Both DOJ and Elsepth have their advantage and disadvantage. As a win condition, no doubt, Elsepth is much faster and act as a board control against aggro (say they attack each round with a goyf, Elsepth will provide you with a blocker each round until you find an answer). On the other hand, DOJ is slower but works much better under standstill and against control deck. The ability to be cycled, thus used as an instant is very useful in the matchup where you need to play control (having mana opens to counter, or to fake a counter). It can also be used to trick opponents when they attack with their creatures. In some very very rare situations, you will find yourself hardcasting DOJ to have 4/4 flying blockers and to kill your opponent. A 2-2 split seem to work for me.
Wasteland or no wasteland : I've cut wasteland, then wanted them back immediately. Merfolk is still a decent deck, and some random deck also run man land. (Granted, the current DTB suggest that manland are almost all gone). Wasteland should be seen as a 'land killed' and not as a land denial. Landstill isn't built on mana denial. In some very rare situation, (usually, lucky one), you can mana screw your opponent. However, a 1-1 trade isn't a very good trade in a deck like Landstill. You want all your land drops to play your 4mana bombs. If you play Crucible of Worlds, Wasteland get better. In the mid-late game, recurring wasteland could be used to mana denial when you have a good board position.
My current list runs 0 FoF. It sometimes lacks card advantage (Standstill cannot always be abused). However, with 3x sensei's, I've found my list to be more stable and at the same time im being able to control the game much better. If only i could make room for a 3standstill, 3 bs, 3 top WITH 2fof, that would be really good.
To be honest, I rarely use JACE +0 ability. This may sound crazy, but everytime it hit the board, the board relatively clean so i could just use its +2 ability to control the game and ultimately use his final ability to seal the game. Controlling what my opponent draws seem to be way more effective than drawing 1 extra card. The -1 is also VERY nice.
with the weakening of ANT and Reanimate deck, I feel landstill could possibly make a come back, especially if Aggro deck start to dominate again. We can easily modify our deck to combat aggro. I've read that 43.land deck will also become more dominant since its worst MUs are practically gone. I don't know how to tune our deck to fight them. My guess is to counter their exploration/mana bond and after sideboard, use graveyard removal and meddling mage on life from loam. The mu should be feasible.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)