[ATW] Landstill

[Nightmare]

The original Legacy Control weapon, Landstill has waned in favor due to the domination of Goblins. With Goblins maintaining a shaky hold on the format, as well as innovations and new card printings, Landstill has seen a bit more play in recent months. Does this foreshadow a return of the once-king?

Running Gagg #2, Geneseo NY
Coverage
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Threads:
UR Landstill

UBg Landstill - Vorosh Control

UB Landstill - Duck Hunt

Old DTB Thread

BHWC Landstill

The typical Landstill shell will include the following blue cards:

• Standstill
• Brainstorm
• Counterspell
• Force of Will
  
  Other popular blue inclusions are the following:
• Fact or Fiction
• Mana Leak
• Stifle

Discussion Question: Is extra counter in Mana Leak and Stifle worth losing possible removal slots? Is Fact or Fiction still hot or not?

Landstill was a quite a few color variations. Blue is always included for counters and draw, but the secondary (mass, spot removal, win condition) colors are debatable.

Removal

• Red
• Pyroclasm
• Slice and Dice
• Fire/Ice
• Bolts (Lightning, Chain)
• Magma Jet
  
  Black
• Damnation
• Decree of Pain
• Ghastly Demise
• Edict (Diabolic, Chainer's)
• Innocent Blood
  
  Green
• Naturalize
  
  White
• Wrath of God
• Swords to Plowshares
• Wing Shards
• Disenchant
  
  Multi-color
• Pernicious Deed (GB)
  
  Artifact
• Nevinyrral's Disk
• Poweder Keg
• Engineered Explosives

Discussion Questions: What color provides the best, cheapest, and/or most cost effective removal options?

Win Conditions

• Black
• Haunting Echoes
  
  White
• Decree of Justice
• Eternal Dragon
• Exalted Angel
  
  Green
• Gigapede?
  
  Lands
• Nantuko Monastary (GW)

Discussion Question: Does White's seemingly superior win conditions make that color an automatic inclusion for Landstill?

Other Considerations

• Black
• Discard - Duress, Cabal Therapy, Hymn to Tourach
  
  Green
• Recursion - Gaea's Blessing, Regrowth
• Enchantment and Aritifact Hate - Naturalize, Tranquility
  
  Red
• Reach/To the Dome - various burn spells
• Artifact Hate - Shattering Spree, Meltdown
  
  White
• Life Gain - Pulse of the Fields, Life Burst
• Enchantment and Artifact Hate - Disenchant, Aura of Silence
• Storm Combo Hate - Orim's Chant, Abeyance

[Pinder]

I honestly think that the strongest combination is UWBG, as it gives you access to most of the best control elements in the game. Most notably it gives you Pernicious Deed, which is the best board sweep option Landstill has available to it, IMO. I certainly know that I hate to see Deed on the other side of the table.

Having access to green and white also gives you Nantuko Monastery, which is probably as good or better than Mishra's Factory, and speeds the deck's clock up.

Access to black also gives you EP out of the board for Goblins/ETW craziness, and for other Tribal Decks as well. It also gives you extra removal like Edict and Innocent Blood to supplement Swords to Plowshares.

And there's always discard either maindeck or board to help against combo, which if I recall Landstill has had a historically bad matchup against. White also gives you weapons against combo in the form of Chant and Abeyance.

[Anarky87]

I honestly think that the strongest combination is UWBG, as it gives you access to most of the best control elements in the game. Most notably it gives you Pernicious Deed, which is the best board sweep option Landstill has available to it, IMO. I certainly know that I hate to see Deed on the other side of the table.

Having access to green and white also gives you Nantuko Monastery, which is probably as good or better than Mishra's Factory, and speeds the deck's clock up.

Access to black also gives you EP out of the board for Goblins/ETW craziness, and for other Tribal Decks as well. It also gives you extra removal like Edict and Innocent Blood to supplement Swords to Plowshares.

And there's always discard either maindeck or board to help against combo, which if I recall Landstill has had a historically bad matchup against. White also gives you weapons against combo in the form of Chant and Abeyance.

I second this. The deck can pretty much be dubbed Answer.dec. A guy I play with played the 4c version for the longest time, but said he was going to switch for the GP, because he didn't know if he could handle the manabase for 10+ rounds in a row. I'm kind of on the fence about the manabase, at times it works beautifully and you get exactly what you need, but when you get color screwed, you take it hard. I know I just described every deck there is, but I finally stopped playing the deck because I could never get the right amount of colored lands. And with Goblins blowing a huge load at the number of non-basics I played it was a tad discouraging.

Though I did dabble in the U/B/g version of the deck for awhile before going back to U/b/g/w.

[Tacosnape]

Another potential black inclusion in the Sideboard of any Black variant is Extirpate (I run it in my Uwbg build.) I find beating Life from the Loam decks to be incredibly tricky without it, and while not the end-all against combo, it's debatably as useful as Duress against certain combo decks and often useful when combined with Force, Counterspell, Stifle, and Mage.

[Nightmare]

After doing some significant testing, I'm not entirely convinced the black splash is worth it. Basically, you get Deed (if splashing Green too), which is awesome, but has terrible synergy with Crucible; Engineered Plague, which helps in the Gobs match but you only need because you wrecked your manabase going 4c; and Duress, which is Good vs. other control (which you beat anyway), and Combo (which you can build to beat, if it isn't Solidarity). You sacrifice any kind of reliable manabase for it, and I think in a control deck it's much more important to hit the mana you need when you need it, rather than pack the deck full of powerful cards and not play them because you can't draw a manasource. I'm still unsure as to what colors are the best, but I know it won't be Black.

[jamest]

I find beating Life from the Loam decks to be incredibly tricky without it ...

Me too. I think a dedicated Loam deck just makes a better lategame deck than ours. I thought about running Cunning Wish in place of Disenchant with a small wishboard of Extirpate, removal, and Pulse of the Fields.

After doing some significant testing, I'm not entirely convinced the black splash is worth it. Basically, you get Deed (if splashing Green too), which is awesome...

The problem is that I can't find a decent replacement for Deed. The fact that Deed can come down Turn 3 to destroy Warrens tokens is key for me.

...but has terrible synergy with Crucible;

I've been running a Loam engine instead, partly because of this. Here's my current decklist:

7 Fetchlands
3/3/3 Trop/Sea/Tundra
4/3/2 Factory/Treetop/Monastery
1 Wasteland

4 Brainstorm
4 Standstill
2 Intuition
1 Loam
2 Sandbar

4 Deed
4 Plowshares
2 Vindicate

4 Force
4 Counter
3 Stifle

Engineered Plague, which helps in the Gobs match but you only need because you wrecked your manabase going 4c;

I think the Goblins matchup is a big issue that has been subtly ignored. In my testing, this deck can't beat Goblins game 1. I wasn't sure if I was doing something wrong until I ran into this quote by Tacosnape (which everyone ignored):

Nick, I'm curious about your Goblins strategy. How winnable do you find game 1, and is it worth attempting the same strategy of conceding game 1 to mass-board for games 2-3? I tend to find myself drawing with Goblins a lot after losing game 1, winning game 2, and then finding insufficient time left for game 3.

Then again, this shouldn't come as a surprise. Originally, Goblins moved to 4x Port 4x Waste to combat UW Landstill back in the day. In my opinion, it's not just the manabase that's the problem, but the entire strategic approach. Basic maxim: Mass removal doesn't beat Goblins.

I think in a control deck it's much more important to hit the mana you need when you need it, rather than pack the deck full of powerful cards and not play them because you can't draw a manasource.

Agreed. I've tried to address this by increasing the number of color mana sources.

[Nightmare]

Engineered Explosives is better at killing Warrens tokens than Deed, as it has no mana retrictions and hits a turn earlier.

[thefreakaccident]

I have to agree with nightmare here, the deck is packed full of goodies that are just awesome to be seen played in the same deck... but with its' flimsy mana base, it comes to a screeching halt in its' developement when it comes to mana denial in the forms of wasteland/rishidan port. Belgorath over at salvation was able to help me fix the base, and it looks a lot better & plays a lot more consistantly... but then again he is the king of still.

@ Jamest: Yaw I have to agree, mass board removal does not end goblins, they simply have to restock... you need something like plague to continuously deal with their threats, pernicious deed serves as a timewalk in this instance because they are either afraid of the deed popping, or they'll just put the pressure on until the deed pop's to leave room for the threat build up in their hand... that's just the way it goes.

this is landstill, not loam; the reason we use crucible for recursion & not loam is because crucible goes under the standstill, which is the whole point of the deck... you play crucible, then standstill... you play under the standstill comfortably until they break the still; then you massively control the board and play another still, rinse wash repeat.

[Tacosnape]

Jamest gets a cookie for being the first person to actually listen to me. Possibly ever.

Now, the whole Loam/Crucible debate aside, the manabase of the UBGW Landstill -is- flimsy regardless of how you look at it. So I cut Wasteland.

(Pauses while you go take a Maalox and resynchronize your pacemakers...)

Now, obviously, I'm aware that Crucible/Wasteland is ungodly powerful, as is slightly less so Loam/Wasteland, and I'm sure I'll get at least three posts telling me I'm off my rocker. But I've found I win far more games from not dying to my own manabase than I do to not having the Wasteland.

Let's look at the traditional 4C Landstill manabase and then one without Wasteland.

Traditional versus (Without Wasteland)
4 Flooded Strand (4 Flooded Strand)
3 Tropical Island (3 Tropical Island)
3 Underground Sea (4 Underground Sea)
3 Tundra (4 Tundra)
4 Mishra's Factory (4 Mishra's Factory)
3 Nantuko Monestary (3 Nantuko Monestary)
3 Wasteland (1 Polluted Delta)
1 Island/Plains (1 Island/Plains)

The traditional build has a mere seven ways to hit any given color aside from blue, 13-14 to hit Blue, 8 for White if it runs the basic Plains over the basic Island.

The non-wasteland version has nine ways to hit black or white and eight for green, 16-17 for Blue, and Ten for white if it runs the basic Plains over the basic Island.

Now, the drawbacks of losing Wasteland are threefold:

1. You lose mana denial as a strategy.
2. You won't have the advantage under a Standstill as often.
3. You can't deal with a select few problem lands.

To which the answers are:

1. Most decks, thanks to goblins, get around Wasteland as a sole mana denial strategy by running enough basic lands to cast their deck.

2. Yes, you will, actually. Or if not, the difference will be marginal. You'll lose some ground against other decks packing manlands, but by constantly having the right color mana at the right time, you'll have less trouble casting your removal spells to stop anything that might come in Pre-Standstill. In Landstill Mirrors, Nantuko Monestary is bigger than their guys. Your only real problems here are a cycled Decree of Justice and the 4C Mirror, which runs a larger risk than you do of not having the GW for their Monestary.

3. You weren't favored in those matchups anyway. But just in case, here's how to deal with them without Wastelands.

RISHADAN PORT: The biggest nightmare land Landstill has to face is Rishadan Port in Goblins. There's nothing as frustrating as sweeping Goblins' board and countering all their Ringleaders and then being unable to attack them for seven turns while they recover. Your solution? Board in your Meddling Mages. Your manabase will be strong enough without Wasteland to make them castable. Dig for Plagues, then Mage on Krosan Grip if you see a Taiga. If they're clever enough to board in Pyrokinesis or are somehow packing REB, Blue Elemental Blast or Force them. Swing for the win.

WASTELAND: Stifle it, or Loam/Crucible your land back. If they drop a Crucible, Counter or Disenchant it. If you pack Extirpate, use it to nail Loam.

OTHER MANLANDS: You have more of them, unless you're playing against 43 Land. Swords to Plowshares is your friend here, as it'll keep them from coming back for more. Nantuko Monestary is also bigger than Mishra's Factories that don't come in groups of three.

MAZE OF ITH: Sucks to be you. Chances are if you're facing this it's in a deck running 26 land or better and reliant on a Loam system, so try to Meddling Mage all their key points and get more Mages than they have Land.

RANDOM RECURRING ABILITY LANDS: This includes everything from Kjeldoran Outpost to that new Hellbent land to Academy Ruins to Volrath's Stronghold. You won't face these often. You might never face them. But they can hurt when you do. Deed away outpost tokens, kill them before the hellbent land kills you, hope they don't do broken shit with academy ruins, and so forth.

I haven't looked back since making this change, as I can still hang with Goblins just as well thanks to my improved manabase and the Plague/Plague/Mage-for-Grip plan. (I'm 5-6 in matches against Goblin decks since, which isn't bad considering a woeful 1-10 game 1 record.)

[jamest]

So I cut Wasteland.

I'm down to one Wasteland myself for the same reasons. If you look at my manabase, I have 13 green, 10 black, 10 white.

this is landstill, not loam; the reason we use crucible for recursion & not loam is because crucible goes under the standstill, which is the whole point of the deck... you play crucible, then standstill... you play under the standstill comfortably until they break the still; then you massively control the board and play another still, rinse wash repeat.

Crucible has better synergy with Standstill. Loam has better synergy with Deed. But here's the thing you missed: If I have the Loam engine going, I don't need Standstill at all. The amount of cards Loam will draw dwarfs anything Standstill can do. In fact, Standstill basically becomes FOW food once Loam is active. Don't get me wrong though; there are reasons Crucible is better than Loam (and vice versa) but synergy with Standstill is not one of them for me.

[Belgareth]

After doing some significant testing, I'm not entirely convinced the black splash is worth it. Basically, you get Deed (if splashing Green too), which is awesome, but has terrible synergy with Crucible; Engineered Plague, which helps in the Gobs match but you only need because you wrecked your manabase going 4c; and Duress, which is Good vs. other control (which you beat anyway), and Combo (which you can build to beat, if it isn't Solidarity). You sacrifice any kind of reliable manabase for it, and I think in a control deck it's much more important to hit the mana you need when you need it, rather than pack the deck full of powerful cards and not play them because you can't draw a manasource. I'm still unsure as to what colors are the best, but I know it won't be Black.

I agree, all my testing has indicated going 4 colours does not gain you enough to wreck your manabase.
I prefer the UWR landstill variant which is a solid deck and performs well against most of the field but is very dependant on the pilots abilities to make decisions.

[Tacosnape]

What are thoughts on Future Sight's Glittering Wish for UBGW Landstill? You'd almost have to cut back on Wasteland to run it due to colored mana constraints, but I think it could be very powerful.

I was thinking a miniature board (4-5 slots) could be comprised for 2 maindeck Glittering Wishes. Meddling Mage is already a target. Crime//Punishment has long been a 1-of in my deck (Kills Needles on Deed, steals kill conditions), and could be relegated to the board. Loxodon Hierarch could give the deck some much needed lifegain potential. The deck could support a Vindicate.

I thought about Absorb, but then essentially Glittering Wish has "UUGWW: Counter Target Spell", and getting five colored mana symbols is ehh.

That sets a board looking something like:

4 Engineered Plague
4 Meddling Mage
4 Blue Elemental Blast
1 Crime//Punishment
1 Loxodon Hierarch
1 Vindicate

And since we have lifegain with Hierarch, you could probably cut one Blue Elemental Blast for an additional slot. My immediate thought for this slot is Teferi's Moat, which would give 4C Landstill an outside game 1 chance against Goblins. Landstill's plan would be to stall the quick assault, dig for a Wish, drop the Moat, keep SGC off the board, and Deed away all other 4 mana or less Goblins while swinging with recurring Monestaries. It's not a -great- plan, but it's better than the current one.

If anyone has any other ideas for this, I'm all ears.

[jamest]

For more ideas about Glittering Wish, check out the Truffle Shuffle thread. Two cards that could go into the wishboard are Dueling Grounds and Pernicious Deed (to increase the frequency of it).

[Tacosnape]

I like Teferi's Moat here over Dueling Grounds, as my Landstill build rarely has aggro problems that don't have the creature type of Goblin. Dueling Ground tends to die to my Deeds, whereas Moat Survives Deeds of 4 or less.

[Solpugid]

Considering 4c landstill's main negative is the fragile mana base, is it possible to take the wastelands out of the maindeck to include 2 in the sideboard for matchups like thresh? That would keep it from screwing up games against goblins or the like, where it's very sub-par.

[jazzykat]

Has anyone considered a couple of Teferri's Responses in the boad? While highly situational they are quite relevant and the actual card advantage is the same as generated from standstill

[Tacosnape]

Considering 4c landstill's main negative is the fragile mana base, is it possible to take the wastelands out of the maindeck to include 2 in the sideboard for matchups like thresh? That would keep it from screwing up games against goblins or the like, where it's very sub-par.

I've tried it off and on, running 2 Wasteland in board. Right now it's Off and will likely stay that way. There's nothing I'd want to board it in against. At all.

You don't need Wasteland against Threshold. Threshold decks pack enough basics to Survive. Mishra's Factory will handle Nimble Mongoose all day long, and they don't have anything that can swing through a Monestary except Mystic Enforcer. Then it's on them to stop STP, Deed, and Diabolic Edict, all backed up by a deck as many hard counters as they are.

You could board them in against Vial Goblins to stop Rishadan Port, but then you're just weakening your manabase (Or your capacity to deal with threats.) The Plague/Plague/Mage plan is solid enough to handle it.

You could board them in against decks like 43 Land or Loam Control, but it's a futile effort. 43 Land will drop lands faster than you can waste them, and Loam Control has alternate kills and recovers just fine.

It takes a leap of faith to quit using Wasteland, but you'll be amazed how much more efficiently your deck works even without the Wastelock if you can just get your color-producers on the board.

As for the one Wasteland, it's a decent idea. It gives you the Wastelock without being particularly detrimental to your manabase. I actually spent a good amount of time trying to construct a Gifts Ungiven shell (One Wasteland, one Loam, one Darkblast, etc) in place of Fact or Fiction before deciding I just plain liked FoF better.

[Kadaj]

I might be the only person on the planet who still believes this, but I think old-school UW Landstill still has viability in the current metagame. With a properly built manabase (i.e, play enough basics so that port/wasteland doesn't wreck you) it can handle Goblins, maintain a good matchup against threshold through a critical mass of removal, beat other control by out landing them with Eternal Dragon and using Standstill and Crucible to maintain an advantage, and can take advantage of the sideboard to get a better matchup against High Tide and other combo (bring in Stifles/Meddling Mage and any other hate you might have).

Maybe it's not the best options for all the reasons it stopped being played, but frankly I really don't think 4c Landstill is the way to go either. A manabase that fragile causes a ridiculous amount of headaches and Pernicious Deed, as awesome as it is against most aggro, is unlikely to be fast enough against Goblins. Many players agree that 3 color Tog has no chance against goblins because of its clunky manabase, even though it also has access to Deed. I think the same principle applies here.

UWr Landstill might be a better overall option than straight UW, but I doubt 4c Landstill's manabase is worth the trouble it causes.

[Solpugid]

I would run UGB landstill (deed and damnation are available, with plenty of options for the swords slot) or UGW (access to krosan grip, which is better than disenchant, and nantuko monastery as a better finisher) before going UW or UWR.

That said, I've been testing 4c with the wastelands and plains removed for 1 polluted delta, and a scrubland, a savannah, and a bayou. This has made sure I have my support colors, and I also have one more blue source. So far the changes have been great. While I do feel rather odd running 0 basics, a single basic plains wasn't doing much to handle recurring wasteland anyway.

As another note, because I removed the plains the disenchant has become krosan grip (so much better in testing). And for anyone still thinking of using life from the loam over crucible, it's not worth it. Crucible is better.

[Tacosnape]

I might be the only person on the planet who still believes this, but I think old-school UW Landstill still has viability in the current metagame.

I agree. I think it's one of the strongest and most underrated decks around. UW Landstill's all over the Top 8 Page in Europe.

And for anyone still thinking of using life from the loam over crucible, it's not worth it. Crucible is better.

I stand in awe of the incredible logic behind your reasoning.