This seems like a ridiculously contrived example. Crucible is way better than Life from the Loam under a significant few scenarios, the most important being under a Standstill and Wastelocking or recurring chump-factories with counterspell/drawing mana up, whereas the most significant time LftL is better is when you've got 2 lands and none(?) in hand, or against a deck that can win the counter war against you(which very few can?). Do you really believe, based on your playtesting, that these scenarios come up more often than the ones where Crucible is favored?Originally Posted by Tacosnape
-Slay
OH SHIT THERES A HORSE IN THE HOSPITAL
Team Slay and Lego: Slay your a tool and your glasses are almost as GAY as your retarded snitch of a boyfriend Lego. Lego focus on your own game you are a fucking clown and should have heard the rediculous amount of people saying how much of a dick you were being and what kind of a fool you are. I laugh at you two. Seriously you both need attitude adjustments. I have never encountered a larger pair of pussy bitches in my whole life.
This scenario is never going to rest, I swear.
First of all, contrived indicates that what I posted was not exactly the case of what happened in the tournament, which indicates you're calling me a liar, which I don't appreciate. The example happened exactly as I said it did. I would have lost both of those games had my Loam been a Crucible as I would have never gotten my third land and even if I had, the Crucible would have been destroyed.
Secondly, let's hit all your points.
1. Under a Standstill, yes, obviously, Crucible of Worlds is better than Life from the Loam. I freely concede this point. In defense of this, any deck that has a significant chance of being stronger under a Standstill than me I can't beat anyway. Yet again, My 4C Landstill has a crappy mirror match. I take the auto-loss to the mirror and decks like 43 Land and whatnot in exchange for being between even and favored against almost (there are exceptions such as MUC) every other deck in existence.
2. Wastelocking is irrelevant to me, because my 4C Landstill build doesn't and never has run Wasteland. I clearly stated that I was making the case for Loam being significantly better if you aren't running Wasteland. While I personally feel it's stronger in Deed-packing builds even if you are running Wasteland, I won't go out of my way to argue this point.
3. While not many decks can win the counterwar against me, a few can and several are close. While I might be able to counter-battle a Crucible into play, the point to Loam is that it allows me to save my Countermagic to stop whatever the opponent's biggest threat is, be it Counterbalance or Back to Basics or their own Crucibles or Fact or Fiction or whatever, and it simultaneously allows me to spend my countermagic backing up other things, like my Pernicious Deeds.
The few Landstill mirrors I win are done by getting an active Loam while spending every last effort of my countermagic (And Deeds/Explosives) to prevent the opponent from getting their Crucible engine online, as it's significantly easier to beat an opposing Landstill deck when my land recursion engine works and theirs doesn't.
4. Yes, I believe that Loam is stronger in my build than Crucible could ever be. In the past few months I've only wished my Loam was a Crucible twice that I can remember: Once when my Tropical Islands had been Extirpated, and once when I didn't get it until I had 7 cards left in my library and couldn't afford to Dredge. Both were in control matchups where I couldn't be sure my Crucible would have lived, in any case. This is compared to countless scenarios where I'm incredibly happy to have had the Loam over the Crucible. I firmly believe it's the superior choice based on over a year of testing.
EDIT: Again, I reiterate, in this particular build. I believe Crucible to be stronger in any Landstill deck packing Wasteland and not packing Pernicious Deed.
According to a very quick search this hasn't been posted on the thread: would 4x Pithing Needles in the board give 4c a realistic shot at beating traditional (U/W/x) Landstill?
The 4x part is critical, because you really want two copies of them: the first to shut down deadly Wasteland, the second to hit Engineered Explosives; a third one can deal with Decree of Justice or Academy Ruins (mostly the former, since with Wasteland offline Crucible is not as threatening).
Testing idea:
SB: 4 Needles, 2-3 Grips, 4 Mage, 2-3 Extirpate, 2 BEB (Needle does some of the work of the last two)
YOU'RE GIVING ME A TIME MACHINE IN ORDER TO TREAT MY SLEEP DISORDER.
It's possible. I've often wanted Needle, 9/10 of the time to deal with an activated ability of a land (Wasteland, Ruins, Maze, etc.) It also deals with Shackles and, if you want to go that route, works well with Tarmogoyf in board to create a pseudo-Threshold transformation.
However, setting aside the whole "Your Deeds blow up your own Needles" thing, you're talking about axe-ing Plagues for them, at which point you're talking about making Goblins unfavorable (It's winnable without Plagues, but far less so) and severely hurting both your Ichorid and Cephalid Breakfast matchups as well.
The favorable matchups against most of the DTB Forum is the chief reason you should play 4C Landstill. The way I see it, if you damage these matchups, you might as well being a different variant.
I guess it's still a nice option if you sleeve up 4C and then discover the dealers are all out of Crucibles and Decrees.
YOU'RE GIVING ME A TIME MACHINE IN ORDER TO TREAT MY SLEEP DISORDER.
It's also important to put the LFTL into context. Have you cast it once or twice already? If you have, and have 2-4 lands in hand, then Crucible being better than it under Standstill becomes a little less relevant, as you can still make land drops for several turns. This excepts things like Waste locking under Standstill or recurring Factories, but I think it's still important. If you're using Crucible to replay several lands and LFTL has given you several lands to play, you're essentially doing the same thing. Abstractly, Crucible is better, but better by how much is open to the particular contexts that come up in the game when one has cast crux/lftl and then Standstill. I hope that makes sense.
This is very true and makes perfect sense, and it's a good articulation on a point I've failed to convey effectively. This is another large reason I think Loam is stronger if you aren't running Wasteland.
That Wastelock will win the Standstill war between Loam and Crucible, however.
Also Lftl is uncountereable and unbreakable. It is more dificult to deal. I side in Krosan Grips in the mirror to asure that Crucible of Worlds will not be online on the other side of the table. However now I am not running either, I took 3rd place in the Spanish Legacy Champs with a 4C build with my only loss in semifinals with a list based on my previous list and the 4C list than konsultant (I believe) posted with Liliana Vess:
4 Force of Will
4 Counterspell
3 Stifle
4 Standstill
4 Brainstorm
3 Cunning Wish
2 Fact or Fiction
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Eternal Dragon
2 Decree of Justice
4 Pernicious Deed
3 Underground Sea
3 Tropical Island
3 Tundra
1 Savannah
1 Scrubland
1 Plains
1 Island
1 Polluted Delta
4 Flooded Strand
4 Mishra's Factory
2 Wasteland
SB:
4 Meddling Mage
3 Extirpate
2 Krosan Grip
1 Misdirection
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Pulse of the Fields
1 Intervention Pact (a lot of burn with PoP here XD)
1 Diabolica Edict (the day before someone beats me with an Ascetic Troll and I was a little paranoid)
1 Slaughter Pact
With the Eternal Dragons I could estabilize my manabase a lot and have a recursion to not deplete my win conditions ever. I choose to play this version beacuse Decree of Justice. Now there are a lot of Landstill decks over here and this version with Decrees are better against another Landstills decks than the other with Monasterys. Also the Dragon + white mana were used to beat the Magus of the Moon that were near an autolose against the previous version (I had to Cunning to the Pact quickly to kill an eventually resolved magus).
This List seams quite solid, its quite similar to mine ( http://www.mercadia.de/home/page.php.../deck&id=58770 )
The question, for which i have actually no answer, is, whether Deed is really better then WoG...
Surely, it is more flexible with its disruption but i see some cases, which can actually happen quite often, where you will hate the Deed for being an enchantment...
It can be stifled, needled ( getting more and more popular in Grow-Decks ), gripped or simply disenchantet when u have to put it into play and wait a round to activate it...
Then, your Manabase is of course much weeker the base of a UWb Landstill. Further, it occured quite often to me, that you did not have B AND G in time, since you want fetch first the Tundra to use ur StoP...
How much MU's are there, where Deed is really better then Wrath ?
I count only Staxx / TES / Belcher / Mirror / Affinity - did i forget one ?
Yes Dukelio that is very similar to the build I had posted called Hybrid a few pages back.
The problem isn't the killing of the creature's, it's the killing of the artifacts or enchantment's really. Take a deck like Skies whitch is very popular over here. The problem is that your counters are to far spread. Aether Vial must stay out of play in order for you to ever play a Standstill. On top of that the deck has Jitte and/or Mask of Memory. This deck is a prime example of why I play Akroma's Vengeance in the SB because EE isn't powerful enough. The deck has Vial's at 1 Mana, Looter's and equipment at 2 Mana, all of it's real threats at 3 Mana [Sea Drake, Serendib]. If you replace the Wrath's with Deed you don't need Vengeance in the SB and you have all of that removal in game 1. Not to mention that Deed is increadibly more powerful than Vengeance with regards to speed or being able to play it and have Mana open for Counter back up. There are other matches where Deed is better than Wrath as well, Enchantress, Survival, Skies, Goblin's, Cephalid Breakfast, Ichorid {anything playing Aether Vial really}.
I personally run the UWb build because I prefer the more stable Mana base. I do also believe that not being as vulnerable to Pithing Needle, Krosan Grip or Stifle is why UWb is the "better" version. The only reason I think UWb is the "better" version is that all of the cards that interfere with the 4c builds are commonly played. Magus is very popular over here. Back to Basics has been springing up latley. Grip, Needle and Stifle are played in a majority of the decks in the field right now. People are trying to abuse Life and Wasteland in numerous different shells. Academy Ruins and even Volrath's Stronghold are seeing alot of play over here.
The fact of the matter is that if you want to be able to beat anything you sit across from {those who know me, know that nothing less is acceptible to me}, You must play Wasteland and you should probably be running 3 at least between the MD and SB. You must have a sweeper of some form for more than just Creature's. The only one's I would really consider are {Disk, Vengeance, Deed}. When I was running the Cunning Wish's I did use Return to Dust with some success.
So the big Landstill question is, whitch build will win you more game's more often. As of now I have been able to make up for the advantage's of Deed by using other card's in the my MD. Primarily I use Stifle and EE to help give my deck some much needed tempo that allows for my larger Mana cards to come online before I am overwhelmed. Until I find myself unable to deal with my opponent's early game I personally don't think it is worth it to play the 4c build and risk losing to disruption. That is not to mean that you can't win with the 4c version even through disruption, I'm basing this completly on how consistently and how easily each version of Landstill fairs in it's matchup's.
Team Pandora
Team Disqualified Poster
Well i HAVE played UWb at all 5 Bazaar-Leagues in Nürnberg ( Marius Hausmann here ) and it was quite successfull...
Further i DO agree with you, that wrath is the answer, which is better against enemy disruption. Concerning Magus of the Moon i would never play a Landstill without minimum 1 basic plains, 1 basic island and a single eternal dragon. I think the magus will hit UWb Landstill nearly as hard as it does to 4C...
You are right with the LftL-Decks that came first up in Munich ( Land Ho / Aggro Loam / Terrageddon ), but they are quite well handeled by Cunning Wish / Extirpate.
Another question must be, wether Wrath or Deed is the faster Solution... While Wrath comes certain down round 4 and takes all out, a Deed can take out turn 3 Empty the Warrens-token, but against "normal" Decks like ***** / Fish etc. you will have the Deed exactly as fast as wrath, while u will have left blue mana to counter new threats in round 4...
Last my agreement für return to dust: This card is really really great, i put it into my SB, kicking the dismantling blow...
Edit: Apparently Marius doesn't mind me posting our new list so here I go:
The 2 Humilities in the main have proven awesome, especially with access to Pulse of the Fields game 1.Code:/// Maindeck (60 cards) // Lands 4 Flooded Strand 2 Polluted Delta 4 Tundra 2 Underground Sea 1 Scrubland 2 Island 2 Plains 4 Mishra's Factory 2 Wasteland 1 Academy Ruins // Creatures 1 Eternal Dragon // Spells 4 Brainstorm 4 Standstill 3 Cunning Wish 4 Counterspell 4 Force of Will 4 Swords to Plowshares 3 Engineered Explosives 3 Wrath of God 2 Humility 2 Crucible of Worlds 2 Decree of Justice /// Sideboard (15 cards) 4 Meddling Mage 4 Engineered Plague 4 Extirpate 1 Pulse of the Fields 1 Slaughter Pact 1 Return to Dust
With Humility in the deck, you don't want Eternal Dragon but for mana fixing, therefore we upped the land count. As the deck is more top heavy, a Wrath of God and a Decree of Justice had to go (Humility somewhere fits in the role of Wrath, Decree is awesome with Humility, but a total late game card).
The Wishboard is striped down to the absoluted minimum to still be able to run a hard sideboard.
Listen to this guy, he top8 five times in a row in a 130+ tournament, always with a slight variation of an UWb build with Cunning Wishes we have been working on for ages.
Actually, if you play it carefully (an no shit like t1 on the play Magus, you don't have a Force happens), Magus is all right. You just fetch an Island first and then you have the ability to Cunning Wish for Slaughter Pact when he becomes too anoying. With no Pact in the Sideboard, I agree that Magus might be a little problematic as you'll be in a conflict which basic to fetch first (for example if you want to cast an eot Brainstorm to set up your draws but have a Swords to Plowshares in hand and play against Dragon Stompy or the like).
Oh, and I play 4 basics (2 Plains, 2 Island), 1 Eternal Dragon at the moment.
For reference, here's my new mana base:
4 Flooded Strand
2 Polluted Delta
4 Tundra
2 Underground Sea
1 Scrubland
2 Plains
2 Island
4 Mishra's Factory
2 Wasteland
1 Academy Ruins
(1 Eternal Dragon)
You can maybe notice some of the minor recent changes.
I've built in another fetchie as I didn't feel to reach black mana soon enough (EE, Extirpate, Plague etc).
Academy Ruins are just plain and simply awesome. They win the mirror (they help in CoW fights) and they are MVP if you have an Explosives against the rest of the field. They are worth being the 7th colorless mana source which hasn't been an issue lately as I've adopted a 24 land configuration.
Also, they have a function that is even more important to my very controling playstyle: they prevent you from decking. Seriously. I've often found that I'm in perfect control of the game, but have some problems finishing my opponent off in those 10-15 cards left (find a wincon etc). Academy Ruins just gives you this additional bit of security.
These decks are never a Matchup you look forward to, but at least with 3c Landstill you have a fighting chance. Cunning Wish was originally added only to beat these decks (and to have a fighting chance game 1 against any Life from the Loam based deck really) and it works quite nicely.
From my testing, if you play a 4c Cunnig List (which Marius and me have been working on but which I rejected for being too crapy), you can't win this game. Their mana base disruption will hit you very hard (you can't reliably cast Deed) and their threats will hit you too quickly (Deed is slower than Wrath really)... which leads me to my next point.
I think you can't really compare Wrath of God and Pernicious Deed. I'd rather see Deed as an Akroma's Vengeance which gives your opponent a timewalk if you aren't in the lategame.
While testing the 4c list, I found it extremly frustrating to be hit another time by the opposing critters (and to drop very low on life therefore) where Wrath would just have made Tabula Rasa here and now, lets see what happens next turn.
Also, if you play the 4c list, your NQG matchup will seriously drop. Against the builds with Stifles and Wastes you'd have a real trouble to ever get down a Deed and/or to blow it and against the other NQG decks (I still play 3 MB Needles) you'd be facing 3 additional pieces of disruption.
Pernicious Deed might be the right choice for some metas, but I'm talking of the general Legacy Metgame here and that's where I think the UWb version will be superior.
I agree. Even if you didn't quite convince me yesterday, I tested it a little and I love it against NQG where you can just totally own your opponent by taking out a Counterbalance and a Needle for example (then blow your EE and smile).
I still like Crucible more as it doesn't cost your draws and doesn't eat mana every few turns. (The argument that CoW is better under Standstill isn't really valid in my opinion as if you have a Standstill that actually wasn't broken directly, you are already in a winning position - not so the mirror, I agree, but there I'd actually only drop a Standstill while having a superior board state | also I think that you can't really argue about the not so good synergy between Deed and CoW as you rarely pop deed at more than 2 (at least I don't))
Looks solid, I still don't like Stifles in the main though. Also, Fact or Fiction is very clunky in my opinion, too clunky really to be played. I'd rather play more removal (Engineered Explosives).
In your Wishboard, I'd cut a Krosan Grip (you have Deed and EE to take care of random enchantments so that I'd never board these in), the Misdirection (card disadvantage for a narrow effect? Not worth it!), the Fact (I've recently cut the FoF from my wishboard and never looked back. In the entire last few months, I did wish for a FoF exactly once (during the German Champs) and even there it was a horrible move taking up too much mana for too much suck) and either a Intervention Pact (too cute in my opinion and only good in one Matchup) or and Edict for a playset of Engineered Plagues.
Goblins are still a concern and these are also awesome generally and against more decks than one might think... Baseruption (wizard -> Dark Confidant, Shadowmage Infiltrator, 1/1 Mages), Breakfast (wizard -> Dark Confidant (still in sb afaik), Cephalid Illusionist), Ichorid (zombie -> 1/1 tokkens aren't that scary, 0/0 tokkens are dead), random tribal stuff (an elves deck top8ed twice at the BoW Leage) and many more I sure forgot to mention.
Last edited by diffy; 12-14-2007 at 05:49 AM.
I do not believe I can play the 4C version without stifles maindeck. It turns the tempo lost against wasteland in a tempo gain. I must protect my mana base.
I believe it is a trade. I trade a little bad mana base for the pretty powerful CA engine and the flexible removal that Pernicious Deed is.
The decks you talk about for the inclusion of the Engineered Plagues there are not so much played here. Fishesque decks like Baseruption are a pretty good matchup with Landstill, and breakfast and Ichorid are also very little played and the Extirpate totally owns it.
I really don't like also the Edict, but I included it beacuse the issue of the Troll Ascetic, but I really don't see it too often to include it. I droped it for the 4th Extirpate.
Burn is really popular over here, so I include the pact, beacuse I hate lose against weak players with a stupid deck, and pulse alone aren't the good answer, beacuse they mana burn themselves.
Krosan Grips are there to beat the Counterbalance+Top locks in the ******** matchup and also to destroy Needles. I prefer it against return to dust beacuse the uncountereable issue.
And last I like FoF. I wished for it often and side in in the mirror and in every matchup in wich I can't use standstill like my CA engine.
Have you considered boarding the SDT/Counterbalance engine yourself?
I did this in one tournament where I knew the metagame was chock full of Burn, black-based control, and Baseruption/Threshold style decks, and I totally rocked face with it. Counterbalance decimated Burn, caused loads of problems for Baseruption (Criming Counterbalance also works well here if you run C//P), and allowed me to beat for the win with a Mage against Train Wreck (Counterbalance shut off both Edicts and Deeds and I was able to Force the lone Damnation/Mutilate, whichever it was).
What's more, you can abuse the Counterbalance engine better than most decks. Deed and Fact mean you can theoretically hit anything from 0-5 with Counterbalance, which gives you a lot of potential with SDT and Brainstorm helping adjust your library.
This has probably been of little importance to those of you who live in the East coast region... but I have a couple concerns with my deck.
For reference:
URW landstill (Belgareth's landstill)
lands//26
1 island
1 plains
4 flooded strand
4 tundra
4 volcanic island
4 mishra's factory
4 wasteland
4 faerie conclave
spells//34
4 force of will
4 counterspell
2 teferi's response
2 stifle
4 standstill
3 fact or fitcion
4 swords to plowshares
3 fire/ice
3 lightning bolt
2 crucible of worlds
3 nevinyrral's disk
sideboard//
2 pithing needle
4 meddling mage
2 engineered explosives
4 tormod's crypt
2 BEB
I have been having trouble with BGW Funkbrew, as it is a 50/50 MU... I would also like to know what my board should look like if I am expecting high concentrations of both control (mainly blue based like opposing landstill) and aggro control (various black based and some fish based)... I would appreciate any suggestions...
If I wanted to run academy ruins, what should I take out for it?
Welcome back 2003 Landstill card for card. 4 Faerie conclave is just terrible, your deck packs it to wasteland with only two basics. Teferi's responce? The card is just too narrow to be effective in todays metagame, your opponent has to use Land D or removal. They could just block with their Tarmogoyf. Nev. Disk? C'mon is this a bad joke? Pithing needle anyone? The card had it's day and it's gone now, it's effective the turn after it comes into play. Which is terrible to begin with. It's going to get Disenchanted/Deed'd/Krosan Griped/Needled/ect... No mass removal what so ever in today's metagame besides Disk which isn't going to work at all. Also, red and no pyroclasm? Way too much spot removal. I'll stop ripping on 4 years ago now.
Yes, I did. I liked it, but now I prefer to not use it beacuse the sideboard space issue. It take at least 5 slots (3 counterbalance and 2 SDT at least). I really can't afford this, beacuse it forces me to drop Extirpate and/or Mage and/or the Cunning Wish toolbox. I like the flexibility of cunning wish and I need Extirpate to deal with random graveyard strategies like Ichorid, LftL decks (I know I can simply counter them with counterbalance, but they side in Grips...) or random reanimate decks. Also I like mages a lot, and they beat against some decks, that is a little problem of Counter-top, that it stalls the game, but it is easy to go to time. I believe than this three packs are more useful than the Counterbalance/top.
Another added problem with Counterbalance/top is the "I played a threath already" issue that I suffer already with Standstill. Sure, it not the same, I can play counterbalance and kill the threath later, but sometime occurs thn you draw them when you need a resource to deal with something, and only draw counterbalances and standstill.
Also ¿what to side out to side it in? Against threshold, for exmaple, I can´t side out removal and if he plays wastelands I really have not nothing clear to side out.
My meta consists in most Aggro decks like Goblins, Mono Black, some Boros Builds, few combos like Iggy Pop and S.I. and maybe one or two decks packing FoW in a Aggro/Control style.
What's the best Landstill build for this meta?
“THROUGH me you pass into the city of woe, through me you pass into eternal pain, Through me among the people lost for aye.
Justice the founder of my fabric moved, to rear me was the task of Power divine, Supremest Wisdom, and primeval Love.
Before me things create were none, save things Eternal, and eternal I endure.
All hope abandon, ye who enter here.” - Inferno
My guess would be Duck Hunt, a.k.a. straight Blue/Black Landstill. A rock-solid mana base and Engineered Plagues in the board. If you can borrow/buy them, The Abyss is great too. Its main disadvantage (few or no answers to noncreature permanents, other than EE for 1-2) is practically nonexistent in your meta.
Last edited by Nihil Credo; 11-28-2007 at 12:12 PM.
YOU'RE GIVING ME A TIME MACHINE IN ORDER TO TREAT MY SLEEP DISORDER.
@Der_imaginäre_Freund:
Is it really worth it running Cunning Wish for one relevant card(Extirpate)?
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