U/B/g Landstill - Vorosh Control

(Mods - I looked around for UBg Landstill thread but couldn't find one easily. If this is a duplicate, feel free to merge this where it should go.)

As soon as I saw the Planar Chaos spoiler, I knew I had to find a cool home for Vorosh, the Hunter who happens to be in my favorite or second favorite color combination in MtG. I started with a shabby casual aggro-control shell that used AKs, Vinelasher Kudzu, Intuition and things like that, but the part of me that likes to build cutthroat decks soon changed the course of development.

Sadly, one of the first cards to get cut was the awesome Vorosh. If the colors permit, he'd make a fine bomb in Limited, but a six mana flying 6/6 with a dubious special ability is not exactly of tournament caliber in Legacy. I experimented with a few shells, but eventually settled on a hybrid of BHWC Landstill and my Tog deck.

Here are the cards I used:

The Draw
4 Brainstorm
4 Standstill
2 Fact or Fiction

Four Brainstorms, is, um, a no-Brainer. As is a set of Standstill, since I ended up with a Landstill variant. Even if you have nothing menacing on the board, it's often safe to just throw a Standstill out there. Most opponents will likely break it, and, technically, you don't need to cast any spells to win the game. Fact is just a great card to dig for something you need or just to refill your hand. Though Gifts Ungiven is something deserving consideration, but that will require some additional tweaks to the deck.

Countermagic

4 Force of Will
4 Counterspell
2 Stifle

Nothing surprising here. Stifle is just a swiss-army knife life effect and can be used in conjunction with Wasteland to mana screw your opponent.

Board Control

3 Pernicious Deed
3 Vedalken Shackles
2 Smother
1 Naturalize
1 Putrefy

This package needs the most amount of work. Damnation might substitute for Deed, but then you're dealing with a whole other deck, since Deed is really the main reason this deck is running Green in the first place. You can also max the Deeds by tweaking other card counts, but I'll get to that shortly.

Vedalken Shackles, while slow, are also unbelieably nuts. It's just a mean and filthy card against most decks that run critters, especially mid-range kinds of things like Angel Stompy and Threshold. Against Goblins, they are on the slow side and aren't meant to be the first line of defense.

Smother, Purefy and Naturalize just round out the package to diversify your removal and give you quicker access to it than Deed. Naturalize is for Needle, but also good against opposing Crucibles, Factories, and all of Affinity. Putrefy is fine and I'm testing one, but it's on a list of cards that might get cut. The flexibility is nice, but being at 3cc means it will probably be the only spell you cast in a turn.

Yesterday I would have lost a game against Affinity if I was only running 3cc answers. The situation arose where I needed to Naturalize a Ravager and then Smother the Nexus that my opponent activated to move the modular counters when I only had four land up. I'm not sure if the rarity of this kind of situation warrants the theoretical narrowness of Naturalize, but there you go.

The Toys

3 Chalice of the Void
2 Crucible of Worlds
1 Engineered Explosives

Since I'm only running six 1cc spells (4 Brainstorm and 2 Stifle), Chalice is a sexy card to run in this deck. The Brainstorms increase the chance of having it in hand. At 2, it's crushing against B/W Confidant, a rout for Threshold at 1, etc. Deed + Chalice poses a problem, but one that I've partially alleviated with Academy Ruins. Ruins is also the reason I'm running the singleton Explosives. Ruins + EE = Huge Smiles. Crucible is there, because it is (Wasteland and for long-term mana superiority by regrowing spent fetchlands, manlands, etc.).

Colored Mana

4 Underground Sea
4 Tropical Island
3 Flooded Strand
3 Polluted Delta
1 Island

Fifteen colored sources provide the following:

U 15
G 10
B 10

This is another advantage of running Deed instead of Damnation, since the deck only needs UUBG to function, not having any spell with double of any particular color than blue. I'd like to squeeze in more basics, but this has been fine for now. Going to three each of Sea and Trop to add another Delta and Strand isn't a terrible idea, but not necessary yet.

Winning and Stuff

4 Mishra's Factory
3 Wasteland
1 Faerie Conclave
1 Academy Ruins

The deck can probably just win with the Factories, but it's nice to have the lone Conclave if I'm having a problem finding one. Ruins used to be a Treetop Village, but is awesome in recurring artifacts that may have died from a Deed activation or from other unnatural causes. And three Wasteland seems to be all that I can squeeze in.

The result...

Vorosh Control
by Bardo

4 Brainstorm
4 Standstill
2 Fact or Fiction

4 Force of Will
4 Counterspell
2 Stifle

3 Pernicious Deed
3 Vedalken Shackles
2 Smother
1 Naturalize
1 Putrefy

3 Chalice of the Void
2 Crucible of Worlds
1 Engineered Explosives

4 Underground Sea
4 Tropical Island
3 Flooded Strand
3 Polluted Delta
4 Mishra's Factory
3 Wasteland
1 Faerie Conclave
1 Academy Ruins
1 Island

Sideboard
4 Engineered Plague
4 Vinelasher Kudzu
4 Duress
2 Hydroblast
1 Chalice of the Void

I retained Vorosh in the name, since it's a flavorful way of describing the U/B/G color combination. I've enjoyed playing the 4-c Landstill deck, but I found the mana requirements dangerously fickle, with a misuse of a fetchland often leading to a game loss. That was basically the challenge: retool BHWC Landstill to the point where I would feel comfortable playing it in a tournament. To do this, I wanted to simplify the UUWBG operating requirements.

White gives BWHC Landstill StP, Meddling Mage and Nantuko Monastery. Since I wanted to run Chalice for the combo, Thresh and Burn matches, it made sense drop StP and replace it with Smother who can nail a Confidant or Hyppie, unlike Ghastly Demise. Vinelasher Kudzu (or Phyrexian Negators) replaced Meddling Mage in the sideboard for the combo match. I figured the deck will have enough disruption post-board (4 FoW, 4 Counterspell, 4 Duress, 4 Chalice), but I need a good clock to end the game and Vinelasher (supported by the deck's heavy mana load) fits the bill well. The other thing about Kudzu is that you can grow it without devoting any resources to it (unlike Dryad)--you just need to keep making your land drops (fetchland activations are +2/+2) and can keep your mana open for Counterspell, etc.

Negator is awesome too, but with ETW appearing in more combo lists, I'm not sure how hot of that is these days.

Testing

The list above is pretty crude. I've only played two dozen games with it (all pre-board) and have yet to test against Thresh, Goblins, etc. That's why it's in the Development forum. So far, I've gone 6-1 vs. Affinity, 4-0 vs. my MBC deck, 3-0 vs. WW and beaten some random stuff on MWSPlay.

So, yeah, it's good enough to warrant more testing, but I'm not sure exactly how good it is. It is a fun deck though; Shackles, Deed and Chalice of the Void are sweet as hell.

Sideboarding

Some rough ideas...

Vs. Goblins
+4 Engineered Plague
+2 Hydroblast
-3 Chalice of the Void
-2 Naturalize (Vial?)
-1 Engineered Explosives

Vs. Threshold
+3 Duress
+1 Chalice of the Void
-2 Naturalize (maybe keep in for Needle?)
-2 Stifle

Vs. IGGy Pop & High Tide
+4 Duress
+4 Vinelasher Kudzu
+1 Chalice of the Void
-3 Pernicious Deed
-3 Vedalken Shackles
-2 Smother
-1 Engineered Explosives

Vs. B/W Confidant
+4 Duress
-2 Fact or Fiction (too expensive)
-2 Stifle (?)

What do you think?