[Deck] UW(x) Landstill

[Tom T]

Guys,

I'm writing a primer for the UW Stone-Blade archtype so discussion about the deck doesn't mix with the original UW Landstill archtype.
However, I don't have enough experience with the deck to make a correct match-up analysis.
I was wondering if the more experienced players would be interested in helping with the match-up analysis. A PM would be great!

Thanks in advance,
Tom T.

[klaus]

@ catinthecat:
Thanks for that very true analysis on MM in U.Control.

@ moss:
Don't forget that we have Bs, FoW, Top, and sometimes Ponder to address unneeded late game MMs.

[dsck]

Any tips on a game plan against UR Painter?

[GGoober]

What UWx build are you playing?

- Snare on Painter, MM on Welder
- StP on Painter in response to Grind
- EE@2 on Painter in response to Grind (it's best to set this on 2 against Servant instead of 1 against Grindstone)
- Extirpate (if they play Intuition)
- Grudge/Grip are good against this matchup (UWg builds are not as popular)
- Needle isn't ideal (since they can REB it) but it works on Grindstone
- Disk is slow, but if Disk/Deed ever resolves, it's over for them. Humility should always be boarded out against this matchup
- If they decide to be cute with Show and Tell postboard, you can be cute with Tariff (which kills Painter if they don't go Emmy, or kill the Emmy if they Show'd you the FSM).

I've played against Painter multiple times, and find the Imperial Painter builds to be much more brutal than the fast combo that is in the DTB section. Imperial Painter can sometimes screw you with Moon/Jaya, making it difficult to fight, but the UR Painter is much easier to beat since they usually go for pure combo/speed which you have many outs to.

[mossivo1986]

I think it will be better served if we actually discuss what MM counters that your worried about if this is the kind of discussion you wish to have. I would also like to see where you value such a threat IE something like the following.

Threat level


Difficulty
vial

Medium
lackey

Easy
nacatl


I think then we can actually determine if this card has value versus something like snare or counterspell.

Me myself I prefer a package that looks like this:

4 force
3 counterspell
3 snare

removal
4 stp
2 ee
2 moat
1-2 wrath

draw
4 bs
3 still
2 jace

I don't feel like jace deserves four slots in the deck.
I don't think there is anything that can or should be labelled as a "pure control deck" as you put it.
I do not feel mistep is absolutely useless in landstill, but I do feel like there are absolutely better options to fight a tempo war with these decks. Sure your stp/bs/ee etc can get countered, that doesn't mean you have to fight wars your not going to win against tempo strategies which pride themselves on controlling the early game with mana denial/ back-breaking dazes. spell pierces, mm's, etc. etc.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

I think it is just you. Does the fact that any deck ending in "-still" sucked ass between the debut of Triton's Minions and MM's printing not indicate to you it's necessity as a 4-of? Gerry may have started the trend, but the best players in the world (i.e. the pros) universally used a full set in their various whatever-still control decks in Providence. Those who've written about it even testified that it had become another automatic slot alongside Brainstorm and Force of Will for said decks. Just like that, pure(r) control became viable again overnight.

Powerful 1-drops exist in Legacy, many of which can mark the beginning of the end for slow [Ux] control if they're not dealt with quickly and efficiently. Sometimes, those 1-drops aren't cast on the first turn which means Misstep, contrary to popular acknowledgment, is not dead on turns 2+. If it's reeeally a problem, you can just Brainstorm (a very Misstep-able spell) it away with one of the 4 JTMS you should also be running. "Traditional" lists still suck now as much as they did starting in 2008, which is why they're still not top 8ing events and still not being played except by the handful of self-titled old guard players who can't help but remember what Landstill was like in Type 1.5 when it was "super sweet," always forgetting the entire last 3 years.

While I don't think 4 Mental Misstep is "clearly incorrect", this post is putting an entirely unhealthy emphasis on what is. It's important to look at what's winning, but the best deck at a tournament usually doesn't win, and the absolute best deck 75 in a metagame (certainly in Legacy anyway) will almost never even be registered.

I think this is particularly important to keep in mind when discussing Landstill, which I think is experiencing a resurgence largely because of Misstep, although some of that is indirectly so, by causing the format to slow down.

[(nameless one)]

Hey Guys,

I was wondering for the right number of Super Jaces and Elspeth1.0s in the deck? I have most of the pieces (I run Merfolk, Quinn and CounterTop Thopters) outside of the Tundras, Moats and Jaces.

Would this deck do fine with minimal to no Tundras? It might sound suboptimal but I'm staying away from dual lands as much as possible.

Does anyone have a sample lists that incorporate both Jace and Elspeth that I can start working on?

Does the deck really need Stoneforge Mystics?

Thanks in advance

[GGoober]

I run 2/2 Jace/Elspeth split. Most people these days run 3 Jace and 0-1 Elspeth (usually no Elspeth). I strongly believe Elspeth is much better than Jace in an aggro environment, and resolving Elspeth deals easily against a resolved opposing Jace.

Jace is played because in a favorable board position, he immediately wins you the game with fateseals/brainstorm and bury your opponents in a stage he can't recover. Elpseth serves a different purpose: she is incredible at getting you out of an unfavorable position (which Jace is terrible at).

I play with 3 Tundra for about 1-2 years now. The deck probably cannot go below 3 Tundras if you're planning to play WW-based spells like Humility/Moat/Elspeth. Blue is the primary color (so basic Island is valued higher than basic plains) but if you're playing WW-based spells, you can't drop below 3 Tundra IMO.

Read a few pages back on lists. I always play 2-2 Jace/Elspeth splits. I don't recommend the most recent list I posted because playtesting I wasn't doing so well. The UWb builds that I've posted on previous pages are pretty standard and strong.

I believe SFMstill isn't really under the playstyle of Landstill. It's a strong strategy but I feel the deck isn't classified under the Landstill archetype, but rather under a Stoneblade archetype that I don't understand why we still don't have a thread/primer opened for one under DTB/Developed because the deck is for real.

Notes: Yesterday, I had an EE against Batterskull in play. I plow'd the SFM and EE@0 the germ token, just thought I mentioned that was an interesting play against an otherwise annoying situation :P

[Iron Buddha]

Metalwalker, you played 2 Top for a long time, then upped to 3 Top (p. 235), but then you finally arrived at 1 Top. I'm curious why the fluctuation? I'm personnally a big proponent of 3 Top. I think Top is an excellent early-game card just like Misstep, Snare, or PtE, but I would like to hear your opinion (and the opinion of anyone else).

[GGoober]

I was making space for more 1-1 pinpoint removal. 2 Top is great in a build that is constantly digging every turn, countering/Stp'ing the only relevant threats, then follow up with a sweeper. I didn't enjoy the list I posted on last page. 1-1'ing bob/SFM is really not the way to go. I'm open to Shackles etc but I feel Shackles isn't stellar in Landstill due to the lower island count. However, with Cliques/Bobs/SFM/Maverick/Merfolk being ever more popular than Goyf/Knights.dec, I think Shackles is indeed solid even with Landstill's manabase.

I'll give it a shot again. I like Top much more than Ponder (that Klaus is playing in his list). I felt a little underwhelmed with just 1 Top after my brainstorm gets MM'd (and I fight back with MM because that particular brainstorm was very much needed). 2 Top is what I primarily play with. I played 3 Tops a few months back because of Counterbalance in the board (great against combo/High Tide/burn/zoo etc) but since MM was printed, I dropped the Counterbalance in the board and went back to 2 Top. I tried the 1 Top in a more speedstill approach of having a stronger early game against faster Bob/SFM/merfolks deck. Didn't pan out too well because it was still hard to keep up with Bob/SFM in particular.

I did steal a couple of games with Scepter/Helix against UWb Stoneblade (lol). After some playtesting, I feel that the loss of sweepers and end-game x-1 spells was not worth the initial better gameplan with additional 1-1 removal.

[RogueMTG]

Metalwalker, you played 2 Top for a long time, then upped to 3 Top (p. 235), but then you finally arrived at 1 Top. I'm curious why the fluctuation? I'm personnally a big proponent of 3 Top. I think Top is an excellent early-game card just like Misstep, Snare, or PtE, but I would like to hear your opinion (and the opinion of anyone else).

I've also gone through this fluctuation over the years. Started with 1, upped it to 3, then 0 and now still debating between 1 and 2.

I had been testing the deck a while with no Top, as was the style of the time, but I decided to try 1x for my first "big" tournament with the deck (170~ people) and it performed well and I managed to sneak into the Top 8.

So I upped it to 3... and I found that it did a very good job of letting me not lose, but not a great job of helping me win. That is, I picked up a TON of draws.

I had a number of tournaments where my record was something like 5-0-3, ending in 9th/10th place because you stretch games out with topping and often top lets you delay the inevitable when you're in a losing position. So rather than just losing/scooping game 1 or 2 and having time to roll them in game 3, you drag it out (unintentionally), and now you don't have the time to even shuffle up and end up taking a draw.

Well I got fed up quickly, and decided top was a crutch and I would just be a badass and not run it at all like the old days and just get by with a very consistent build (lots of 4 and 3 ofs). This is a workable strategy, and has it's merits, but in the end it just didn't feel as powerful despite solving the "tons of draws" problem.

So now I'm back to 1x, flirting with the 2nd, which I feel is a good balance of utility and real answers/threats.

[IsThisACatInAHat?]

Me myself I prefer a package that looks like this:
cards

You and most landstill players for the past several years. In that time, Landstill was never a tier 1 deck, nor was it even very good. CBtop just did everything better. But times have changed. The decks are faster and the format's #1 bogeyman since Coldsnap is gone. Moat and Wrath are no longer reliable stabilizers by themselves against aggressive decks with 16 counterspells or where half their damage is burn-based anyway. EE went from a slow, crappy card with the versatility to get around CB to just being a slow, crappy card.

The "neo" blue disruption package looks like: 4 FoW, 4 MM, 3 Snare, 4 BS. It trumps the classic Landstill suite in basically every way; any counter you pay for, they pay half to stop you and they run just as much of it. What are you even trying to stall into, assuming you don't just get run over? One of your two Jaces? An Elspeth? Against other slow blue decks, you're running exactly half as many of the single most powerful card in the matchup. Against aggressive decks, you're banking on expensive 4-mana trumps that all of them have ways to get around anyway, if you can resolve them without dying (a very, very big if).

If you choose to "accept your responsibility" to Force every potentially backbreaking cmc 1 card, you also choose to accept your responsibility to lose to them because you'd rather put your faith in expensive catchalls. Before NPH, it was a cost you had to pay if you wanted to play the archetype. Now, you have a free unconditional 1:1 counter. Eschewing it in favor of the same cards that were mediocre when they were "good" is just negligent.

While I don't think 4 Mental Misstep is "clearly incorrect", this post is putting an entirely unhealthy emphasis on what is. It's important to look at what's winning, but the best deck at a tournament usually doesn't win, and the absolute best deck 75 in a metagame (certainly in Legacy anyway) will almost never even be registered.

Yes and no. Yes, it's statistically provable that the "best" deck in a metagame is more likely not to win a tournament in which it's registered. But no, that does not mean classic Landstill is anywhere near it. Here we have a bunch of players who insist the classic UW Landstill shell is optimal. Objectively, since Merfolk entered the Legacy metagame, the deck has failed to put up any kind of consistent positive results. But all of a sudden, Landstill is a tier 1 deck. Even if none of the lists putting up numbers every week is optimal, they all have some things in common. One of those things is 4 Mental Misstep. Another is 3+ (usually 4) JTMS. Could it be coincidental that all of these decks are winning despite these 8 slots, rather than because of them? Sure. Is it likely? Mmm probably not.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

People tend to insist that the current version of a deck is the best until someone, usually a pro comes along and wins a tournament with something new and flashy and then everyone jumps on that ship.

But to say that the 2008 builds of Landstill are insufficient is not to say that the Gerry Thompson build is optimized.

[Iron Buddha]

RogueMTG, that is indeed a valid point. But theoretically it comes down to the player being able to evaluate the gamestate correctly. I'd say with Landstill you have a very good knowledge of what your deck can and cannot do, because what it can do is excatly your 4c bombs:
Cards like Wrath of God/Humility/Moat usually turn things around if they resolve no matter the gamestate, and Standstill/Jace immedietaly puts the nail in the coffin afterwards. - So you can judge pretty well whether your plan is worth it or not.
---However, that's theory of course.---

But I have to say that my two favourite Landstill variants ever are the one of Citrus God p. 169 (I'm aware that it's two years old) and Mana Drain's list p. 223. They both run 3 Top. What I like about them is that they perform very straight forward.


I really like mossivo's setup. Assuming 24 lands he has now 7-8 cards to play with.

At least one of those should be some kind of artefact/enchantment removal (third EE, Oblivion Ring, Cunning Wish, etc.). Gerry Thompson made that mistake in the SCG Open Louisville: he cut the Repeals, and ended up having no maindeck answers to artefacts/enchanments. He "lost handily to Joe Bernal's Bitterblossoms".

Two more slots should be dedicated to card draw, else the deck is losing consistency: Top, Standstill, whatever.

That's 4-5 remaining slots.


You can't ever run less than 3 Counterspells, LSV and PV did in the GP, but I'm very sure that this is an awful idea. Counterspell is a fundamental part of Landstill's lategame consistency.

Your evaluation of EE I don't understand. EE is a tier one card, am I wrong?!

Wrath of God/Humility/Moat: I'm very sceptical if a list doesn't run 3 of those. Jace and Standstill fail under severe pressure. Don't forget that Mutavault is a huge threat for Jace. Do you really want to get out of the worst case scenario with pin-point removal? Also, Mental Misstep relegated Spell Pierce to the SB, good thing. Daze you can draw out simply by playing into it in the first couple of turns.


EDIT:
I suggest this layout:

24 lands

// counter: 10
4 FoW
3 CS
3 Snare/CS/MM/Cunning Wish

// removal: 10
4 StP
3 EE
3 WoG/Humility/Moat

// draw: 10
4 BS
3 Standstill
2 Top
1 Top/Standstill

// win: 3
3 Jace/Decree of Justice

// 3
3 open slots

[dsck]

I made top 4 today in a 28 player 5 round swiss + top 8 tournament with the following list:

4 Mental Misstep
4 Force of Will
3 Spell Snare
3 Counterspell
4 Brainstorm
4 Standstill
3 Jace, the Mindsculptor
1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
4 Swords to Plowshares
1 Dismember
1 Wrath of God
1 Day of Judgment
1 Humility
1 Oblivion Ring
1 Crucible of Worlds
2 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Flooded Strand
1 Polluted Delta
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Arid Mesa
3 Tundra
2 Island
2 Plains
1 Celestial Colonnade
4 Mishra's Factory
3 Wasteland

Sideboard:
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Relic of Progenitus
1 Phyrexian Metamorph
1 Moat
1 Leyline of Sanctity
2 Misdirection
3 Peacekeeper
1 Volcanic Island
2 Pyroblast
2 Vendilion Clique

Round 1 TES 0-2
Round 2 BW 2-0
Round 3 Burn 2-1
Round 4 RUG Order 2-0
Round 5 GW with Fauna Shaman/Vengevines 2-1
Top8
Quarter finals Aeon Bridge 2-1
Semi finals Hive Mind 1-2

GW Maverick won TES, Cephalid Breakfast and Hivemind in the top 8 and won the tournament.

[Omega]

Congratz! Too bad you didn't face Merfolk, as I believe this is Landstill nightmare :( (the only reason why im not playing the deck...)

On a related note, expecting a lot of Zoo + Merfolk + aggro control + aggro tomorrow. I expect very little combo/dredge.

Should I decide to pick Landstill, how am I to optimize it for that meta? Red for maindeck Helix/Bolt/Fire and ice/pyroclasm effect?

[Lemnear]

the only question I have is, what happend in the first round? 0-2 vs. TES with this deck?

[dsck]

Congratz! Too bad you didn't face Merfolk, as I believe this is Landstill nightmare :( (the only reason why im not playing the deck...)

There were at least 3 Merfolks in the room, they were all destroyed by gw decks. My side plan was 3 peacekeepers + misdirections to protect them (from dismember) but I havent actually ever gotten to test these.

the only question I have is, what happend in the first round? 0-2 vs. TES with this deck?

G1 He broke 2 standstills and I was starting to beat him with factories but then he warrens'd for 8 goblins, I had full grip of fows/counterspells and active jace, he had massed a lot lands on the table with the standstills being there so I couldnt really counter anything before the warrens. I dealt slowly with the goblins (lack of Engineered Explosives showed here.. couldnt find wrath either, I was mainly fatesealing him with jace to not let him have tendrils) he got me low enough life total and used the tendrils he had been holding whole game to kill me

G2 He went for 16 tokens with pyroblast back up on turn 2 after duressing me turn 1, I could only get to 3 mana while holding day of judgment.

I didnt find myself needing explosives in any of the other games though, here it would have been MVP.

[Ozymandias]

Made top 8 at a 40ish person tourney with Landstill today.

2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Elspeth, Knight Errant
1 Moat (borrowed, probably better as Wrath 2)
1 Humility
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Wrath of God
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Oblivion Ring
4 Mental Misstep
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Counterspell
3 Spell Snare
4 Force of Will
4 Standstill
4 Brainstorm

1 Academy Ruins
4 Wasteland
4 Mishra's Factory
4 Flooded Strand
2 Polluted Delta
1 Marsh Flats
3 Tundra
2 Plains
2 Island
2 Underground Sea

SB:
3 Extirpate
3 Enlightened Tutor
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Planar Void
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Energy Flux
2 Engineered Plague
1 Nevinyrral's Disk
1 Eternal Dragon
1 Oblivion Ring

The SB was pretty terrible, but nearly every single card in the maindeck pulled its weight. The mana was a little iffy, and I definitly punted my t8 match, but whatever. I will play it again soon.

[DragoFireheart]

I have a little dilemma:


2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Elspeth, Knight-Errant


OR


4 Jace, the Mind Sculptor