[Deck] U/B/g Landstill - Vorosh Control

[Bardo]

U/B/g Landstill - Vorosh Control

(Mods - I looked around for UBg Landstill thread but couldn't find one easily. If this is a duplicate, feel free to merge this where it should go.)

As soon as I saw the Planar Chaos spoiler, I knew I had to find a cool home for Vorosh, the Hunter who happens to be in my favorite or second favorite color combination in MtG. I started with a shabby casual aggro-control shell that used AKs, Vinelasher Kudzu, Intuition and things like that, but the part of me that likes to build cutthroat decks soon changed the course of development.

Sadly, one of the first cards to get cut was the awesome Vorosh. If the colors permit, he'd make a fine bomb in Limited, but a six mana flying 6/6 with a dubious special ability is not exactly of tournament caliber in Legacy. I experimented with a few shells, but eventually settled on a hybrid of BHWC Landstill and my Tog deck.

Here are the cards I used:

The Draw
4 Brainstorm
4 Standstill
2 Fact or Fiction

Four Brainstorms, is, um, a no-Brainer. As is a set of Standstill, since I ended up with a Landstill variant. Even if you have nothing menacing on the board, it's often safe to just throw a Standstill out there. Most opponents will likely break it, and, technically, you don't need to cast any spells to win the game. Fact is just a great card to dig for something you need or just to refill your hand. Though Gifts Ungiven is something deserving consideration, but that will require some additional tweaks to the deck.

Countermagic

4 Force of Will
4 Counterspell
2 Stifle

Nothing surprising here. Stifle is just a swiss-army knife life effect and can be used in conjunction with Wasteland to mana screw your opponent.

Board Control

3 Pernicious Deed
3 Vedalken Shackles
2 Smother
1 Naturalize
1 Putrefy

This package needs the most amount of work. Damnation might substitute for Deed, but then you're dealing with a whole other deck, since Deed is really the main reason this deck is running Green in the first place. You can also max the Deeds by tweaking other card counts, but I'll get to that shortly.

Vedalken Shackles, while slow, are also unbelieably nuts. It's just a mean and filthy card against most decks that run critters, especially mid-range kinds of things like Angel Stompy and Threshold. Against Goblins, they are on the slow side and aren't meant to be the first line of defense.

Smother, Purefy and Naturalize just round out the package to diversify your removal and give you quicker access to it than Deed. Naturalize is for Needle, but also good against opposing Crucibles, Factories, and all of Affinity. Putrefy is fine and I'm testing one, but it's on a list of cards that might get cut. The flexibility is nice, but being at 3cc means it will probably be the only spell you cast in a turn.

Yesterday I would have lost a game against Affinity if I was only running 3cc answers. The situation arose where I needed to Naturalize a Ravager and then Smother the Nexus that my opponent activated to move the modular counters when I only had four land up. I'm not sure if the rarity of this kind of situation warrants the theoretical narrowness of Naturalize, but there you go.

The Toys

3 Chalice of the Void
2 Crucible of Worlds
1 Engineered Explosives

Since I'm only running six 1cc spells (4 Brainstorm and 2 Stifle), Chalice is a sexy card to run in this deck. The Brainstorms increase the chance of having it in hand. At 2, it's crushing against B/W Confidant, a rout for Threshold at 1, etc. Deed + Chalice poses a problem, but one that I've partially alleviated with Academy Ruins. Ruins is also the reason I'm running the singleton Explosives. Ruins + EE = Huge Smiles. Crucible is there, because it is (Wasteland and for long-term mana superiority by regrowing spent fetchlands, manlands, etc.).

Colored Mana

4 Underground Sea
4 Tropical Island
3 Flooded Strand
3 Polluted Delta
1 Island

Fifteen colored sources provide the following:

U 15
G 10
B 10

This is another advantage of running Deed instead of Damnation, since the deck only needs UUBG to function, not having any spell with double of any particular color than blue. I'd like to squeeze in more basics, but this has been fine for now. Going to three each of Sea and Trop to add another Delta and Strand isn't a terrible idea, but not necessary yet.

Winning and Stuff

4 Mishra's Factory
3 Wasteland
1 Faerie Conclave
1 Academy Ruins

The deck can probably just win with the Factories, but it's nice to have the lone Conclave if I'm having a problem finding one. Ruins used to be a Treetop Village, but is awesome in recurring artifacts that may have died from a Deed activation or from other unnatural causes. And three Wasteland seems to be all that I can squeeze in.

The result...

Vorosh Control
by Bardo

4 Brainstorm
4 Standstill
2 Fact or Fiction

4 Force of Will
4 Counterspell
2 Stifle

3 Pernicious Deed
3 Vedalken Shackles
2 Smother
1 Naturalize
1 Putrefy

3 Chalice of the Void
2 Crucible of Worlds
1 Engineered Explosives

4 Underground Sea
4 Tropical Island
3 Flooded Strand
3 Polluted Delta
4 Mishra's Factory
3 Wasteland
1 Faerie Conclave
1 Academy Ruins
1 Island

Sideboard
4 Engineered Plague
4 Vinelasher Kudzu
4 Duress
2 Hydroblast
1 Chalice of the Void

I retained Vorosh in the name, since it's a flavorful way of describing the U/B/G color combination. I've enjoyed playing the 4-c Landstill deck, but I found the mana requirements dangerously fickle, with a misuse of a fetchland often leading to a game loss. That was basically the challenge: retool BHWC Landstill to the point where I would feel comfortable playing it in a tournament. To do this, I wanted to simplify the UUWBG operating requirements.

White gives BWHC Landstill StP, Meddling Mage and Nantuko Monastery. Since I wanted to run Chalice for the combo, Thresh and Burn matches, it made sense drop StP and replace it with Smother who can nail a Confidant or Hyppie, unlike Ghastly Demise. Vinelasher Kudzu (or Phyrexian Negators) replaced Meddling Mage in the sideboard for the combo match. I figured the deck will have enough disruption post-board (4 FoW, 4 Counterspell, 4 Duress, 4 Chalice), but I need a good clock to end the game and Vinelasher (supported by the deck's heavy mana load) fits the bill well. The other thing about Kudzu is that you can grow it without devoting any resources to it (unlike Dryad)--you just need to keep making your land drops (fetchland activations are +2/+2) and can keep your mana open for Counterspell, etc.

Negator is awesome too, but with ETW appearing in more combo lists, I'm not sure how hot of that is these days.

Testing

The list above is pretty crude. I've only played two dozen games with it (all pre-board) and have yet to test against Thresh, Goblins, etc. That's why it's in the Development forum. So far, I've gone 6-1 vs. Affinity, 4-0 vs. my MBC deck, 3-0 vs. WW and beaten some random stuff on MWSPlay.

So, yeah, it's good enough to warrant more testing, but I'm not sure exactly how good it is. It is a fun deck though; Shackles, Deed and Chalice of the Void are sweet as hell.

Sideboarding

Some rough ideas...

Vs. Goblins
+4 Engineered Plague
+2 Hydroblast
-3 Chalice of the Void
-2 Naturalize (Vial?)
-1 Engineered Explosives

Vs. Threshold
+3 Duress
+1 Chalice of the Void
-2 Naturalize (maybe keep in for Needle?)
-2 Stifle

Vs. IGGy Pop & High Tide
+4 Duress
+4 Vinelasher Kudzu
+1 Chalice of the Void
-3 Pernicious Deed
-3 Vedalken Shackles
-2 Smother
-1 Engineered Explosives

Vs. B/W Confidant
+4 Duress
-2 Fact or Fiction (too expensive)
-2 Stifle (?)

What do you think?

[Whit3 Ghost]

Shackles is interesting tech.

I'd like to see 1x Damnation in here, because every now and then you just want to make some things explode and Deed just can't do it.

Why Naturalize over Krosan Grip? It seems so much better because if you only have 2x maindeck answers to needle and if one is countered, you need to dig deep to grab it.

Smother is nice, but i've ran into stupid situations with it where it sat dead (killing Siege Gangs, Ringleaders and random large threats like Angel or Enforcer).

[URABAHN]

Why are you running Vedalken Shackles, Crucible of Worlds, Chalice of the Void, Engineered Explosives, and Pernicious Deed? I realize you can scale Deed back to 0, 1, or 2, but then you kill your Chalices and Explosives. Also, what's with the lone Academy Ruins? Bring back Engineered Explosives?

[iOWN]

Also, what's with the lone Academy Ruins? Bring back Engineered Explosives?

That, and to bring back all the artifacts you just blew up with Pernicious Deed. ;)

I agree that Krosan Grip should be in place of Naturalize, just to make things easier versus Jitte and Survival of the Fittest.

This may be a completely retarded suggestion, but could Artificer's Intuition fit in here somehow? It's mana hungry, slow, and recquires active play, but seems to blend with the Ruins/little artifact thing going on. Lastly, Life from the Loam seems like a decent choice either as an alternative to or in conjunction with Crucible. It would help get threats into your graveyard to move the game slightly faster, and let Ruins set up the artifacts you need. The only flaw I see with it is the disadvantage it would cause by either skipping draw or eating up a cantrip (and the antisynergy with early Wasteland/Loam/Counterspell, where another free counter might be worth considering).

[Bardo]

Re: Naturalize. It's hard enough to swallow at 1G; at 2G it's almost getting pushed out of maindeck playability. Split Second is swell and all, but if all of the removal cost three, this deck is pure ass. That's why you need to make some compromises; e.g. Smother--sure, you can't kill Enforcer or SGC, but it will like 85-90% of the things you'll likely see.

@ Urabahn - I realize it looks like shit on paper, but it's been working great in testing. It's good to consider synergies in the abstract, but you can't dismiss it out of hand. Like Flores/Brian Kowal's "This Girl" that Mike used to win NY Champs that ran 16 creatures and 4 maindeck Wraths. I'm sure a lot of people griped on the poor synergy, but the deck slogged through eleven rounds to take first place. Wrath is/was really good in Standard, Deed is great in Legacy--especially against randomness, which is like 50% of most tournaments.

As for Academy Ruins, that's the card that addresses the problem (synergy). If you nuke your Chalice or Shackles, you just regrow them with Ruins. And yeah, EE + Ruins is a sweet mini-combo in itself.

Re: Life from the Loam. Really, then I'm back to square one and would probaby just play Loam/Tog instead. The point was to find a cheaper way to win with a recurring damage source (Manlands/Crucible) than Genesis/Tog.

[overlord95]

@bardo: How have you goblins game been so far? It looks a little shacky with only 6 answers to first turn Lackey(4 Force and I guess 2 stifle), and 7 additional answers on the play(2 Smother, 1 EE, and 4 Factories(In my experience this guy never successfully stops Lackey)).

[Bardo]

I haven't tested the Goblins match-up yet, and yeah, it looks really bad. :) The deck may need to be retooled (U/R with Pyroclasm, or maybe U/R/b, etc.)

[noobslayer]

Goblins might be better if you board in the Kudzu's; just to have another guy. The same idea was used by Pikula, where he'd board in wretch vs. aggro decks to get another guy into the mix.

[Mirrislegend]

While I've always believed Shackles to be a potentially powerful card, it's never performed for me: it's always at least 2 turns too slow. However, the sheer ridiculousness of it, solely in theory, says that it does have a place in this deck. I'd go -1 Shackles, +1 Deed.

Also, shift Chalice to the SB, where it belongs (distinct lack of Ancient Tomb/City of Traitors/Crystal Vein ftw) and replace them with 3 Duress. It's not going to affect you're Gobbos game at all, and improves just about every other matchup better than a slow-to-come-down Chalice.

[Bardo]

Also, shift Chalice to the SB, where it belongs (distinct lack of Ancient Tomb/City of Traitors/Crystal Vein ftw) and replace them with 3 Duress. It's not going to affect you're Gobbos game at all, and improves just about every other matchup better than a slow-to-come-down Chalice.

From experience, maindeck Chalice has been fucking nuts.

Testing last night on MWS:

Game 1 vs. B/W Confidant: Turn 2 I let Bob resolve, Turn 3 Shackles; Turn 4 Chalice = 2; Turn 5: <system> Player Lost.

Game 2 vs. Mono-Red Burn: I Force a Blood Moon and get a Chalice for 1 onto the board; win with Factories; after the game, my opponent reveals a hand of 6 1cc spells.

Game 3 vs. R/G Beatz: This game is all about Shackles and Chalice again (this time with 1 counter) after I Smother a guy with Rancor on the stack. GG.

3-0 last night.

I love this deck.

[Di]

Not to nitpick on your anti-combo package, but do you ever find issues with Chalice, Duress, and Stifle? It'd seem like you'd have problems if you get an early Chalice for 1 down, because it effectively removes half of your hate cards from the game.

[Ta Jugs]

When you said vorosh control I thought you were actually being awesome and playing him. But I was WRONG, WRONG!!!

[Aggro_zombies]

When you said vorosh control I thought you were actually being awesome and playing him. But I was WRONG, WRONG!!!

QFT. I was about to award you major style points there for making him work in a good Legacy deck (something I, too, have wanted to do). But you bring my hopes up only to smash them down. Meany.

Why no Damnation? It seems like an auto-include in this deck, especially since you're saying the Goblins matchup could be bad. Deed is nice and all but it has a savage lack of synergy with E. Plague, which you want to keep in play to keep their guys out of play. A better choice would be to board out Deeds games two and three for either some Infest or some Damnation to act as a "mop-up" card that compliments your biological weapons. Damnation is also good against random aggro, although Pernicious Deed is also good against Stompy-type decks as well, so that one's a personal call.

[Radley]

Why are you running Vedalken Shackles, Crucible of Worlds, Chalice of the Void, Engineered Explosives, and Pernicious Deed? I realize you can scale Deed back to 0, 1, or 2, but then you kill your Chalices and Explosives. Also, what's with the lone Academy Ruins? Bring back Engineered Explosives?

I guess this is a suicide variant. But instead of using phyrexian negator and stuffs he kills his permanents.

damnation will be better than a perniciuos deed because you kill all creatures at once. if you want, drop chalice and run damnation and pernicious deed.

[Bardo]

When you said vorosh control I thought you were actually being awesome and playing him.

Yeah, six-mana flyers for 3UBG aren't exactly tournament worthy in Legacy--sorry to burst your bubble. At least I retained the awesomeness of Vorosh in the deck's name, which is still UBG.

Not to nitpick on your anti-combo package, but do you ever find issues with Chalice, Duress, and Stifle? It'd seem like you'd have problems if you get an early Chalice for 1 down, because it effectively removes half of your hate cards from the game.

Well, you'll often be setting your Chalice to 1 vs. combo, but not always. Like you might want to drop a Chalice for 0 against Golden Grahams (to turn off LED recursion) or 2 against IGGy Pop (IT, Echoing Truth, Cabal Ritual) or 0 (LED, Petal). Chalice=2 against Tide is also sweet (Impulse, Remand, Reset, Brain Freeze, Twincast, etc.); so it often won't get in the way of your 1 cc spells. But it also helps that Chalice=1 costs 2, so you can conceivably go turn 1 Duress, turn 2 Chalice.

Re: Stifle. If your opponent bounces your Chalice on 1 and spends a lot of resources doing so, you'll have your Stifle waiting. Anyway the scenario will usually be worse on paper than in real games. And with Wasteland being part of the game, it's not a bad to burn a turn 1 (pre-Chalice) Stifle on an opposing fetchland anyway.

[xsockmonkeyx]

Here is a UBG Landstill thread from a couple of months ago. Appearantly the BHWC has already been down this road once or twice. You might find some inspiration somewhere in all that jank.

[Bardo]

Here is a UBG Landstill thread from a couple of months ago. Appearantly the BHWC has already been down this road once or twice. You might find some inspiration somewhere in all that jank.

Cool. I think the only thing I'll try is 2x Life from the Loam in place of the Crucibles. Right now, the Crucibles are the only thing I've had to proxy (they're Ornithopters in my IRL deck), which is kinda fuggly, and trading for them on MOTL has been a bitch.

Tacosnape's arguing was kinda compelling. The only thing I disagree with, was the mana comitment. Like once Crucible is down, you pretty much never need to worry about it again--it regrows your stuff for free. LFTL, on the other hand, is far more mana-intensive, though more resilient (like it won't get blown up by the Deeds). I'll give LFTL a shot later tonight.

[xsockmonkeyx]

Bah, wait until 10th Edition comes out. There will be an initial rush and then a crash in the market for Crucibles.

The Eternal Witness idea is kind of interesting but hard to support at double green.

[Bardo]

The Eternal Witness idea is kind of interesting but hard to support at double green.

Yeah, the point of my resign of BHWC Landstill was to simplify the operating mana requirements. For now, BB and GG spells are out--though UU is fine. Since the deck has numerous colorless sources, I wanted to make the deck run on UUGB with some colorless control cards to also increase stability, hence Chalice and Shackles. Shackles requires Islands, but it doesn't need many and it doesn't need to be played off those Islands.

Also, an update on my Crucible -> Life from the Loam swap. I'm not liking it. I played some games last night and realized what makes Crucible swell: it's a spell-like ability without being a spell (re: Standstill). This is also what's good about Shackles and Crucible again (same with Deed, to a lesser extent): they all let you do things and use "spell-like" effects without breaking Standstill.

And LFTL and Standstill do not play nicely together. But I've got my deck with me today and am testing some IRL games with a buddy this afternoon. I'll keep the LFTLs in the deck until after those games.

Oh, and my last swap from last night: 2 Stifle -> 2 Spell Snare. I need to keep testing that one and see what works better.

[xsockmonkeyx]

So, Bardo, what did you decide about spell snare/stifle? Personally I think Stifle has better applications and gives you a more diverse range of answers.