Originally Posted by TheInfamousBearAssassin
I'm actually right there with you on this one. I built a UR Standstill deck as like my second Legacy deck, and despite the thing being janky as hell (the dreaded Disk/Capsize combo) I didn't run Crucible, and never really felt the need to. I mean, are you ever actually going to run out of threats? I guess the recurring blocker is nice, but how often is that relevant? More often than a sweeper or draw spell or threat would be?
And I certainly never wanted wasteland. The card advantage this deck runs is about the best in Legacy. Why do you need a late game mana denial theme?
Anyway, I'm certainly no Landstill expert, so feel free to take the comments with a grain of salt.
I never understood why we ran Wasteland in the first place. I cut it my UWR from Landstill about the time Legacy was invented, and I certainly won't ever run it in UGBW.
I also think I agree with IBA, at least partly, about the point of Crucible needing an inclusion at all. The downfall here is that it means you now need an alternate kill condition, as it makes focusing all their efforts in removing your threats a viable strategy once again.
I currently have cut down to 1 Life from the Loam (Getting two sucked, but merely having one in the deck partly negates the effectiveness of trying to kill all my threats unless I somehow never draw it until the last few cards.) I have no idea what to board in for it, though. If Flash stays it'll be the 4th Stifle, but I'm not sure what beyond that.
I'm tempted to try a single Shackles, as a lot of people seem to be doing well with it. Any thoughts? My main problem with it is that it dies to deed like everything else, though.
how often do you have to deed for 3 or more when you have a shackles in play? Seems like goblins is the only deck thats gonna play multiple high CC threats, and while goblins is obviously a concern, I would think that saving your shackles until after you've played a board clearer would probably be enough to slow them down, especially if you can counter ringleaders.
I think if I were to cut Crucible altogether, I'd cut Manlands as well and just focus the deck into a typical U/W control. There would seem to be no reason running a creature land that, if hit with removal, costs me a land. At least with Crucible, if they nail your attacker, you just replay it the same turn and keep going. Most of their removal outside of StP becomes useless, as does Wasteland.
I haven't been a fan of Wasteland, being that it's symmetrical and in a control deck you don't want to be nuking your own lands for the sake of tempo. What I don't mind is completely locking my opponent out of the game with, say, Cabal Pit. While it may seem like a tactic that is win more, if I don't have a win condition yet, then I'm not in a 'win' situation to begin with. Therefore, Cabal Pit recursion lets me stall out my opponent until I find one and win. Maybe I just like Crucible too much, but I've never felt disgusted at it when I've played with it.
But if you're saying out with Crucible, then I'd fix the mana base and run something like Tron in Extended with Decrees and Exalteds to finish the game.
I run Deed alongside Shackles and I don't think it's ever come up that I've blown up my own permanents. I know it sounds odd in the abstract, but I've tested dozens (hundreds?) of games with Landstill and it's never once been a problem--not that I can recall, anyhow.how often do you have to deed for 3 or more when you have a shackles in play?
Re: Wasteland. Hmm. I rather agree. The format has adjusted to Waste-lock and it pretty much never happens, except in the mirror; owing to the speed of the format, and decks adjusting to Goblins (Wasteland/Port). Also, yeah, Landstill is definitely not gaining any tempo boost with Wasteland, since the deck is so glacially slow to win.
Re: Crucible. I find the thing to be a game-winner in many matches. Let's just ignore Wasteland for the moment (though Crucible is the most important card in the mirror, for what that might be worth), but it's golden in regrowing manlands, Maze, spent fetchlands, etc.
My current list:
"Vorosh Control"
by Bardo
4 Brainstorm
4 Standstill
4 Force of Will
4 Counterspell
4 Spell Snare
3 Chalice of the Void
3 Vedalken Shackles
3 Pernicious Deed
3 Crucible of Worlds
1 Engineered Explosives
4 Mishra's Factory
3 Wasteland
3 Polluted Delta
3 Flooded Strand
3 Underground Sea
2 Tropical Island
4 Island
1 Academy Ruins
1 Tolaria West
1 Faerie Conclave
1 Maze of Ith
1 Tabernacle of Pendrall Vale
Sideboard
4 Leyline of the Void
4 Engineered Plague
4 Duress
2 Massacre
1 Chalice of the Void
While there seems to be a lot of anti-synergy going on here (anti-ergy?), I was focusing on maximizing the number of powerful cards the deck was running and adopted a "screw synergy" approach that has paid off.
IBA has also mentioned running Haunting Echoes and Grave-Shell Scarab which I plan to eventually test.
You can see a lot of my notes on this version of Landstill on my TMD blog (posts #19 - 23).
Edit - Cabal Pit is a cool idea; I hadn't though of it. I would suggest testing Tabernacle and/or Maze of Ith, to see if that works better. Tabernacle is such a freaking ball-breaker in this deck.
Tabernacle is amazing. Alongside maze of ith, you any aggro player's nuts in a vise. Do you find that tolaria west is good at doing what it does - namely, functioning as an extra tutor for explosives, maze, chalice and tabernacle? The fact that it is a sorcrey kind of bothers me, and I don't think I'd use it to search up a chalice as you usually want a chalice to come down before turn 4-5.
Re: Tolaria West. It seems so freakishly awesome, sorta. I've used it a few times (mainly for Tabernacle, EE [once], Wasteland [once] and Maze [once]). Conditional, three-mana sorcery-speed tutors are kinda crap, but I like that it works under Standstill. In the worst case, it's just a really bad Island.
In short, I intend to keep testing it and will see if it needs to go; but I've been really pleased with it so far and haven't felt the need to pull the plug on it. It's here to stay for the time being.
The fact that Chalice or EE will come down no earlier than turns 4-5 with it hasn't been a problem that I can't live with; since it's so good when it does come down--esp. if you can recur EE with Ruins, or if Chalice will just win the game for you (@1 vs. Thresh; @2 vs. Fish, B/W, etc.)
Last edited by Bardo; 05-29-2007 at 07:01 PM.
If anyone really doesn't want to give up the Crucible/Waste plan, you could always stick it in the board.
I'm fine with dropping waste, but I'd like to keep crucible in, for reasons mentioned above. If my factories or mazes get blown up, i'm in the shitter and need a way to recur them.
crucible/manland is what makes the archetype. How the hell are you going to abuse standstill without land-based win conditions? The answer is that you aren't, so you're going to replace standstill with something else, and then you aren't playing any of the cards that make the archetype what it is.
what's with all this talk about dropping crucible?
obviously someone has overlooked the card's effect!
basically you have recurrable threats/lock peices/mana producents.
crucibe allows you to thin your deck out, have infi chump blockers, and sometimes take advantage of weak mana bases (thresh, fish, and others).
and what is with the talk of all the utility lands going around (tabernacle & maze of ith).. we have board sweepers, and without crucible those cards would be far from optimal anyways.
I say keep crucible and don't add such rediculous lands to the deck... that's just me though; you guys can go ahead and weaken your builds all you want.
So you're running Tabernacle, a bad non-mana producing land that's competing with several colored lands and your win conditions in order to play a card that you can't back up effectively with any sort of mana denial? Seems like a pretty stupid idea to me.
Maze of Ith is a worse idea. The whole point of running Maze is this: It keeps people from swinging in with single creatures and forces them to drop multiple creatures that you can then sweep. Why is this a bad idea? Because Mishra's Factory does the same exact fucking thing. And it's a kill condition! I'll pick Mishra's Factory.
And why exactly would you want to tutor for any of those cards you listed, outside of maybe Engineered Explosives if you aren't running Black-Green? They're all awful.
Landstill has no business running lands that don't A. Produce Blue Mana, or B. Kill people.
Here you make a very solid point. This is why I keep a single Loam in my deck. Inevitability. You can blow up my threats all you want, I'll Loam them back. And it's harder to blow up my Loam than it is to blow up my Crucible.
Partly right, Partly wrong.
Manlands are what make the archetype. Not Crucible/Manland. The theory is that if you drop a Standstill on a clear board and you run more manlands in your deck than your opponent does, they have to break the Standstill in order to win.
Crucible doesn't give you any sort of edge in this battle, even in the mirror, just by being in your deck. It has to be in play. The manlands give you this edge just by being in your deck. All Crucible does for your Standstills is provide a relatively ineffective tool to allow your graveyard to count as your library in this edge.
A. I haven't run tabernacle in Landstill yet. I was commenting on it in general.
B. I am thinking of running maze of ith. If we are dropping 3-4 wastelands, I'd like to test cards to put there in it's stead.
C. I am not running Tolaria, just asking how it works. I personally won't run it for the fact that I'd rather not tap out on my turn to cast a sorcery which is iffy
D. I am running (currently) U/g/b.
I agree with freakaccident. Crucible does a lot for the deck in getting lands, recurring blockers, and wastelock is sometimes important. I would consider cutting wasteland for more colored sources though.
A. Don't start.
B. The entire point of us cutting Wasteland is so we can run more Duals/Fetches/Basics to shore up inconsistent manabase problems.
C. Very good call.
I pretty much agree with this. Landstill needs some kind of plan if all of its lands get blown up, whether it's recursion or some sort of alternate kill like Decree of Justice, though with Empty The Warrens seeing a lot more play lately I can't fathom DoJ being a great idea. I still prefer Loam here in green builds, especially if we're not trying to abuse Wasteland with Crucible and solidifying our color structure. To me, Wastelock was the only good argument to run Crucible over Loam.
To illustrate the Loam point, my current maindeck is as follows:
4 Tundra
4 Tropical Island
4 Underground Sea
3 Flooded Strand
2 Polluted Delta
4 Mishra's Factory
3 Nantuko Monestary
4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Diabolic Edict
4 Pernicious Deed
1 Crime // Punishment
4 Force of Will
4 Counterspell
4 Stifle
4 Brainstorm
4 Standstill
3 Fact or Fiction
1 Life From The Loam
The deck is very balanced. The single Loam gives me the inevitability I need to come back from having all my manlands destroyed, and the Crime // Punishment not only acts as a board sweeper but also can steal my opponent's kill conditions, sometimes in ways that win you games you couldn't win otherwise (Such as casting Crime on a Genesis.)
My manabase runs manlands and color producers and that's it. It's incredibly consistent.
I have 12 creature removal spells. I have 12 true card advantage generators. I have 12 hard counters. I have 17 ways to hit blue mana and 9 to hit each of the other colors, not counting Brainstorm and Standstill for digging. With my sideboard, I'm prepared for almost every situation any metagame can throw at me. I do fluctuate a lot between the 4th Stifle and the 4th Edict, as well as between the 4th Tropical and a 3rd Delta, and a lot depends on my metagame.
Recently one of my team members piloted this deck in a Flash-legal tournament where I was piloting Goblins (stupidly, I might add.) During that tournament, he went 4-1 counting the top 4. He started out 3-0 beating Threshold, Kiki-Flash, and me with Goblins. Then he lost horribly to Paint It Black piloted by another of our teammates, only to beat it in an immediate rematch in the top 4. He then traded the win for the prize and some other cards to the Kiki-Flash he'd just trounced earlier.
The point is, the deck's incredibly versatile and fears very few matchups.
I have been playing the list Anti-american has been using back on page 4. I've noticed a few things.
Counter/Top is freakin awesome. Even without Top the card randomly counters things. Together, your opponent never resolves another spell. Top + Fetches is really good too.
Wasteland is really crappy. I never considered playing it. Wasteland doesn't beatdown or produce Blue. It sucks in Landstill.
Crucible has been really good as it allows you to hit your land drops every turn which has been important in activating multiple manlands a turn. It recurs your kill conditions. It protects you from manascrew. I love it.
One thing I've noticed is that I never have anything to do with my Wishes. I've never needed 2+ Enchantment killers. I dropped the Ray of Revelation for Pulse of the Fields. Most of the games I have lost were because of random burn topdecks or just one unanswered guy. Pulse of the Fields would have saved me many times.
"We are goblinkind, heirs to the mountain empires of chieftains past. Rest is death to us, and arson is our call to war."
Hey Anarky , im likeing your list for UWb Landstill ALOT ( Havent lost a game yet), but im wondering if u have upadted the list at all and what are u gonna change with the sidebaord after the banning of flash(hopefully)?
I'm glad you like it and its been working out fantastically. I haven't made any dramatic changes to the deck. The only change I've made is -1 Sea for +1 Scrubland. Sometimes when I was fetching I'd want W for StP/Wrath/Something, but also need B for my Pit, and so a Scrub took a Seas place.
As for the SB, I'm not quite sure at the moment. I don't think all the combo hate in there will be needed, but I'd like to keep some. I was talking with a few other people in my area and I'd like to fit 2-3 Extirpates in the SB for the mirror. So essentially
-Current SB-
4 Leyline
4 Plague
4 Mage
3 Duress
-Post Flash Banning SB-
4 Leyline
4 Mage
4 Plague
3 Extirpate
Leyline just seems pretty powerful against a lot like Iggy-Pop, Thresh (but you should beat them anyway), LftL style decks, any GY based stuff really. I don't know, I'll probably tinker around with it a lot, but I feel the MD is pretty solid right now. Thanks for the interest and I'm glad you like my build.
Edit: Also, back on my original list, I have 3 Islands in the deck, not 2. I apparently missed one when I was copying the list.
Ah i see i jus added another Sea I made a few changes
In
1x Engineered Explosives
1x Somethign else cant figure out ( its Late )
Out
1x Vindicate
1x Disenchant ( Seemed random as a 1-Of )
And is Leyline really nescessary because the decks u side it in against are already good matchups ( Idk about loam ) but i really dont think its worth a Sb slot , please correct me if im wrong. I'd pefer some more creature kill because it helps ur worst matchups, fast aggro.
P.s Cabal Pit is Hawt ; - D
Yeah, I'm sure Disenchant will become something else eventually, as of yet I don't know what, and so I like having it. Leyline might be overkill, but so far I've liked having it in my SB. Without Flash, it may not be necessary, but if people are going to start trying to break Replenish, I might want it to stay. I haven't had too much trouble with other fast aggro decks. Being as the area I live in is pretty janky, I see a lot of mindless aggro decks besides Goblins and I've yet to experience problems. But the SB is very customizeable, so try out what solves your problems the best and roll with it.
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