, but in a deck with 4 Brainstorms and 2 Jace (who usually ends up brainstorming a lot (lots!)) I could never see going below 9 fetches (trying that out right now), there just isn't any reason for that.
Secondly, It's not only about Moon, the Forest + Swamp setup is also just better against mana-denial in my opinion, as the decks most usually employing mana denial plays a lot of creatures. And what you want to be able to cast first and foremost against those decks is removal (pre-board) and removal + goyfs (post-board). So being able to quickly get an indestructible mana-base for you removal spells and goyfs is more valuable to me than being able to hold up reactive spells or something along those lines.
Thirdly, why "Island and Blue Blast"? Are you referring to especially the painter MU or something? Because as I said, my basics isn't only meant to hedge against moon, that just comes for free.
Lastly, I don't get the "You have to beat Burn to be a tier list" thing. One of Shardless BUG's worst matchups is Burn, and that deck is still tier. Burn is a deck to watch out for online and at your LGS, but I build decks for GP metas and I think Burn is amongst the last deck to worry about as both Miracles and OmniTell just crushes that deck.
That was my thoughts for the day at least.
Forest + Swamp causes more color problems than it fixes. It makes the opening 7 more dicey to look at. It makes mulliganing more risky. It increases the chances of having no blue mana in the opening hand. It increases the chances of not having the colors you need on the board turn 2 or 3.
If we weren't already running Mishra's Factory and Wasteland it would be more plausible but I think it's very hard to win with BUGStill without running both of those cards.
Very long experience running similar lists has made me unwilling to run less than 14 blue sources and really not that happy with less than 16. 17 is the number I try to hit these days just to avoid having a round where I mull to 5 twice and lose off of that effect.
You don't have to fetch both of them if your hand is all blue, what I'm saying is that the blue spells are often less necessary than your BG-ones vs wasteland decks, just like miracles relies more on it's white cards than it's blue cards vs those decks.
Usually what happnes is that you fetch a Forest and then just fetch out Seas as I play 4 of those. But having access to both Forest + Swamp early has been good for me.
What do you refer to with the blue-source thing? I run 16 blue sources with the basic swamp + forest setup.
Edit: No wait, I'm stupid, I run 18 blue sources counting CTPs.
Last edited by LarsLeif; 05-21-2015 at 10:47 AM.
Counting cantrips as .25 blue source and shamans as .5 I have 17 blue sources. It's one less than I would like, but you have to make some compromises. To me, the main issue about basic forest is that it's basically another colorless source and drawing it sucks. Swamp and island can at least tap for colored mana for most spells. That said, I have liked swamp+forest setup very much as a hedge against Blood Moon. I like fetching swamp first as it casts all my removal spells.
11.8% chance at zero blue mana in a list with 15 true blue sources. That's every 8.5 games you're looking at zero blue in your opening hand. If 2 of the blue sources are Creeping Tarpits you're at 16.3% chance of zero blue mana on turn 1. That's every 6 games. So you wind up with maybe 4 games in 8 rounds that you're mulling just because of blue mana. Then you have the mulls due to other consistency issues on top of that.
Counting cantrips towards second blue mana is fine but they don't get you the first.
Except that with my list, I don't need blue mana turn 1, and DRS and Tar Pit cast Standstill turn 2 just fine. But just counting probabilities on not having a true blue source in opening hand doesn't give you right estimation, because most hands that don't have a blue source are mulligans anyway (no lands or just one land). Therefore we should just take otherwise keepable into calculation. Luckily, Frank Karsten already did the work for us in his excellent article. His numbers claim that 14 real blue sources is enough, and I have found this to be true in practice.
Read the article again. His recommendations are 14 sources to cast a 1cc spell of the color but almost everybody in his example lists, the successful lists in high level competition are actually running 16+ sources of the color needed.
This is kind of like saying, to dunk a basketball I recommend you be at least 6'2" tall but then pointing at a bunch of 6'4" players as proof of the concept.
Except that they are not. The first list had abundance of turn one colored sources, but the second one had 15 and 12. The third one had 13 and 13. The fourth one had 14 and the fifth one only 11. The last one had only 9 untapped black sources to cast Thoughtseize turn one.
But that wasn't the point as you will run more than minimum number of colored sources whenever you can. The point was that calculating the minimum number you should only take account keepable hands, and my own experience suggest that his numbers are correct.
Yes, I also agree with Nastaboi that this decks blue-source count isn't an issue. We only want blue mana turn 1 for Spell Snare when we are on the draw essentially. 18 blue sources is absolutely enough I feel. Compare that number to some other decks that actually want a blue source turn 1 a lot more often than we do:
OmniTell (Shota's version from GP Kyoto): 16 blue sources.
Storm (GP Kyoto Top 8): 13 Blue sources (not counting 4 Petal)
Miracles (4-Ponder version) : 19 Blue sources
BUG Delver: Around 15 Blue sources
... And the list goes on. I think it is perfectly fine to run 18 blue sources, as we rarely need them turn 1 anyways.
This comment was just indicating that if you wanted a way out of Blood Moon, a sideboard Blue Blast along with your Island, cantrips, and card draw, would help with this. I really could not imagine the forest / swamp setup but you have more experience with the deck so I'll keep considering it. Thanks for the discussion.
Blue Blasts were more potent when Sneak and Show was the Show and Tell deck of choice. With that and UR Delver losing popularity, I like to find a way to combat Blood Moon otherwise and save SB slots. I still like Blue Blasts in local tournaments where Burn and Painter are more prevalent, but I like the new setup against wide meta.
I played in a few tournaments this past weekend with BUG Landstill and did rather well. This was my first experience with the deck and it was great. Standstill is incredible!
Things to note about my list:
4 Wastelands plus Loam - great!
4 Standstill + 2 DtT = tons of cards and always enough delve targets
1 Clique Main was great
Always won through manland damage (I have 3 Factory / 2 Tar Pit)
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