So what is our gameplan against Lands?
Too many times I've lost to T3 Thespian's Stage+Dark Depths or T1-2 Punishing Fire targeting Deathrite Shaman.
I just can't beat it. I looked at Land hate and Tsabo's Web is a joke. I can't play Blood Moon. I certainly can't play Back to Basics. If I play Needle on Stage then all my guys get PFired and I get locked out with Ghost Quarter/Wasteland+Life from the Loam and my goyfs get Mazed.
This shit is getting aggravating.
Preoboard the best thing you can do is Spam the Board with creatures and keep up wasteland against their combo. Protect your deathrite with all possible measures but it aint a good matchup. Multiple tarmogoyfs are pretty strong because outside of maze they have no clean anwsers for it (if they have the mana to cast triple punishing fire you are dead anyway). Other than that force whatever their first relevant play is if possible (Exploration, mana bond, gamble on turn 1) cause all those cards put you very far behind and abrupt decay The mox diamonds. Lands regularly runs into mana consistency issues because of the high Utility Land count that does not produce colored mana. Even if they have a colored source u still are very likely to Choke down their options by decaying their mox
Postboard you want to get rid of your Planeswalker and some number of abrupt decay (though not all, depends of how many good cards you can bring in. Postboard you will often face cards like tireless tracker cause they Board a Plan b that doesnt need the graveyard ) . The Planeswalker come late and are Part of a control game you wont be able to execute against Lands and they stop only sorcery speed marit lages, which just isnt good enough. At least that was my experience. Greatest cards to bring in are the obvious Surgical extraction, diabolic Edict and vendilion Clique (which are all very reasonable to be in your sideboard) . Very often postboard the Lands Player keep loamless hands because they know their opponents bring in a Lot of graveyard hate and just make Land Drops into marit Lage, ive won many Games against Lands by simply diabolic edicting their token to hell.
All in all the matchup is negative, u can tune your maindeck and sideboard to get some decent extra percentage against Lands, but unless your going full retard on your sideboard choices it's not a deck you want to face. If you really want to beat this deck, your giving up percentage to other matchups
Well thats my Cents on the matchup
You should be looking at grave hate, not land hate. If you can shut down Loam and P fire that's 80% of the battle. Without graveyard recursion they can only beat you with the combo. So the game plan should be to hate their yard and hedge against the combo. Something like 4 Leyline of the Void, 2 Pithing Needle, 2 Diabolic Edict is a perfectly reasonable plan against Lands.Originally Posted by HateKnuckle
Nobody plays Legacy anymore, the tournaments are all too crowded
How many Wastelands are you running?
Just the 2. I like the 2 Creeping Tar Pit because the deck kinda feels threat light. Pretty stock other than that.
If you really want to improve on Lands - tar pit + wasteland will make a noticable difference
That's definitely going to make your Lands matchup worse. Wasteland is the best card in the matchup other than Deathrite, and is absolutely critical to being able to beat them putting Stage+Depths on the table in game 1.
Just remember the correct way to disrupt stage+dd combo. I see a lot of people do this wrong.
Thespian stage targets dark depths, legendary rule they sac the dd with counters, now there's a trigger on the stack that checks when there's no counters on dd. Now you wasteland dd. Any other wasteland will leave them still with a piece of their combo on board. This way both go to the graveyard and no 2020 indestructible flying token kills you yet.
Another thing to remember is if you play pithing needle and they activate thespian stage in response to make it anything else like a forest or whatever just name the card they turn the stage into I.e. Forest, it'll shut off the activated ability stage adds to it but not the mana ability. I see a lot of people miss this, it's truly these small things that give you your only edges against lands combo.
Didn't know you could interrupt the activation like that. Thanks.
Something seems wrong when I'm trying to play the Wasteland game while Lands is so much better at it than I am.
You aren't playing 'the Wasteland game' against them; Wasteland is your best way to beat the combo (whether by forcing them to do it into Liliana or simply by stopping them from going for it), a way to create an opening to eat Punishing Fire, a way force damage through a Maze of Ith/Glacial Chasm, or to get a basic out from under a Port. Your Decays have relevant text against Manabond/Exploratio, their Crucibles, and in some cases, Diamonds.
By the way, postboard graveyard hate and your own Loam or Crucible means you can absolutely play the Wasteland game against them. If you can get a Goyf and a Liliana in play, keep Exploration and Manabond off the board, and set up reasonably stable Wasteland recursion their deck won't do much.
How do I beat the combo or get damage through when they recur their lands?
Deathrite shaman leyline of the void pithing needle meddling mage surgical extraction extirpate tarmogoyf life from the loam.
Did a rough first draft after the bans.
+ sweepers main
+ 1 wasteland
- 1 abrupt
SB
+ NoSB
How are you gonna start the testing?
Deck
Creatures
4 Tarmogoyf
2 Leovold, Emissary of Trest
3 Baleful Strix
4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Shardless Agent
Instants
4 Force of Will
3 Abrupt Decay
4 Brainstorm
Sorc
2 Toxic Deluge
2 Hymn to Tourach
3 Ancestral Vision
Walkers
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Liliana of the Veil
Lands
3 Wasteland
4 Polluted Delta
1 Misty Rainforest
4 Verdant Catacombs
1 Creeping Tar Pit
2 Bayou
2 Tropical Island
3 Underground Sea
1 Forest
1 Swamp
Sideboard:
1 Umezawa's Jitte
2 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Pithing Needle
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Vendilion Clique
1 Night of Souls' Betrayal
2 Fatal Push
1 Golgari Charm
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
1 Garruk Relentless
2 Thoughtseize
1 Maelstrom Pulse
@weiuwei: I think you are correct, that we have to overthink our pre-ban build, but I am not sure I agree with all that you have come up with. Cutting a number of AD seems right, what this number is I am not sure as of yet, but it's probably 1(-2?).
NoSB seems definately good in the SB, but when do you want it? I think Elves and Grixis Delver are the obvious ones. I am not sure how good it is against an unknown number of TNN if we don't see multiples game one. I think Golgari Charm is better positioned here at the moment, since it can kill Blood Moon, which I expect to become more popular with Miracles out of the picture. Also I think it's better against Empty the Warrens, since it's faster.
Talking about Storm: There I think is the biggest weakness of your list, only playing 2 Hymn, 2 Liliana and 4 Forces makes for very hard to win pre-board games. Post-board your list can only add some stuff, but why not play 2 Cages and 1 Spellbomb, since it's also a hedge against Elves. In my opinion these will be the new Decks-to-Beat.
I wonder about the number of Strixes and Leovolds we want in the current meta. I think strix will be less important and Leovold more, so playing 2 of the crazy overpowered Elves I definately agree with!
I think the decks we want to be able to beat in the future will be Storm, Elves, BUG Midrange Decks of any kind, Death and Taxes (most likely with a red splash), 4c Czech Pile and Eldrazi (probably in this order). Sure there will be others around (Sneak and Show w/o Omniscience, Lands, Loam, RUG Delver, Burn, ...), but you can optimise your list to have an edge against all of them.
Here is my post-ban list, which so far is untested, since I have been playing mostly 4c Czech for a little while now:
BUG Shardless (61)
Land (21)
3 Underground Sea
2 Bayou
1 Tropical Island
1 Forest
1 Swamp
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Poluted Delta
2 Misty Rainforest
1 Creeping Tar Pit
3 Wasteland
Creatures (16)
4 Shardless Agent
4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Tarmogoyf
2 Leovold, Emissary of Trest
2 Baleful Strix
Card Draw/Selection (7)
4 Brainstorm
3 Ancestral Vision
Disruption (4)
4 Force of Will
4 Hymn to Tourach
Removal (5)
3 Abrupt Decay
2 Toxic Deluge
Plainswalker (4)
2 Liliana of the Veil
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 Garruk Relentless
Sideboard (15)
3 Thoughtseize
1 Nihil Spellbomb
2 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Vendilion Clique
1 Night of Soul's Betrayal
1 Umezawa's Jitte
2 Pithing Needle
2 Fatal Push
1 Golgari Charm
1 Maelstrom Pulse
There are still some things I am unsure about:
1) More removal instead of disruption? The 4th Hymn seems much, but they are a blast against Storm, do we still need a Maelstrom Pulse? Is cutting Dismember correct? Do we need more Fatal Pushes?
2) Garruk Main is a thing I personally like, because he can take over games if not answered, but could also be cut/moved to the sideboard.
3) Are 2 Sweepers main enough? Maybe we need another Golgari Charm main? Do we want Marsh Casualties? I don't think so.
4) Quirks about this list: 61 cards, there has been lots of discussion about that in the Death and Taxs Thread, I think 60 or 61 is fine. Also I am only playing 21 instead of 22 Lands, which I tested quite extensively and never was a problem in my opinion.
I think this deck could be in a position to see a resurgence now. Predict Miracles was a pain to deal with, but if it's going to be replaced by various stoneblade decks that's great news for us.
To answer your questions:
1) I would not cut disruption for more removal; you don't want to be cold to combo g1. I say either 4 Hymn or a 2/3 Thoughtseize/Hymn split is where we want to be.
2) Garrick in the main seeems unnecessary with Miracles gone, it's a sweet card but it will be dead in many matchups. I would probably cut it for another removal spell or Strix
3) 2 Toxic Deluge seems solid. TD seems way better in the current meta than Maelstrom Pulse
4) 60 cards, always. This is not up for debate unless you are playing a deck with silver bullet/toolbox targets and even then it is hard to justify. This deck in particular wants to hit its best cards as often as possible. Deathrite in the opener, Visions off cascade, etc.
Nobody plays Legacy anymore, the tournaments are all too crowded
A few more thoughts:
1) It seems like people are skimping on anti-combo cards because of Leovold and I think this is a mistake. Leovold is great but we have to actually survive until we can land him.
2) I think Fatal Push deserves some serious consideration for main deck slots, the reason I didn't consider it before is because it was absolutely terrible against Miracles. But one problem we have is getting out tempo' by Delver decks and Push would really help in that regard.
Nobody plays Legacy anymore, the tournaments are all too crowded
Abrupt Decay is just so much better against Delver. I won't ever main deck Push in Shardless because of bad cascades and the combo matchup. It's fine in the board for elves, DnT, Delver, infect and the bug mirror, but maindecking it doesn't get the nod yet imo. I also think it competes with Diabolic Edict for slots, which I think are important for the lands matchup. For some of the decks I mentioned, edict is good as well (Delver, infect).
Leovold comes down turn 2 often. I think you play a couple MBTrap, more discard (Thoughtseize), and Surgical if you are playing them. Between the main deck discard and grave hate, and correct mulligan decisions, you should be fine. I beat storm and belcher fairly often with Shardless.
Now is probably the time to play that faerie that steals creatures, depending on how much sneak and show you have in your meta.
Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk
I think I like the 3/2 split (hymn/TS) best at the moment. Also, I agree with not playing fatal push main, since Abrupt Decay is much broader and (almost) never a bad cascade. I'm still on the fence whether to play 3 or 4 Visions. In a fast combo meta it seems to me cutting one is correct. Also what about Jace? REB becoming more and more popular, do we really think he is worth it, since we can't really protect him all that well. That's why I like Garruk so much. Safe from AD and REB he is not only good against miracles but also vs BUG Midrange, D&T, Non-Red-Delver and my guess would be even 4c Czech Pile, though they have a easier time removing it than other fair decks. So at least a spot in the sideboard is warranted I guess?
A couple of Shardless players top 8'd the recent Legacy Challenge: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/tourname...0616514#online
One list ran 0 Ancestral Vision maindeck, opting instead for a discard package of 4 Hymn and 2 Thoughtseize, alone with 2 each of Leo, Lili, and Jace.
Nobody plays Legacy anymore, the tournaments are all too crowded
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Reply With Quote