Tacosnape, are there any interesting things you've learned about playing or building 4c Landstill for this tournament that you'd like to share? I'm in the process of getting it put together myself, and any extra tips before I unleash it on others would be excellent.
Just to add something, I would agree that 4 colors is perfectly viable. During my (admittedly limited) playtesting I found land hate easy enough to work around. And if rishadan port is really that much of a problem, run a few teferi's responses in the board. Having four colors means you can play pretty much anything you want, so solutions are bound to exist for your particular meta.
In the BHWC Landstill, with Pernicious Deed the mana base is very weak. You are forced to fetch quickly an Tundra to play Stps, and after you have to have Tropical Island and Underground Sea to play Deed. This use to be hard. I believe the UWg is a very good approach. I play with only a green card, LftL, and 2 Monasterys. I play with a lot of Silver Bullets, and so I can beat anything (I used to play UWr and had some troubles with LftL decks and so on). My version is also very strong in the mirror due to the uncountereable land-recursion of LftL to recur Wasteland and the two Lonely Sandbar. My decklist:
4 Force of WIll
4 Counterspell
4 Brainstorm
4 Standstill
3 Stifle
3 Intuition
2 Trinket Mage//Spell Snare --I'm not very happy with wathever I put in that slot
4 Swords to Plowshares
1 Life from the Loam
3 Engineered Explosives
2 Vedalken Shackles
1 Pithing Needle
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Academy Ruins
1 Wasteland
2 Lonely Sandbar
2 Nantuko Monastery
4 Mishra's Factory
3 Tropical Island
4 Tundra
1 Polluted Delta
4 Flooded Strand
1 Plains
1 Island
SB
4 Chalice of the Void
2 Blue Elemental Blast
2 Spell Snare
2 Porphiry Nodes
2 Disenchant
1 Pithing Needle
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Life from the Loam
It is very nice to have a secundary draw engine. It is so good against the mirror and against decks with a lot of manlands. I can search for my silver bullets with Intuition+Tolarian Ruins+Life from the Loam.
aggro: T. Ruins, LftL, Engineered Explosives/V. Shackles
control: LftL, Sandbar, Sandbar/Wasteland
I can also go for 3 of whatever in an emergency, like 3 Fow, 3 Counter or 3 Swords, but I do not like doing it if I have another path to deal with the treath. Also can win decking my opponent with Tolarian Ruins (I had to do it against Life once).
Originally Posted by Nightmare
Geoff Smelski Landstill 2k7 [fixed]
4x Force of Will
4x Counterspell
3x Cunning Wish
2x Fact or Fiction
4x Brainstorm
4x Standstill
4x Swords to Plowshares
4x Wrath of God
3x Engineered Explosives
3x Decree of Justice
2x Eternal Dragon
4x Mishra's Factory
3x Wasteland
4x Tundra
1x Scrubland
1x Underground Sea
1x Tropical Island
1x Savannah
4x Flooded Strand
2x Island
2x Plains
Side Board
1x PULSE OF THE FIELDS
Your sideboard choices should be determined by your own personal play style and your local metagame. Pulse is literally the only reason I run Cunning Wish. Having 3 cards that can get me Pulse game 1 has won me more games than any other single card. Most importantly, with Cunning Wish I have been able to return Landstill to answer.deck. It's more difficult to win the first few rounds of a tournament against random rogue decks, than it is to face the tier one decks you are readilly prepared to see. With the variety of removal/draw/counter you gain access to with Cunning Wish, combined with the staple cards of Landstill, I have yet to run into a random deck and lose 2-games.
I splash both off deck colors, I do not however need to see either color to cast anything. Personally I find Pernicious Deed to be a win-more card in Landstill. I play green and black mostly for the Engineered Explosives, but i do usually run an Extirpate in my board. The extra board space created by playing Cunning Wish allows for a considerably more diverse side board. You also have access to the majority of the cards game-1.
Thanks for the updated list, Geoff. Please, please, fix the grammar and spelling though. It's one of the main rules in the Forum Rules. ~ Nightmare
Last edited by konsultant; 07-24-2007 at 11:29 AM. Reason: I hate english class
why do you run 3 wasteland and no crucible MD?
Why the green splash without monastery?
why not include a singleton volcanic and have some red in the wishboard too?
Honestly I have never run Crucible MD. I have found it useless in most match-ups. I run the Wastelands for the mirror-match and the random person playing Volrath's Stronghold. (mostly the mirror)
The green splash could very well be changed to a red splash. I have done some testing with Price of Progress in the SB as a way to beat the 43-Land decks. It actually worked pretty good. It really all just depends on what you want as Cunning Wish targets.
To fly in the face of both Dukelio and Konsultant's posts, what I learned, or reaffirmed, was that Pernicious Deed is the single best card in Landstill, not a win-more card, and that the manabase is completely solid (I had -one- game where I had mana troubles, which I think for 10 games played on MWS is completely acceptable, and I still won that game. (I'm not counting where I got my Tropical Islands Extirpated, though I won that game too.)
Beyond that, not much to add that I haven't added already. I won two games because of Crime and another because of Punishment that I wouldn't have won otherwise. C//P is so ridiculous it's immeasurable. As far as advice, the golden rules of Landstill, as far as I'm concerned, are not to counter anything that you don't absolutely have to, and not to be too quick to remove lesser threats with STP/Edict that you can sweep with Deed. And to get a solid feel for when you can and can't afford to play a Standstill.
EDIT: It is worth noting that as a buffer against MWS I went up to 7 fetchlands and only 3 Tropicals, and it seems to have worked out fairly well, so I've been trying it in real life as well.
Agreed, and you're making it worse. Get rid of Lonely Sandbar, get rid of Academy Ruins, and get rid of Wasteland. 4C Landstill should run a grand total of seven lands and no others. Tropicals, Seas, Tundras, Deltas, Strands, Factories, and Monestaries. Maybe a Scrubland (I've been considering this.), but probably not.
Have you done any testing against decks with considerable land disruption? I don't understand how playing a build that literally loses to a resolved Bloodmoon, is better than one with a more stable land base.
I agree that if you were going to play that build of the deck, you would need to play exactly that mana base.
Perhaps I am thinking to far into the future of the format. I firmly believe landstill is going to make a very large come back into Legacy. As a very experienced player of the deck, I would find it nearly impossible to fight through some of the SB hate cards people used to play against Land Still with the list you are running.
What decks are packing these Blood Moons though? Burn? Sligh? A Goblin list I haven't seen? Red Death (Except I play Magus, which is easier to answer)? Red Thresh kinda screws itself in the ass dropping one on you unless they fetched out all their basics by then. I would fear a more dedicated LD strategy like RD or Deadguy more than a Blood Moon, because it's rare you'll see it.
And if it did start showing up significantly, you can alter the deck to include an out to it. Not that difficult. The original list ran 1 Plains and 2 Disenchant's MD, if need be, you could always move back to that.
I have never, ever, ever lost to a resolved Blood Moon or Magus of the Moon. And I've seen at least ten of each attempted to be played. Magus of the Moon is incredibly easy to deal with, as all you need to do is float the mana to remove him. Blood Moon's a little tougher, but succumbs to Blue Elemental Blast (A basic Island could be run if this became a popular thing to do, but right now it isn't.) and also is useless if you already have a Deed on the board.
Wasteland is no bother thanks to Stifle unless recurred with Loam, and most Landstill decks die to decks packing Loam pre-board anyway. Fortunately, Loam is heavily heavily favorable postboard with Mage, Extirpate, and Blue Elemental Blast leading the charge. Sinkhole and Vindicate are easily countered, ignored, or recurred from, unless they aim Extirpate at your colored lands, and if they do, it's not the end of the world generally.
EDIT: Also, for what it's worth, the second the Mirror becomes relevant in the metagame, I already have my 4C Tech lined up to be inserted: Quagnoth. Any Landstill variant not packing Green (Or heavy double-white for Wrath/Humility) loses to Quagnoth. Quagnoth swings through a Monestary, is immune to STP, Immune to Engineered Explosives, highly resilient to your own Deeds, immune to Force and Counter, and the only spell Landstill tends to run that gets rid of him, Diabolic Edict, can be circumvented simply by tapping a Mishra's Factory.
Last edited by Tacosnape; 07-24-2007 at 09:28 PM.
I did some extra testing with 4c Landstill, and I'm more and more impressed with it. The stifles and edicts, again, aren't my favorite slots, but they work quite well at rounding out the deck. I might try smother in place of edict though.
One thing I've realized is that although land-hate can cut you off of a color of mana (green, for instance), the deck can still function from this position. I believe Tacosnape mentioned this , at least in passing, in a recent post. The power level of the cards in this deck is so high that you often don't need them all to win. For instance, without green you have no deed, loam, or monastery. But you still have all your pinpoint removal, counters, draw, and mishra's factory to finish the job. (I chose green because I think it's the best color to cut off, since without loam you can't get the color back).
I'm also going to retract my past criticism of life from the loam (over crucible), since I recurred lands prior to deeding for 3+ multiple times (which, as you can tell, would destroy crucible). I haven't played any post-board games yet, since I don't have a board built, but I was thinking this:
4 Meddling mage
4 Blue elemental blast
3 Extirpate
4 Empty slots
I don't want the empty slots to be plagues since goblins are less common than generic zoo in my meta.
The power and versatility this deck has to offer will almost certainly bring it some attention soon. And until land hate becomes more prevalent (and in much greater quantities within the decks) this deck seems to have little to fear. I would like some ideas for the empty slots in my board considering a meta of zoo, burn, countersliver, solidarity, MUC, affinity, stax, and survival. Also, is smother really a good idea or should I just stick with the edicts and be damn grateful?
I can't understand why this mana base:
Academy Ruins
Wasteland
2 Nantuko Monastery
4 Mishra's Factory
2 Lonely Sandbar
3 Tropical Island
4 Tundra
1 Island
1 Plains
5 Fetchs
is weaker than:
12 Duals
6 fetch
6 colorless manlands
Ok, my mana base has more colorless mana, but my spells is so less colored mana intensive than yours. I can search for basics lands to have 3 mana and cast Intuition (maybe in my upkeep against Rishadan Ports) into LftL. Sometimes Wasteland also protect my land from enemy Rishadans and allow me deal with multiple manland in the mirror or go for the mana-denial route.
From there I don't care mana denial. At least here in Spain aggro is the most frecuent matchup, in any form, from Goblins to RG to WW of whatever. Against goblins, sure, you can ignore the firsts goblins to catch all with Deed, it is quite possible than you were dead then. And if you have to fetch Tundra, first, it is very easy you can't have the GB neccesary to cast Deed in the third turn.
However when I wrote last time against your 4C approach, I really wasn't thinking in your mana base, I am thinking in the Paul's Nicolos with Wasteland and 3 monasterys. Maybe with the 12 duals MB your deck are less mana problems, but you have the problem that can´t deal with some lands, but it can be a minor problem beacuse these lands aren't so used.
Is there a reason so many lists here are packing Edict over Innocent Blood? The only one I can think of is Chalice of the Void for 1, which is rough for sure, but it seems the ability to take out turn one Lacky and to a lesser degree Mongoose on the draw would outweigh the Chalice risks.
Lands:
4 Mishra's Factory
4 Polluted Delta
3 Nantuko Monastary
3 Wasteland
3 Tundra
3 Tropical Island
3 Underground Sea
2 Flooded Strand
Spells:
4 Counterspell
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
4 Standstill
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Pernicious Deed
3 Fact or Fiction
3 Stifle
2-3 Innocent Blood
2-3 OPEN - Currently testing 1 Crime//Punishment, 1 Teferi's Response and the 3rd Blood
I'm currently testing a pretty similar build to all the ones in here, still fooling around with a few last spots, but the Crime//Punishment seems like a pretty nice tech piece to have in there, nothing else has really jumped out at me, so been going a little heavy on removal with the extra Blood and Response seems good enough for a 1 of since there's a pretty good chance that our land base will be targeted at some point either by early disruption or by removal, and if its not being targeted we're generally in ok shape anyway, plus its a pitchable card to FOW at worst (like in a situation against combo).
Once again, there are several reasons for Edict over Innocent Blood. And trust me, I've played both for over four months, so I have some semblance of what I'm talking about.
The first and biggest reason is that Innocent Blood does not get along with Meddling Mage at all. And this will prove key in any matchup where you board in Mage and leave Edict/Blood in, most notably but not limited to Survival. This would also be a factor in matchups like Cephalid Breakfast, Death and Taxes, or what have you. Blood will worsen a ton of your rogue matchups.
The second is that Diabolic Edict is an instant and thereby capable of dealing with certain threats that Innocent Blood struggles against (A hasted Warchief, Mishra's Factory, the first piece of the Cephalid Breakfast combo in response to the second one, the random rogue Ball Lightning, whatever.)
The third is, as you mentioned, Chalice for 1. This really isn't a big deal, but if it's known you run Blood, Faerie Stompy can lock you down fast with a Needle on Deed followed by a Chalice.
That said, there are situations where you want that Innocent Blood in order to have the removal a turn faster. The two turn-one creatures you'll wish you had Blood against? Goblin Lackey and Hypnotic Specter. Lackey can be solved with STP or Blasts, and Specter can be Swordsed or Forced and they have to have a Ritual to go with it, but either one is a complete nightmare if it hits you.
Well I took the 4c deck to a 5-0-1 1st place win today in a 14 man tournament. The list and SB I used was:
4 Tundra
4 Seas
3 Trops
3 Delta
3 Strand
4 Factory
3 Monastery
4 StP
4 Deed
4 Edict
1 C/P
4 FoW
4 Counterspell
3 Stifle
4 Brainstorm
4 Standstill
3 FoF
1 LftL
SB: 4 Plague
SB: 4 Hydroblast
SB: 4 Mage
SB: 3 Extirpate
I get there around 1:00 and see my friends Travis (who I haven't seen in forever) and Jeremy are already there. We chat about Legacy decks before signing up and getting the tournament underway. I'll just preface this by saying the skill level of the tournaments, as well as the decks, aren't really that high. So this report isn't worth very much other than 4c Landstill >>> Bad Players.
Round 1: Ron with B/G Poison creatures (This is what was referencing to)
Game 1: He plays some weak, overcosted creatures with Poison and I either Edict, StP, or Deed them away and beat with a Factory, shortly followed by Monastery after a FoF (Just to get Thresh).
Game 2: See game 1. I didn't take any damage except from a fetch.
Round 2: Don't remember his name with Mono Red...Accelration into Puzzle Box and Creatures.
Game 1: He spits out an early Puzzle Box to which I Deed away, then counter all his relevant spells and win with Monastery.
Game 2: I literally had a counter for everything he played pretty much (Aside from creatures, I just killed them). At one point he threatens with the red Akroma that can't be countered or StP'd. So I just cast Edict and beat him down with manland beats, countering what seemed needed.
Round 3: Jeremy with Mono Green Beats from Standard. (All he had)
Game 1: He gets early beats powered out through Magus of the Vineyard. The only down side is this lets me play a Deed off 1He gets me down to 7 before I clear his board, stabalize, and win with Monastery.
He says he's bringing Tsunami. I didn't know if he was joking, but I brought in Mage anyway. -3 Stifle, +3 Mage
Game 2: He mulligans into a 6 card hand and keeps. I don't see a Mage, but he again plays a turn 1 Magus, to which I lay down a turn 1 Deed, which pretty much hosed him for the rest of the game, as he couldn't get above 2 lands (1 of which was Treetop Village). There were some Standstills and FoF's before I beat him in with Monastery and Factory.
Round 4: Travis with Rifter. We ID. We're both undefeated and decided it's just cooler to draw.
T4: Mike with U/G Madness.
Game 1: My Standstills, Brainstorms, and FoF's reveal nothing but crap to stop his beats. He also Trickbinded one of my fetches to get a Trop, and I never saw another Fetch or Trop and lose to a horde of creatures holding LftL and Deed...Boo...Of course game 2 is where the shit hits the fan...
I board out 3 things I can't remember and bring in the Extirpates, thinking I'll just counter/kill his creatures and then nerf the important ones and Wonder.
Game 2: Nothing interesting happens for most of the early and middle game. He has a Rootwalla attacking and I'm building my manabase and hand. Eventually I StP the Rootwalla and then I think cast FoF. On his turn he plays some Enchantment that he boarded in that does 1 damage for each non-basic I control during my upkeep. My board is exactly this on my turn and my hand contains a Stifle and Deed:
1 Monastery
1 Factory
2 Tundra
1 Tropical Island
2 Underground Sea
I Stifle the trigger of the Enchantment, so I can play Deed without a ton of damage, so I tap the Tundra, leaving me with 6 lands untapped and me thinking I'll have to blow it next turn. I draw a Tundra for my turn and think, "Great, I can drop and blow Deed this turn for 4 (cost of the Enchantment)."
So I play the Tundra, tap a Monastery, Sea, and Trop for Deed, and then tap 2x Tundra, the remaining Sea, and the Factory to Deed for 4. He asks what that even destroys, to which I kinda point obviously at his Enchantment. He then asks if I had enough land to do that, to which I showed how I had tapped and he said ok and passed the turn. He draws crap and passes to me, I draw Stifle and beat for 6. He plays a Looter, passes to me, I draw Edict and beat for 6.
On his turn he suddenly goes on a rageful tangent that I didn't have enough lands to kill his 'tech' (I'm guessing because his draws were awful and he was gonna lose). I ask, "How so?" showing him, yet again, how I played/tapped my lands and that I hadn't played any lands since that turn. My friend Jeremy is beside me telling Mike exactly what I'm telling him, because he's seen my hand the whole two games. But he throws his cards together and storms off shouting that he, "Won't play like that!!!" (Insinuating I was cheating...even though I never have since I've known him). So I apparently win that game and the next, because he concedes in the other room I hear.
Finals: Travis with Rifter. At this point I'm kinda not enjoying playing anymore, but finish anyway.
Game 1: I keep him off Rifts, StP a Dragon, and Stifle a Decree. This match is bad for him, because he has a bunch of dead cards like Humility and Wrath. This is good for me.
-4 Edict, +3 Extirpate and +1 Plague (As a joke, because all 3 of us had been joking about it)
Game 2: Pretty much the same as game 1, except in this one he beats me down to 10 before I drop my singleton Plague on Solidiers and Extirpate his Eternal Dragons and again keep him off Rift and win out.
So after this we chat for a bit before moving out to the main store area. The store owner's wife essentially tells my friend Travis and I that we can't come and play in anymore tournaments at the store. This is because the 'kids' aren't wanting to play anymore, because we show up and win all the time with good decks, while they're losing with their casual decks because they want to have 'fun'. We go back and forth for awhile with us stating that 'fun' can mean different things to different players, and that we shouldn't be punished because we have fun being comeptitive and the players there refuse to play anything resembling a competitive deck.
In the end, we can only come back and play in the tournaments if we also play bad decks and play poorly, like everyone else. That's what she said in a nutshell. Pretty miffed and frusterated we leave and I go pick up my g/f for dinner and recount my day to her. Overall, the deck played very well, except the one game against Madness where I didn't draw a Trop. Otherwise I liked the list and I'll be playing it again in another Legacy tournament run by my friend Jeremy. Thanks for reading.
Yeah, there's definitely a shortage of sanity in card shop owners. That sucks about that.
Congratulations on the solid finish, though. Landstill's biggest strength is being amazing against all the random jank people can show up with, and I think your results proved that pretty well.
Rifter can be tough at times, though. I'm impressed you rolled through it so easily. (I assume you were clever enough to not drop Standstills?)
Yeah, I don't understand their logic, but apparently their reasons seemed good to them. But whatever.Yeah, there's definitely a shortage of sanity in card shop owners. That sucks about that.
Congratulations on the solid finish, though. Landstill's biggest strength is being amazing against all the random jank people can show up with, and I think your results proved that pretty well.
Rifter can be tough at times, though. I'm impressed you rolled through it so easily. (I assume you were clever enough to not drop Standstills?)
And yeah, the deck just has the power to plow through any sort of random garbage you come across. Which is not always true with something like Thresh or Fish.
I dropped Standstill a few times, because he didn't really understand how Humility doesn't affect manlands, so I'd throw down a Standstill knowing he'd drop a Humility into it. And he'd break it for stuff like Rift. Other than that, I just used them for FoW. I didn't really feel threatened at all during that match, but maybe his SB didn't have Landstill in mind. The only thing that took awhile was that he had StP and Wing Shards for my manlands. So I had to LftL quite a few times. I like the deck though.
Why are you impressed? Rifer is an easy Matchup.Yeah, there's definitely a shortage of sanity in card shop owners. That sucks about that.
Congratulations on the solid finish, though. Landstill's biggest strength is being amazing against all the random jank people can show up with, and I think your results proved that pretty well.
Rifter can be tough at times, though. I'm impressed you rolled through it so easily. (I assume you were clever enough to not drop Standstills?)
Dropping Standstill isn't that good since you can get fucked suddenly by a DoJ. So you should only drop a Standstill when you got a Pernicious Deed and everything's alright.
Then, you can Crime his Eternal Dragons. And you got enough Counters to handle the Lightning Rifts.
So there's absolutley no problem in winning this matchup.
Team SPOD
<Der_imaginäre_Freund> props:
Adan for being the NQG God (drawer)
Be careful if you aren't loaded on Manlands at the time. A good Rift player will Decree of Justice you out of your shorts if he can.
That's the reason why you should backup with Deed beforce dropping Standstill.
If you do this it will gain you much time to build up a good boardposition.
Team SPOD
<Der_imaginäre_Freund> props:
Adan for being the NQG God (drawer)
Yeah, that happened in the 2nd game, the only reason I was at 10. In game 1 I never saw Deed, so I just Stifled 2 DoJ's. But yeah, them getting Decree under Standstill is bad. With it being their only out really under Standstill and requiring a huge investment to be worth it, I just decided to go for it. Most likely because I was pretty bummed from the previous 'fiasco' and I didn't care at that point. Otherwise I would have boarded them out for the blasts, but he didn't play any Boil or REB I believe.
The only really tricky cards come after SB, because your game 1 is really solid I think against them. They essentially need Lightning Rift to have a chance. Because the majority of their removal is dead while all your removal is pretty relevant. Deed+Stifle answers Decree and Rift, StP and Edict handles Dragon (Because even casting Edict means they need to spend another 12 mana to play a 5/5 the following turn) and all your counters can protect your lands. Boil, REB, etc. are probably pretty tricky post SB though.
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