Top 4 Finish with 4c Landstill @ TDG NJ
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So a few weeks ago I played in a local legacy event winning the while event on a sweet 4c Landstill brew coming home with a time vault. I immediately thought the same deck design could win in vintage. So I tweaked the Mana base to fix moxes, and dropped 3 Brainstorm and added leos, vamp, and recall. Just some minor tweaks. Well 2 days ago I ran the deck at Top Deck Games in NJ to a top 4 finish. It was 36 players 6 rounds of swiss. I swept the Swiss going 5-0-1 (got paired down in round 5 and had to play) not losing a single game. And then I won game 1 of the top 8. So I strung off 11 straight wins which I've never done before and I found really cool.
What makes this list very similar to legacy landstill is the fact that it battles more on the board and less on the stack especially in game 1s. Historically vintage landstill has a heavy counter suite main deck. But I wanted to try fighting very fair on the stack in game 1, but have the opportunity to board in some additional counters and control measures post board. So here's the list, hope you guys enjoy. I would run this same 75 with no changes.
4c Landstill
4 Deathrite Shaman
3 Jace the Mind Sculptor
2 Snapcaster Mage
2 Leovold Emmisary of Trest4 Standstill
1 Brainstorm
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Vampiric Tutor1 Pernicious Deed
1 Toxic Deluge
2 Abrupt Decay
3 Swords to Plowshares4 Force of Will
2 Mana Drain
3 Mental Misstep1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Emerald
3 Polluted Delta
3 Misty Rainforest
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Scrubland
1 Savannah
2 Tropical Island
2 Tundra
1 Underground Sea
1 Swamp
1 Mishras Factory
1 Creeping Tar Pit
1 Treetop Village
2 Wasteland
1 Strip MineSIDEBOARD
2 Mindbreak Trap
1 Flusterstorm
3 Containment Priest
1 Extirpate
2 Null Rod
1 Abrupt Decay
1 Supreme Verdict
1 Ceremonious Rejection
2 Nature's Claim
1 ForestRd 1 Michael Caffery Mirror 2-0 win
Rd 2 Miles Agag TKS Shops 2-0 win
Rd 3 Chris Roepke BUG Gush 2-0 win
Rd 4 Sam Dayton Mentor Gush 2-0 win
Rd 5 Zach Doolings Doomsday Gush 2-0 win
Rd 6 ID
T8 Ryan Glackin Inspector Shops 2-1 win
T4 Dan Miller Paradox Mentor 0-2 lossMy loss in t4 was mulligan to 6 game 1 and his hand was powerful. Mulligan to 5 game 2 which had a misstep and a drain and mana but no Null Rod or Leo. I Drain into JTMS but he was still in pretty firm control and he gets me. Net $125. Had fun playing and seeing friends!!!
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Hey, thanks for sharing.
Why do you want that treetop village over another mishra? I mean, isn't this ETB tapped too bad?
Why do you run 1 basic swamp? -
Treetop started as Factory, then changed to Conclave, then changed to Treetop...basically because this deck is very greedy on needing non blue colored Mana. I know it's odd but I did it when I created landstill oath and I've also done this in legacy.
The Swamp basically ensures I can reliably have Deathrite Shaman off an un-wasteland-able card. Plus Swamp in combination with Forest off the board means Abrupt Decay becomes a reliable card vs Workshop decks.
Hope this made some sense and helped haha
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Walk me through the shift from flash creatures that you were running before, to the deathrite leovold package. What's the thinking there?
Brian Kelly Freudian self-analysis of the day:
I like to express the id that a player would feel without the superego of being like, "oh you have to be nice." -
@Topical_Island said in Top 4 Finish with 4c Landstill @ TDG NJ:
Walk me through the shift from flash creatures that you were running before, to the deathrite leovold package. What's the thinking there?
Can you please elaborate on what you mean from a "shift from flash creatures". Are you speaking of the archetype blue angels that I played like 3 years ago?
The thinking with Deathrite and friends is, Deathrite acts similarly as a piece of fast mana available on turn 2 if he's cast on turn 1. Which makes LEO, JTMS, and other plays like STP + Standstill a sweet play on turn 2.
But basically the inspiration on this list is a direct result of my legacy list which is basically like 53 of this 60. Like I said in the original post, this list breaks the mold of Standstill in vintage. I am not battling on the stack much at all. But bringing my fight to the board.
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Awesome, I love this. So 2009 (yet not), it's great. I didn't realize that was you who posted the list over at TheSource (we talked a bit about it for Legacy).
"The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
—Kaysa, Elder Druid of the Juniper Order -
@H.
Yes that's me, "landstillmaniac" over at the source haha.
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@tattoocek Interesting as always... didn't you run a vintage standstill deck with Queller, and Avacyn not long ago? That's what I was referring to.
Brian Kelly Freudian self-analysis of the day:
I like to express the id that a player would feel without the superego of being like, "oh you have to be nice." -
Oh I forgot about that deck. That wasn't a Standstill deck. It was big blue with a bunch of flash critters haha. Just forgot about that deck.
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@tattoocek should have known, haha. I tried it out for an FNM and it felt great when I could draw something other than land (ended up 2-2). That included a Brainstorm where I drew three lands, put two back, shuffled, the deck was cut, then drew the exact lands I put back, :feelsbadman:
It's probably also than you are simply just a better player than me (pretty sure I never did beat you way back when), so it doesn't surprise me that you would do far better than I could with the same list.
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@tattoocek oh man, that didn't have Standstill in it?
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Hi Josh,
Nice to see you doing well with a build you've spent some time building and tweaking. I see that you've made quite a lot of changes from your EW list (most notably cutting down on the counter suite and adding more Deathrite Shamans and Snapcaster Mages as well as adding the fourth color). Can you elaborate on how you came to these change? Also, how come you cut th Crucible maindeck and the whole Baleful Strix/Pack Rat sideboard package?
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@Griselbrother said in Top 4 Finish with 4c Landstill @ TDG NJ:
Hi Josh,
Nice to see you doing well with a build you've spent some time building and tweaking. I see that you've made quite a lot of changes from your EW list (most notably cutting down on the counter suite and adding more Deathrite Shamans and Snapcaster Mages as well as adding the fourth color). Can you elaborate on how you came to these change? Also, how come you cut th Crucible maindeck and the whole Baleful Strix/Pack Rat sideboard package?
The changes are basically an inspiration from legacy and less my EW deck. In legacy you have to decide to battle broken decks or fair decks and sideboard for the other. So I wanted to do the same in vintage. I'll take my game 1 loss vs storm/paradox for the most part but attempt to beat the other decks in game 1s. Additionally, the worst thing about bug decks in legacy and vintage alike, is they don't have Swords to Plowshares. This is the absolute best cheap removal vs eldrazi and shops (aggro/car variants). The cut in Crucible is mainly because the card just doesn't do enough in the metagame...its bad vs Gush, to slow vs storm, bad vs paradox, bad vs decks with stable Mana bases. It's basically only good vs shops. Which playing 4 colors meant I wanted to skimp on wastes, I valued Deathrite ramping (removing lands from the grave), which all lead me to believe Crucible isn't good here.
Regarding Baleful Strix and Pack Rat...Baleful Strix is only good sticking with straight BUG. Swords is a replacement with access to white. Pack Rat overall is only really really strong when you're late game and have 5 available Mana on board. The card is bad unless you immediately have Mana to use his ability. I never want to cast him and not have Mana up. That just means he'll get revokered, killed, or something. The investment isn't worth it. Actually the deck when I first started testing had 2 JTMS 1 Gideon main deck. I thought about cutting Gideon for Pack Rat, but ultimately decided JTMS #3 was better than the other options!
@Topical_Island the Avacyn Flash deck did not have Standstill.
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Apologies for the double post. But here's the legacy list I won with a few weeks back, which is a spinning image of this vintage list. You can see all the similarities
4 Deathrite Shaman
2 Jace the Mind Sculptor
1 Elspeth Knight Errant
1 Snapcaster Mage4 Standstill
1 Crucible of Worlds
4 Brainstorm1 Engineered Explosives
1 Pernicious Deed
1 Toxic Deluge
1 Supreme Verdict
1 Abrupt Decay
1 Dismember
3 Swords to Plowshares4 Force of Will
2 Counterspell
2 Spell Pierce
2 Spell Snare4 Flooded Strand
3 Polluted Delta
1 Marsh Flats
1 Savannah
1 Scrubland
1 Tropical Island
2 Tundra
2 Underground Sea
1 Swamp
1 Island
1 Plains
3 Mishras Factory
1 Creeping Tar Pit
2 WastelandSIDEBOARD
2 Vendillion Clique
3 Flusterstorm
3 Surgical Extraction
1 Containment Priest
2 Abrupt Decay
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Pithing Needle
1 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
1 WastelandRd 1 0-2 delver
Rd 2 2-1 belcher
Rd 3 2-1 blade
Rd 4 1-1-1 blade
Rd 5 2-0 miraclesT8 2-1 delver
T4 2-0 storm
Finals 2-0 miracles (beating a resolved back to basics and ruination in game 2) -
Dude, double post all you want. I wish you posted much more.
Brian Kelly Freudian self-analysis of the day:
I like to express the id that a player would feel without the superego of being like, "oh you have to be nice." -
To be honest I haven't loved thevery new format of TMD. Maybe I got too used to the old format or maybe there's improvements to be made yet...I post more in the Facebook group "vintage magic the gathering" than I do TMD anymore.
With all that being said I will attempt to post more in here and thank you for the kind words
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Why no Balance?
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"To be honest I haven't loved the very new format of Vintage. Maybe I got too used to the fun format or maybe there's improvements to be made yet that WOTC will never do..."
Fixed that for you.
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@Soly said in Top 4 Finish with 4c Landstill @ TDG NJ:
"To be honest I haven't loved the very new format of Vintage. Maybe I got too used to the fun format or maybe there's improvements to be made yet that WOTC will never do..."
Fixed that for you.
Nope not what I meant at all. I've loved vintage through all phases. Might not like the mentor/gush era we are currently in. But it's still vintage and I still enjoy playing...I was referring to the new layout of THE MANA DRAIN.
@Ten-Ten no Balance because if I have 1 critter in play, Balance doesn't do the job I want it to. Still playable I guess but not as good here
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No room for crucible of worlds in the 75? I would have figured that would be a major selling point of standstill. But given that I can't see anything I would immediately cut for it I will give this list a try for a while.
Good job on the finish.
