[Deck] UW(x) Landstill

[mossivo1986]

@Jak and Wasteland

Since Smelski cut a brainstorm everyone did it.

First off: The reason Smelski cut 1 brainstorm and the reason I did were completely seperate reasonings. Though we do talk I do not hang on the (hypothetical) Geoff bandwagon.

My personal reasoning is this:

I've tested high kantrip counts in landstill. 3 and 4 ponders, 4 brainstorm, 2 top and through hours of testing I found that I prefered not playing ponder and instead playing top. Top then was set at 1, followed by 2, and eventually increased to 3 when I wanted to see it virtually every game.

The problem was this. Redundancy in kantrips. The way I want to play landstill is not to kantrip from one mana kantrip to the next in mutiple turns. It wastes mana, and although it can win you the game it can also spell disaster especially when your running lower on mana count after each one. Top in this case does the same filtering job as ponder/brainstorm (basicly) but offers redundancy far greater then either provide. To me Top is better then brainstorm. The only reason brainstorm remains in the deck is because of its filtering and protection against discard, otherwise i'd run 4 top and 8 fetches.

[mossivo1986]

@Wasteland

Only 3 Standstills maybe are a correct Metagame-Choice.

At this point I wouldn't go back to 4 still. 1 jace has been absolutely the card I want for that slot, and often proves amazing.

In your SB i really do not know, whether you need the Plagues...
They are not good vs. Merfolk and only effektive vs. Goblins and Elves.

Actually they're brutal against merfolk, 12 lords or not. If they run 12 lords then they don't run 4 stifle, and if they don't run stifle I rape them with EE all day long. Bottom I'm happy either way. EP is excellent against gobbos as well as ichorid and random elf matchups where you absolutely need to have it. If nothing else EP completely hozes the Tribal matchups long enough for you to get elspeth + disk online, which obviously gives you inevitability.

while Elves should not be a Problem at all

Depends on which elves your refering to, and obviously you can still boot a game or 2. Their spells are cheap enough and they can put enough pressure on an opponent that you can obviously have bad board positions. Also to note: depending on if your playing against elf survival, elf combo, or elf aggro is a huge difference in both playstyle and aggresion.

Blue Blast is great against Goblins too (and against Zoo / Dragon Stompy / Burn / Belcher...).

BEB is aweful against ANT and theres only soo many slots you have in your sb against the metagame to defend. I'm not going to use more then 3 slots in my sideboard dedicating counter magic to.

Overall other then the negate/counterbalance slot my model has been absolutely incredible at winning games. Obviously there are some that I can't pull out because of top failing or making a bad call on an opponents hand, but thats bound to happen every now and then.

[Jak]

@Jak and Wasteland


First off: The reason Smelski cut 1 brainstorm and the reason I did were completely seperate reasonings. Though we do talk I do not hang on the (hypothetical) Geoff bandwagon.

My personal reasoning is this:

I've tested high kantrip counts in landstill. 3 and 4 ponders, 4 brainstorm, 2 top and through hours of testing I found that I prefered not playing ponder and instead playing top. Top then was set at 1, followed by 2, and eventually increased to 3 when I wanted to see it virtually every game.

The problem was this. Redundancy in kantrips. The way I want to play landstill is not to kantrip from one mana kantrip to the next in mutiple turns. It wastes mana, and although it can win you the game it can also spell disaster especially when your running lower on mana count after each one. Top in this case does the same filtering job as ponder/brainstorm (basicly) but offers redundancy far greater then either provide. To me Top is better then brainstorm. The only reason brainstorm remains in the deck is because of its filtering and protection against discard, otherwise i'd run 4 top and 8 fetches.

Okay, I agree with this. I just don't understand how Brainstorm became an automatic 3-of all of the sudden. It still makes bad hands good, digs for needed cards, protects from Thoughtseize, etc.

The addition of Top does change things though.

[ultimoman]

I have to agree with Moss. I usually feel much better having a Top in my hand rather than Brainstorm. With Top out, I often end up just pitching Brainstorm to FoW. I'm using 2 Tops but have thought of going back up to 3.
As for Jace or FoF, both can be rather insane but in today's meta I think Jace may be a little too vulnerable but I'm still undecided there.
I finally brought my list down to 60 again after cutting a Vindicate, unfortunately I only have 1 now but that may be all thats needed.

[konsultant]

I definitely like the Preacher tech Geoff and it seemed to work for you rather well in your tournament experiences.

I got a chance to test preacher myself and I ended up boarding him in a good portion of my matches. I definitely have been impressed with him so far. He's pretty reliable especially when your other removal spells aren't taking care of business.

Also, Congrats on your finishes Geoff!

Yeah the Preacher's just keep on growing on me. They were a theoretical addition done with zero testing before thier debute but they have faired really well in actual events and in testing now that I have had the time to do some. Alot of people watched me on the live feed mull to five on the play after losing game 1 against Merfolk and still pull out a win on a 5 card hand because Preacher took down Merfolk. Been receiving alot of questions about him ever since.

Thanks the current list has been doing extremely well for me.

[Ectoplasm]

I took the preacher (3 of them to be exact) to a 51-man sunday and when he hit the board he was MVP, taking down aggroloam and dragon stompy like nothing. I really like him, and I love how every opponent I windmilled him on the table against frowned, took the card and spent a good 2 minutes reading it.

Too bad I punted that tourney but still.

I usually comment with 'if this was printed today it would be 2 lines of text at most'.

[Mark Sun]

I took the preacher (3 of them to be exact) to a 51-man sunday and when he hit the board he was MVP, taking down aggroloam and dragon stompy like nothing. I really like him, and I love how every opponent I windmilled him on the table against frowned, took the card and spent a good 2 minutes reading it.

Too bad I punted that tourney but still.

I usually comment with 'if this was printed today it would be 2 lines of text at most'.

Konsultant's and your comments on Preacher are enough for me to at least try them out. I have 3 on the way, but no idea what to cut in the SB for them.

I don't mind my current list but I would like to try out a second Humility and/or Moat as an experiment. Throwing Preachers on the list too I suppose.

[Waikiki]

@konsultant. What is the current SB your using since you made room for 3 preachers ?

[Tea]

Probably you prefer top over BS, because your deck lacks redundancy. BS is an instant and it’s cheaper than top. However you only get one shot with BS; but if you have more redundancy, this would be enough.

[undone]

4 Brainstorm
3 Counterspell
1 Enlightened Tutor
4 Force of Will
1 Path to Exile
4 Spell Snare
4 Swords to Plowshares
1 Wrath of God
1 Humility
3 Standstill
1 Crucible of Worlds
4 Engineered Explosives
1 Nevinyrral's Disk
2 Sensei's Divining Top

1 Academy Ruins
1 Dust Bowl
4 Flooded Strand
3 Island
4 Mishra's Factory
2 Plains
2 Polluted Delta
1 Scrubland
4 Tundra
1 Underground Sea
1 Wasteland
3 Elspeth, Knight-Errant

SB
4 Meddling Mage
3 Extirpate
3 Engineered Plague
3 Relic of Progenitus
2 Ajani Goldmane

Found this list on deckcheck.net, I like it alot although its 61 cards and you dont have 2 wastes (2 wastes +1 dustbowl is equal to 4/4 factory/waste because they have to waste factory and dustbowls leaving you with one extra factory)I cant cut a colored source so whats the next worst card? is it the 3rd elspeth? I have been very happy with her but she may be the worst card in the deck.

[Ectoplasm]

Konsultant's and your comments on Preacher are enough for me to at least try them out. I have 3 on the way, but no idea what to cut in the SB for them.

I don't mind my current list but I would like to try out a second Humility and/or Moat as an experiment. Throwing Preachers on the list too I suppose.

Since I don't run wishes those preachers are in my 'random creaturehate' slot which previously contained 3x PtE.

I like them because against swarm-aggro like merfolk and goblin you can just nab whatever when your opponent goes to combat, and he either doesn't attack at all or loses some creatures in the blocking-step, just keep those LoA's off the board and against something that runs huge dudes you can usually just pick and choose, and I don't see a V. Shackles grabbing a terravore (or a fat goyf for that matter) since I only run 7 islands, like most people do.

An added bonus is the fact that most people board out their spotremoval anyway and add krosan grip with the obvious exception being zoo/sligh where he often dies, but then at least he bought you a turn or more and functioned as a lightning rod, slowing the game down for you, even though I wouldn't call him optimal vs zoo I still think he has his uses there as well.

[NQN]

Allright, played a 12x man tournament saturday and failed horrible.
During the past tournaments I figured that goblins and merrows are on the raise while countertopgoyf isn´t played that much. I had to play against 1-2 tribal decks and 1-2 goyflslighs EVERY tournament I played in since ~bunch of months. What I rarely have to face is cbtop (maybe 1/20 opponents) and what I NEVER have to face are aggro Loam and ichorid.
With that knowledge my list for saturday looked like this:
// Lands
4 [ON] Flooded Strand
2 [ON] Polluted Delta
1 [A] Underground Sea
1 [U] Scrubland
3 [AQ] Mishra's Factory (2)
4 [B] Tundra
1 [TSP] Academy Ruins
3 [A] Island (2)
3 [5E] Plains (1)
1 [MM] Dust Bowl

// Creatures
2 [ALA] Elspeth, Knight-Errant
1 [SC] Eternal Dragon

// Spells
3 [OD] Standstill
4 [AL] Force of Will
4 [AT] Swords to Plowshares
3 [FD] Engineered Explosives
2 [B] Counterspell
2 [SC] Decree of Justice
2 [TE] Humility
4 [DIS] Spell Snare
2 [CHK] Sensei's Divining Top
2 [JU] Cunning Wish
2 [A] Wrath of God
3 [5E] Brainstorm
1 [FNM] Fact or Fiction

// Sideboard
SB: 1 [DS] Pulse of the Fields
SB: 1 [MI] Enlightened Tutor
SB: 4 [CFX] Path to Exile
SB: 1 [TSP] Return to Dust
SB: 1 [PLC] Extirpate
SB: 1 [IA] Circle of Protection: Red
SB: 4 [FNM] Engineered Plague
SB: 2 [M10] Ajani Goldmane

I wanted to beat goblins,merrows and goyflsligh more than anything else.
Long story short, these where my matches:
R1: AngelStompy 2-0 Easy.
R2: Aggro Loam 1-2 g1+3 he gets loam pretty fast and I can do nothin.
R3: Burn 2-1 CoP:Red wins both games.
R4: Dredge 0-2 -> Obv. Would´ve had a chance without horrible screw g2.
R5: Ugr Tempo 2-0 I get lucky in g1, just to defeat him even harder with a normal draw g2. One of the easiest matchups imho!
R6: Aggro Loam 0-2 Loam/Waste active in turn 2. Two times :(
Drop!

Well, I played Relics for long now and never had to use them. Tried to cut
->Epic Fail.

I´m going to stop playing landstill after 1 1/2 years now and start testing Next level Storm :)

[mossivo1986]

Tea

Probably you prefer top over BS, because your deck lacks redundancy. BS is an instant and it’s cheaper than top. However you only get one shot with BS; but if you have more redundancy, this would be enough.`

Like I said before I would argue that Top makes land still consistently more redundant then versions without top. It does slow you down by a turn, 1/2 a turn in the early stages of the game, but as the game proceeds top becomes better and eventually outshines other decks alone without any problems.

This is the primary reason to run 3x top. You want it consistently. To the point that it doesn't matter if you see another in the same game because your card quality has been good enough by this point that you can continue to filter through (Fetches, shuffle effects etc.)

The other thing is if your running redundant land still without a tool-box approach then of course your not going to have the same redundancy that a Geoff list would have. He's a very different kind of player then I am. I prefer options and the greatest diversity in my matches; where as Geoff prefers strict redundancy. It is therefore concluded that while I may not always draw the correct answer (where Geoff Might) I will have greater reach in different matches (Which is what I like).


To note: Top also defines my playstyle by allowing me to consistently see those toolbox cards more often (Dust Bowl, Academy Ruins, Jace, Humility, Disk, Etc.) It also allows me to not have to play a 3rd wish, (Something I really like.)

NQN

I´m going to stop playing landstill after 1 1/2 years now and start testing Next level Storm :)

Stop trying to be cute with your sideboard strategy and just play to win games. Ajani is old tech and not needed. Don't run 4 EP.

I do understand why your doing what you did with your deck, but if you just play a generalized board, i'm sure you wouldn't be having these problems.

Don't quit playing land still.

[NQN]

I play "generalized" sideboards for a long period now and I always played with 7-8 card sideboards because I always boarded the same cards...
I think I was a bit too radical this time, but even without Ajani(which I don´t consider old tech) I would´ve played that much tribal hate.
Sidenote: Had to face 3 goblins, 4 Goyflsighs and 3 merrows in 16 rounds of legacy with zero loam, zero dredge and zero CB in the bygone tourneys :(
Maybe this was just bad luck, maybe I´ve just gotten worse with landstill...dunno...What would a generalized SB look like?
4 Wishtargets
3 PtE
2 Plagues
3 Relics
3 Negates
?
I played that and never boarded Negate nor Relic at the PLGSTW(7 rounds,5-2).
I just feel that landstill has to fight at 15 different frontlines at the same time to be strong enough in my current metagame :( I really don´t want to give it up since it´s my pet deck but I feel like it can´t be helped...
In the past I always top8ed with it, no matter where I played. But atm I only get results like 5-2, 3-3,3-3 etc...its just meh...

`nuff cried,
gn8

[mossivo1986]

@ Citrus and Wasteland:

How do you sideboard against match-ups where you sideboard in counterbalance?

[Wasteland]

Well, Counterbalance is most useful against different Decks:
- Combo: Obviously -Wraths / -Humility etc. ...
- Burn: The same, but let in Swords cause of Lifegain and random hellsparl elementals (+ 2 blue blast the MU becomes excellent for Landstill)
- Loam: I will not board in Counterbalance due to the very few cc2 spells in the deck (3 relics and 2 blue blasts are enough to win against loam, which is mostly quite slow)
- Mirror: -Wraths / -Humility
- Dreadstill: probably the same
- white grow: still not clear whether i need c-balance, probably not, the MU is already suberb
Greetz, Marius

[dal9ll]

So right now Im at a loss to decide what direction to take my Landstill deck in. There’s the classic UW design, the UWb build, and the ever-popular Wishstill build, plus others. My list right now is just the classic UW build (I’ll probably splash black for Extirpate, E. Plague and maybe even Sen Triplets when I can afford the right duals for it). Ive also got the cards to make it a Wishstill deck but I don’t know if Im convinced that one approach to the Landstill build is strictly better than another. They all seem viable, no? This is what Ive got as of now:

4 Force of Will
3 Counterspell
3 Spell Snare

4 Standstill
4 Brainstorm
2 Fact or Fiction

4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Wrath of God
2 Nevinyrrl’s Disk/Engineered Explosives
1 Humility
1 Preacher

2 Crucible of Worlds
2 Decree of Justice
2 Elspeth, Knight-Errant

3 Wastleand
4 Flooded Strand
4 Mishra’s Factory
4 Hallowed Fountain
4 Island
4 Plains (working on getting some Tundras btw)

SB:
2 Llawan, Cephalid Empress (merfolk hate)
3 Relic of Progenitus (GY hate)
3 Negate (combo/control hate)
1 Pulse of the Fields (aggro/burn hate)
2 Path to Exile (more creature hate)
1 Return to Dust (art./enchant. hate)
3 Pithing Needle (should need no explanation)

There’s also a few things Im wondering about.

--Why are so many Landstill decks Im seeing around here only running 3 Standstill? I thought that was the decks token card… Is it just because of the prevalence of Merfolk decks?
-- The Crucible/Wasteland lock was one thing that made me fall in love with Landstill. However, Im seeing that pretty much everyone around here runs only 1 Crucible or none at all. Are our draw spells/Wishes w/ E. Tutor suppose to make Crucible appear more frequently? I run 2 because I absolutely want to see one every game.
--Why do so many around here hate on Faerie Conclave? Is it just because of the CIPT effect?
--Engineered Explosives seems a lot less powerful in the 2-color UW build. Am I wrong about this?

Thanks everyone!

[Elf_Ascetic]

--Why are so many Landstill decks Im seeing around here only running 3 Standstill? I thought that was the decks token card… Is it just because of the prevalence of Merfolk decks?

Among other, yes. Most Landstill list are weaker under standstill then the averge merfolklist. That is, if they don't resolve Vial. If they do, you're fucked anyway. Landstill doesn't want 4 dead cards against the most (?) popular deck. Same is true for Goblins. Top and Jace forfill the same role as standstill, but do a better job in those two matchups.

-- The Crucible/Wasteland lock was one thing that made me fall in love with Landstill. However, Im seeing that pretty much everyone around here runs only 1 Crucible or none at all. Are our draw spells/Wishes w/ E. Tutor suppose to make Crucible appear more frequently? I run 2 because I absolutely want to see one every game.

Yeah, we would want more crucible. However, there are 59 or 60 better cards. We get away with running only one because of Wish for Tutor. Theoreticaly, if needed, we're running 3.

--Why do so many around here hate on Faerie Conclave? Is it just because of the CIPT effect?

It's the CIPT effect, the nonbasicicness and the Tap for Blue only. More then four manlands aren't needed, and 4 Factory > Conclave.

--Engineered Explosives seems a lot less powerful in the 2-color UW build. Am I wrong about this?

Yes, you are. It's only slightly less powerful. The only thing you can't hit what a 3-colored list can hit is Hypnotic Specter, Merrow Reererereeree, Crucible and some other tribal creatures like Warchief and Imperious Perfect. However, 90%, if not more, EE is going to be set at 0, 1 or 2. EE is very, very strong, even in a UW list.

[Citrus-God]

@ Citrus and Wasteland:

How do you sideboard against match-ups where you sideboard in counterbalance?

I board them in against every deck except Not Quite Grow. That means I board them in against Dreadstill as well. Basically, they come in against every match up, but different cards get boarded out for them.

Against Aggro Loam, I board out the Wrath of Gods and Wishes. Against combo and the control mirror, Humilities and WoGs come out. Against Merfolk and Zoo, the Wishes and 2-4 FoWs come out for Pulse and Counterbalances and additional copies of Path to Exile.

[ultimoman]

For those using Counterbalance in the side, are you using 2 or 3 Tops? Most Landstill builds that use Top, use 2 of them, but is that enough for Counterbalance?