Welcome back to another edition of Forcing the Will. Today I will be covering a deck I mention in my last article known as Landstill. I have provided different decklists as well as a video decktech along with a complete set of videos from a Legacy Daily event. Before I go into the Landstill deck, let’s take a look at the current meta and break it down. First of all we have the Top 10 decks being played in Legacy.
Top 10 decks played in Legacy
1. Goblins
2. Death and Taxes (DnT)
3. Zoo
4. Countertop
5. Reanimator
6. Ad Nauseam Storm
7. Landstill
8. Dredge
9. Merfolk
10. Enchantress
Looking at the Top 10 list we notice that once again that Goblins is still in the number one spot along with Death and Taxes holding the number two spot. Comparing this list to the previous Top 10 we notice that Enchantress has its way snuck in, but the remainder of the decks are basically the same. The Top 3 slots are all Aggro decks followed by the usual Control and Combo decks, but how did these deck perform in events? That’s what we’ll look into next. Here we have all the winning deck from 5/17/2010 to 5/29/2010.
(4-0) Ad Nauseam Storm (ANT)
(3-1) UBG Landstill
(3-1) Death and Taxes (DnT)
(3-1) Death and Taxes (DnT)
(3-1) Rock
(4-0) Ad Nauseam Storm (ANT)
(3-1) Death and Taxes (DnT)
(3-1) Goblins
(3-1) Red Deck Wins (RDW)
(3-1) Zoo
(4-0) Zoo
(3-1) Death and Taxes (DnT)
(3-1) Death and Taxes (DnT)
(3-1) Merfolk (green splash)
(3-1) Baseruption
(3-1) Death and Taxes (DnT)
(3-1) Enchantress
(3-1) Astral Slide
(4-0) Bant Control
(3-1) Astral Slide
(3-1) Merfolk (green splash)
(3-1) Death and Taxes (DnT) (green splash)
(3-1) Zoo
(3-1) Enchantress
(4-0) Red Deck Wins (RDW)
(3-1) Zoo
(3-1) Thopter/Counterbalance
(3-1) Goblins (green splash)
(3-1) Zoo
(3-1) UBG Lanstill
(3-1) UBWG Landstill
(4-0) Merfolk
(3-1) Enchantress
(3-1) Zoo
(3-1) Thopter/Counterbalance
(3-1) Death and Taxes (DnT)
(3-1) Death and Taxes (DnT)
(3-1) Ad Nauseam Storm (ANT)
(4-0) Merfolk
(3-1) Dredge
(3-1) Show and Tell
(3-1) Reanimator
(3-1) UWRG Landstill – Planeswalkers
(3-1) Merfolk
(3-1) UBG Landstill
(3-1) Reanimator
(3-1) Ad Nauseam Storm (ANT)
(4-0) UBW Landstill – Planeswalkers
(3-1) UWRG Landstill – Planeswalkers
(3-1) Reanimator
(3-1) Reanimator
(3-1) UBG Landstill
(4-0) Zoo
(3-1) Reanimate
(3-1) Death and Taxes (DnT) (green splash)
(3-1) Deadguy Ale
(3-1) UWRG Lanstill – Planeswalkers
Let’s take this data and plug it into a table to make it easier to see the performance of these decks in the current meta.
Top winning Legacy Decks
| Deck | Wins | Percentage of Wins |
| 1. Death and Taxes (DnT) | 10 | 17.54% |
| 2. Landstill | 9 | 15.78% |
| 3. Zoo | 7 | 12.28% |
| 4. Merfolk | 5 | 8.77% |
| 5. Reanimator | 5 | 8.77% |
| 6. Ad Nauseam Storm (ANT) | 4 | 7.02% |
| 7. Enchantress | 3 | 5.26% |
| 8. Red Deck Wins (RDW) | 2 | 3.51% |
| 9. Thopter/Countertop | 2 | 3.51% |
| 10. Astral Slide | 2 | 3.51% |
| 11. Goblins | 2 | 3.51% |
| 12. Rock | 1 | 1.75% |
| 13. Baseruption | 1 | 1.75% |
| 14. Bant Control | 1 | 1.75% |
| 15. Show and Tell | 1 | 1.75% |
| 16. Deadguy Ale | 1 | 1.75% |
| 17. Dredge | 1 | 1.75% |
| Total Decks: | 57 |
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Looking through the Top 3 spots we see two Aggro decks and one Control deck. It shouldn’t come to any surprise that Aggro has taken up the majority of the winning decks. Is it because the deck is the best to option out there? No, it doesn’t. Take a minute to go back and look at the Top 10 decks in the meta. See how the Top 3 most played deck are Aggro that means that there’s a superior amount of these deck running around tournaments compared to other decks. I am by no means saying the decks aren’t good, but rather saying if you have a field with mostly Aggro having Aggro win a lot doesn’t make it the best deck. Death and Taxes is in the number one spot for overall wins this week compared to the number two spot last time. I expect this to be the case until the format becomes saturated with Combo/Landstill decks, but this might not ever happen. Aggro decks are relatively cheap compared to their Combo/Control brothers, and they still win. If a player has been having great success with a decktype there shouldn’t be any reason to stop playing it until it’s no longer successful.
In the #2 spot we see Landstill, which is down one spot from last time. This is a bit surprising to me since Landstill has been played slightly more lately. I think Landstill is one of the best decks we have online for Legacy at the moment, but I’ll go over that more later.
Zoo has picked up a bit of momentum and is starting to get more wins. One card that has been helping out Zoo as well as the Red Deck Wins is Price of Progress. This card can singlehandedly win games against a Control deck without any counters or any other Aggro/Control/Combo deck that runs nonbasic lands. If you plan on running any Red deck with some basic lands definiatly throw in some Price to Progress even if it’s just in the sideboard. From here we have Merfolk, Reanimator, and Ad Nauseam Storm that seem to be still holding up in the midway point. I expect these decks to stay about midfield with the current meta for a few reasons. 1.) for the most part they are good against Aggro deck in general so players who have these decks and are expecting a heavy Aggro field will more than likely play them. 2.) most of these decks struggle against the Control decks such as Landstill which makes it harder for them to take the top spots in the format. It’s clear though that the format has slowly been steadying, but I don’t believe we are quite there yet. In this format I always expect new decks to come out of nowhere and surprise the field. Until we get a field that is dominated by an archetype it’s almost impossible to know which deck is the best deck to be playing since each deck has another deck to keep it in check.
The last part I will go over is what not to play. Like I mentioned in my previous article I strongly believe Dredge is one of the worst decks you could choose to run at the time. The hate for the graveyard is strong in almost all sideboards and maindecks. Unlike Reanimator, Dredge only has certain amount of removal, disruption, and bounce type spells where Reanimator can use Show and Tell. Dredge players need their graveyards unmolested in order to combo off so one would have to build a sideboard to beat the exact hate that will be seen in the field. The only problem with this is that after Game 1 the Dredge player has to guess which tools the opponent will be siding in. Even though I stated this in my last article, Dredge is still played heavily, but as you can tell only one deck came out with prizes in the end.
One last deck I would suggest not playing is Goblins. Yes, Goblins is cheap and good at times, but seeing as how it’s the number one played deck in the entire format with only 2 decks that even won anything is a bad sign. Compared to Dredge, Goblins is performing much worse at the moment. The hate for Goblins is a bit much, and I would strongly suggest to Goblin players to tuck away their little Red friends back into their caves until winning isn’t so hard for our beloved Goblins.
Now let’s take a look a deeper look into Landstill. I have been playing Landstill quite a bit lately and have been extremely well with the deck. Although I was only able to jump into one Daily Event I have been having great success with the deck in the 2-mans. In my last article I went into some basic strategy of the deck and this can be found here. I provide a lot of useful information in my Decktech video as well as in my last article so I won’t spend too much time breaking down every single card in this section of the article. The main concept behind Landstill is to slow your opponent down in the beginning long enough for you to gain a big enough advantage later on in the game to win. The deck achieves this with counter-magic, removal, man lands, Wasteland, and the original crowd favoriteStandstill. Once the deck has gained momentum through these cards we are then able to use mid to late game tools such as Crucible of Worlds, Pernicious Deed, and Jace, the Mind Sculptor to clear our opponents board and win with either Mishra’s Factory or Jace, the Mind Sculptor. So let’s take a look at three very different versions of this deck.
First up we have a Blue/Black/White/Green version:
UBWG Landstill by LordHypno Legacy Daily #1234396 on 05/23/2010
UBWG Landstill by LordHypno
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Click the arrow to download the above deck in .txt format(To load a .txt deck into Magic: Online’s Deck Editor, click “Load”, select “Local Text Deck”, find the location of the downloaded deck file and double-click the deck.)
I see this version played quite a lot, but I think this is the least superior of the decks. This deck is still capable of winning, but having the fourth color really hinders the deck. Sure you have Swords to Plowshares to remove creatures from the game, but having that 4th color can really trip up your mana. I often find the Blue/Black/Green version to be more reliable. Everything that White does in this deck Black can do just as well without sacrificing our mana consistency.
Next we have a Blue/White/Red/Green Planeswalker version of the deck:
UWRG Landstill – Planeswalkers by FiatLux Legacy Daily #1256649 on 05/29/2010
UWRG Landstill by Fiatlux
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Click the arrow to download the above deck in .txt format(To load a .txt deck into Magic: Online’s Deck Editor, click “Load”, select “Local Text Deck”, find the location of the downloaded deck file and double-click the deck.)
I know I said I don’t like having the fourth color in our Landstill decks, but looking at this list makes me think otherwise. This list has a wide range of tools to answer anything our opponents might throw at us along with ways to tutor up cards we can use. This deck is very innovating and could possibly be the best version of Landstill out there, but I can’t say whether or not for certain that is the case. I haven’t tried to play this varient of the deck, but I think using Jace’s other planeswalker friends is a great idea. The purpose of Landstill is after all to clear the board and take control of your opponents, and I think utilizing other planeswalkers to join the fight is a great way. I will definitely be testing out this version of the deck to see whether or not it is superior to the other Landstill versions.
Last up we have the version I have been playing the Blue/Black/Green version:
UBG Landstill by KillerOwen Legacy Daily #1234398 on 05/25/2010
UBg Landstill by Killerowen
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Click the arrow to download the above deck in .txt format(To load a .txt deck into Magic: Online’s Deck Editor, click “Load”, select “Local Text Deck”, find the location of the downloaded deck file and double-click the deck.)
I now leave you with some videos to go over the deck as well as explaining the card choices associated with the deck, and full coverage of the action in a Legacy Daily event.
LANDSTILL DECKTECH
LEGACY DAILY EVENT ROUND 1
First game I couldn’t do much taking a mulligan to 5 cards. at 5:30 I could have countered Æther Vial, but I wanted to be able to have a counter for when I played Engineered Plague. At 7:00 I should have waited to draw another land before trying to cast Engineered Plague to work around both Daze and Cursecatcher, but I decided to go all in.
LEGACY DAILY EVENT ROUND 2
At 8:20 I should have started to use Jace, the Mind Sculptor‘s +2 ability to start altering my opponents library. At 23:50 I should have sat back on the Mishra’s Factory so I could lay down the Pernicious Deed next turn and sweep the board. I also misplayed the Ghastly Demise here, not paying attention to the number of cards in my graveyard. Right after at 25:15 I should have waited on the Pernicious Deed to avoid Krosan Grip. These two misplays combined cost me game 2. At 30:26 I should have used Jace, the Mind Sculptor‘s +2 ability to keep him out of burn range and to start altering my opponents library, but we were fortunate enough to Brainstorm into another Jace, the Mind Sculptor.
LEGACY DAILY EVENT ROUND 3
At 10:40 I should have tried to lay down the Jace, the Mind Sculptor instead of the Crucible of Worlds since Jace is the best win condition against the mirror. He did have a Jace, the Mind Sculptor to play as well which would have just killed my Jace, but would have gave us a better chance at winning. At 38:20 I should have waited to activate the Mishra’s Factory after he declared attackers so he would lose his Factory; fortunately for us it didn’t matter in the end.
LEGACY DAILY EVENT ROUND 4
At 8:22 I accidently floated extra mana since I was originally going to activate both copies of Mishra’s Factory, but I decided to attack with one and I forgot to undo before I activated the second. At 17:14 I should have Spell Pierce my opponent’s Path to Exile since we had other counters, and just to be safe in case we lose our Jace. At 29:15 I should have played the Crucible of Worlds and brought back the Wasteland instead of playing the Tropical Island.
Thanks for taking the time to check out my article and videos. Please remember to send in questions/scenarios/general help to studowen@hotmail.com for my new Question of the Week section of my articles just make sure you put MTGO Academy in the title of the e-mail. Once again please remember to leave comment both positive and negative along with any questions you might have.
Until next time may the Force of Willbe with you!
Owen Robbins
Awesome job Owen. I look forward to a merfolk article. It’s one of my favorite decks. =)
nice vids thanks for the uploads my question is in match one versus fish why not use the fetches on your turn when some builds now run stifle in the deck and that would have sucked
losing to merfolk makes me sad… oh wait i like to play merfolk… but yea very in depth article could help anyone learn the decks in the format. Is enchantress any good though
In round 1, game 1 like you said you should’ve started using Jace’s +2 way sooner, to get that win condition online asap (and the first activation to keep him out of burn range).
In round 2, game 2 I think it would have been a good plan to play the Standstill turn 2 as you’d have Mishra’s factory to take down the apes in two turns and then you’re unthreatened.
Also, like you said, waiting one turn on the deed would have been preferable. Especially since you saw Qasali Pridemage last game and probably know he’s going to board in Krosan Grips.
Anyway I really enjoyed the Deck Tech to start it off, with careful explanations of why each card is in and also what it does in this particular deck.
And I like that you examine your play in a few sentences after each game. A great way to improve is to analyze your games, win or loss.
I run UWb Landstill in real life, and I’m curious as to why you choose green over white. You would lose access to Deed in the maindeck and Loam (or Grip) in the side, but you not only get access to Wrath of God, Swords to Plowshares, Enlightened Tutor, Vindicate, and a bunch of stuff in the side, you also get Elspeth, Decree of Justice, and Humility – three cards I consider extremely useful in this archetype. Running double Elspeth and double Decree raise my number of win conditions from 5 to 9 (4 Factory + 1 Jace), and Humility is extremely effective at stopping aggro, especially against tribal decks where you can drop down Humility and E. Plague.
Thanks for the responses guys I appreciate it!
@ ctrl_alt_d1337 – It always depends on the situation. I usually wait on my opponents turn so that they have to sacrifice playing a card on their turn, but if I know my opponent is playing stifle I will use the fetchalands before they can cast stifle. It’s also to help protect us against wastelands.
@ G.O. – Merfolk is actually very strong, but as far as Enchantress goes I don’t believe it is good in the format we have now. It does win occasionally, but when you have multiple people playing the same deck one of them is bound to win sometimes. The reason why is that it doesn’t have any counters or discard, and there are quite a bit of combo decks running around that can go off turn 1-2. If you can get the Enchantress all set up though you usually have the game.
@ Zage – Thanks for the comments. I am a firm believer in constructed criticism, and to get better at magic you have to be able to admit the mistakes you’ve made and learn from them. I think this is an important rule to follow in Magic. I also like to see what other players notice since they pick up on things that I miss and am not aware of.
@ Necrogeist – The reason I chose this version over others was just because of the online format. I do like the UWB build and it’s very good. If I were going to run UWB I would more thank likely be playing 2 Elspeths along with Moat. I also believe anything less than 2 Jace in this deck is just wrong. Back to the point though the reason is that the green is simply for deeds. With so many aggro decks running around its great to be able to throw down a deeds and clear the board. With Death and Taxes it also takes care of pesky cards like Vial where my opponent can cast a Magara at the end of my turn and exile my Moat/Humility where with deeds we can activate its ability and still clear the board. I have actually been experimenting with a Landstill deck that utilizes white, but I haven’t had much time to playtest it. One last reason is that I think adding in all the white with my version takes out more counters which are essential, but one could argue I could take out Innocent Blood and Ghastly Demise. What it comes down to is whats being played in the Meta, and a players preference as well as ability to play the deck sufficiently.
hey oh. So I have to say a few things.
1, nice article and thx for the hard work.
2, Im not sure if your aware of this, but you misplayed like every single brainstorm in the first two matches. try condisioning your self to wait on playing it till you can sac a fetchland. Sure it says draw 3 but with out the shuffle its super bad, especially in a threat light deck like landstill. i winced every time you played it.
3. with out acess to the fourth color how do you beat a iona in play naming black? that is the real reason hypno ran the fourth color. have u played the match up yet? cause it seems like your a dog to the deck w/out the other color of removal.
thx.
@ whiffy penguin – It’s true I do like to have a fetchland option when I am brainstorming, but I have a tendency to just play them within the first turns depends on the deck I am facing. If I am playing a discard deck I usually save them so I can tuck my cards away. I should try to hold onto them, but at the same time I like to dig fast. As for not running the 4th color when I play Show and Tell/Reanimator builds I rely on my counters to take care of them, but if not I have Jace’s bounce ability available to return Iona to my opponents hand. If I can’t counter or lay Jace down in time it’s usually good game, but I have been really successful versus the match so far. If I start losing to it I would definitely add the white. Like I stated earlier it comes down to preference.
This is very interesting i really would love to learn to load a deck.