I think I am going to playetest this deck and see what happens because I support hybrid decks. The deck more than likely needs a lot of work, but I think hybrid decks have a lot of potential.

Mad-Dragon has been a very succeful deck in my metagame and has pretty goodmatch ups with just about any deck. I was rather disappointed when it only briefly was brought up in TMD and then quickly scuttled. It seemed like many players wern't grasping the concept of the hybrid deck. Players were assuming that both the Madness and dragon portions of the deck were equally used so it was sub-par because both portions were less than optimal on their own. However, the way the deck plays actually makes it a very dangerous deck and one that allows very little margin of error against an opponent.

The deck goes for aggro beatdown first. Either you deal with the beatdown or die. Which then leaves you open to get comboed out by dragon.

The point I make is that Hybrid decks have to make a gameplan that goes first part of the deck and a backup of the second part of the deck.

I think this is what Covetous is trying to do. It goes for fatty beatdown and then drops the bomb.

Paridigm pointed out that the deck is tryign to do toomany things at once, but I believe that the deckreally should do portion of the deck at a time with the possibility of another threat in the air. This seriously puts the opponent into a tight position.

I hope that this hybrid deck is not thrown away by TMD as Mad-dragon was.

It seems to me that you guys have not palytested with Landstill often enough. When you drop a standstill, if the opponent decides not to break the standstill that's just more for you. Good go ahead and just keep letting me draw into everything I need and then finaly breaking landstill and letting me draw even more.

This is another reason why I love playing standstill because palyers don't understand that the sooner they break a standstill the better. Unless of course you're waiting for your oppoennt to hit seven cards and then Eot break standstill which you shoudl only wait for if your opponent has a large hand and it will only take a short time period for them to hit 7 cards.

I also think that in a more powered metagame U/W is the better choice over U/R because then you have DoJ to put pressure on your opponent. The most important thing to remember is that Landstill is proactive control. You need your opponent reacting to you in order for your control to be most effective and that's why I consider standstill as a control card rather than just a draw engine.

This is my current Landstill deck list, I run U/W because I love DoJ so much.

// control
        4 Swords to Plowshares
        4 Nevinyrral's Disk
        4 Force of Will
        4 Mana Drain
        3 Stifle
        2 Misdirection
        2 Chain of Vapor
// draw
        1 Fact or Fiction
        4 Standstill
        1 Ancestral Recall
// utility
        3 Decree of Justice
        1 Time Walk
// mana
        4 Mishra's Factory
        4 Flooded Strand
        4 Wasteland
        4 Tundra
        3 Faerie Conclave
        3 Island
        1 Strip Mine
        1 Library of Alexandria
        1 Black Lotus
        1 Mox Sapphire
        1 Mox Pearl
// sideboard
SB:  3 Serenity
SB:  2 Humility
SB:  2 Tormod's Crypt
SB:  2 Meddling Mage
SB:  2 Disenchant
SB:  2 Chalice of the Void
SB:  2 Blue Elemental Blast

I don't run teferi's response because it has never been very useful to me and it takes up too many slots IMO for its use. I'd much rather stifle a wasteland for U then tefri's it for 1U and not be able to respond to anything else.

For misdirection I run 2 because I don't find many things that I can misdirect and on top of that it's more cards lost. If you have too many misdirects and FoW's in hand then you have trouble finding the blue cards to back them up and even then I have trouble throwing away those important blue spells.

I also run one less faerie because I find them too slow and would prefer the extra flooded strand to get some quicker mana.

As to using annuls in place of misdirections, thats obviously a metagame call, but of course its only useful in a meta with a lot of artifacts. I would much rather replace misdirections with mana leak than annul.

as for SB options for U/R this is my SB for a U/R build

SB:  2 Energy Flux
SB:  2 Tormod's Crypt
SB:  4 Red Elemental Blast
SB:  3 Rack and Ruin
SB:  2 Chalice of the Void
SB:  2 Blue Elemental Blast

Dustbowl definately does not fit in Landstill at all because it starts destroying your colored mana which you never want to do when you are playing.

Maze of Ith isn't a favorite choice for me as you have other options against Hulk like REB and tormods crypt and I like to have mroe options  my SB

Chalice is a strong choice IMO, but I can also see it being dropped for a different choice (possibly even for Maze of Ith's). Also, energy flux can be dropped since your SB is already packing R&R.

These are just my suggestions, you can metagame accordingly.

Can somone explain to me how B/G Dragon is good in a 5-proxy environment when the most widely used 5-proxy decks are Landstill and Fish?

I can look at my Landstill decklist and I can change the wording on most of the cards to "remove target opponents permanents from the game" and then post sideboard, its even worse.

If you used a little more common sense you would think back to when Raffinity and Bidding was created which happens to be only a couple months ago. I am a T1 player who stopped playing T2 soon after Mirrodin came out (to focus more on T1 since I love the format so much) so I never picked up a Raffinity or bidding deck. The whole reason I stated that is because of the complexities of the combat phase with these decks which I am unsure of. However, I don't think that not knowing a few extremely broken decks really makes that much of a difference in the general picture.

On topic: I think we cannot really compare the two different formats because of the huge difference in the areas skills need to be developed in.

I personaly believe that there is far more play skill involved in T1 generally than in T2. The simplicity of T2 decks is quite evident versus most T1 decks. Most T2 decks I have experience with (unfortunetly this does not include Raffinity or Bidding) basically just go on autopilot. It's a simple mana curve and you play spells according to that curve and whats in your hand. If anything I noticed that you try to ignore you opponent moreso in T2 then in T1.

T1 involves even more skills of geussing an opponents hand, or taking into account a possible card in their hand (because of the brokeness of T1 even a one card hand can make you think twice). Moreover, you have to watchout for cards not just in hand, but in the library (your's and your opponents) in the graveyard and sometimes even RFG (wishes).

I don't think you can hand any T1 deck to any T2 player who isn't familiar with the format at least slightly and see them just win, especially if you give them a deck like keeper. However if it were reversed I can see that happen.

If you want to compare pro T2 players to pro T1 players you have to stop right there. There are no pro T1 players. It's kinda unfair to compare the better players of T1 (who usually have jobs and only spend their free-time on T1) to pro players who invest a huge amount of time in play testing a few decks.

Furthermore, if you want to compare T1 playskill to T2 playskill you cna;t really. As others previously have stated, T1 and t2 play too differently to really be incorporated into eachotheror compared. T1 really focuses on the main phase and you opponents main phase, while T2 focuses a lot on the combat phase.

Vedalken Orrery

Artifact

 

rare

You may play nonland cards any time you could play an instant.


This card is just fucking crazy!!! Alrready a million thoughts popped in my head. MindTwist at the end of your draw phase, Time walk EOT, Nevins disk EOT, Play tog Eot, Draw7 after you tutored for the card you needed. Of course there are millions of more possibilities and I am certain there are still better ones. Discuss!

I didn't even look at it as a combo piece when I first saw it. I rember when I first started playing and when I saw card or even tried to build decks my mind would just try to create combos. I finally stopped doing that after awhile when I realized that effective combos are difficult to find.

When I first looked at this card, I saw its real potential in the recurring wastelands and fetchlands. I think this definately fits the role of a control deck. Of course the downside to the fetches is that you keep lossing life, but I think even fetching a couple extra times will give you the boost you need to give a slot to crucible. On another plus, crucible also ensures that you never miss a landrop assuming you're playing 5 strips and/or 4 fetchlands.

And do you want to get up at 5:00 A.M. to go to the tourney that starts at 6:00 A.M. or the tourney that ends at 2:00 A.M. in the mourning?

Think realistically about how much of a difference 40 min makes to a round (40 x 6 + T8 rounds x 40) that's an extra 400 minutes to a tourney. There is just not enough time in a day to acomplish this.

I agree with BreathDragon, that the member's T1 forum along with the others has been crap especially lately. The last time I actually looked into one of the threads was like 2 weeks ago... So I just went to Open were threads were forming rather rapidly ( this is a good and a bad thing) and actaully getting somewhere (A few quailty posts out of 100 in Open is better then 3 posts that really don't go anywhere in the Member's T1 forum).

I think what a lot of people are trying to do is just get full membership (which what I was doing about a month ago until I realised that the open t1 forum was actually BETTER than the Member's Forum because there were actaul debates going on in there). I think that stopping the ability to recieve full membership will greatly boost the quality of the posts in the Open forum as those little guys wanting their big "e-penis's" will stop posting bullshit, or stop just reguritating what has already been said to look good.

Rancor, I certainly agree with you that we should try to inovate decks before the restrictions. Of course this topic is relativly new ( Me and Jinn only began discussing it last Friday).

However, I think it is asking too much, or maybe to specifically, that the more experienced powered T1 players build buget decks for other players. Maybe you should broaden the terms. I think I am capable of building competative budget decks and I think there are many other budget players who have been palying for only about a year who woudl be willing to also.

Maybe, you should ask these T1 players to make an effort to put in good suggestions into the budget forum because when I skim through it seems to me that its mainly just the budget players talking amongst themselves.

This topic is a bit hard to discuss, but I will give it a shot.

I myself am a budget player (I get to borrow power and stuff from friends though luckily). I woudl definately like to see competative budget decks being built to help t1 grow. The more t1 grows the better.

However, you specifically ask those players who have power to build decks for other players. I do like it when older T1 players make sacrifices for T1( just as my older T1 buddies like it). But it may be a little much to be asking these players to spend hours building a deck which in the end they won't play. It seems that these older T1 players already spends much of thier time working on theie powered decks and they don't want to sacrifice the quality of those decks for the budget ones.

My buddy (TheJinnHong on TMD) and I discussed a topic very similar to this last Friday. Jinn brought up the three cards Bazzar, Workshop, and Mana Drain as Rancor did. And he stated that if you look at any tier 1 or tier 2 deck in the guanlet currently at least one set of one of the cards is in each deck. He was explaining the fact that any constitantly competative T1 deck consists of at least a set one of those cards.

Obviously, it is extremely difficult for the newer players to obtain a set of these cards even if they have the money because thier are only so many of these cards. And when you play with an unpowered deck, no matter how much play testing and tweaking you put into it, your deck is still weaker then those with the power. It is also not until you play the unpowered deck that you realise just how borken Workshop, Drain, and Baazar acutally are.

He went on to state that these three cards limited how diverse the gaunlet could be. His radical solution was the restriction of all three of these cards. Before you all go off on me for even mentioning this let me elaborate:

First and foremost, all three cards must be restricted not only workshop. If only workshop is restricted then all that will do is decrease the gaunlet even more because now the drain based and baazar based decks will be the best decks.

These restrictions will thus allow more of the sub-par decks to enter the tier 2 category and many of the Tier decks will morph. These restictions would also allow for more cards to become viable (i.e. sylvan scrying and crop rotation for decks that still want to use baazar and Workshop).

I agreed with Jinn in every way except I debated the fear that after these restrictions there might be a decline in the gaunlet, then an improvement as new archetypes were formed, but then a reamergance of three different cards that now would become the nescarry cards and thus we woudl be back where we started only with different cards. We went back and forth debating and still ,however, have not come to our conclusion.

I believe that this is the topic that needs to be discussed (not asking other players to take thier own time to build decks for other people) because I think that the restriction of baazar, workshop, and mana drain shows the most promise in leveling the playing field and promoting growth and health in T1.

As for decree, I still stand by my original verdict that 3 decrees is the optimal number. To elaborate:

Swining for 2 or for 4 late game is just so risky. By then your draw and control pieces have usally been expended (I've had matches where I would be two life away from killing my opponent and they would drop a yawg's win). On the other hand, having 3 1/1s plus a 2/2 or 2/1 will kill you're opponent that much earlier and leave more mana open for responces.

Of course, 2 decree already does this, but I tested with 2 decree's before. What ends up happening is that you hold your single decree (with no tutoring you normally get only one) and wait until it is time to drop the decree. While waiting you have to deal with you're opponents threats and then drop yours and watch (as I did so often) sweep the board of fire your soldiers thus leaving you back where you started.

If you had 3 decrees in the build, you could drop the first one for 2 or three measly 1/1s which puts the pressure on your opponent which is were landstill wants to be.

On FoF, that's another one of those preferences. I run it just beacuse it has always been good for me, but I can also see why a person would not run FoF because ancestrall, and standstills is such a strong draw engine already.

On balance, There are times when blaance run's well in the deck. But the usefullness of balance is so situational(and IMO not usefull in most situations especially with disk there) that I still will not run it main deck.



First of its FreddieNDB, but no big deal. And have you really seen misdirection being played in any of the upper tier decks? The correlation is because their are fewer spells that can are misdirection "worthy" in more powered metagames. The reason is because less players started runnign spells that targeted(unless of course they were required) because they were being misdirected, which is of course worse than being countered.



This is exaclty why i said it depends on if it's a powered metgame or not. Hymn to Tourach is really only used in Sui Black (which is a less powered deck). If you're playing in a meta where Sui Black is played more and burn decks, and even stompy decks( for spells like growth and rancor) then of course you run more misidrections. However, in my meta I play more against ChiaPet(aka GAT), Mud decks, and now mad-dragon which is why I lowered my count of misdirection.

As for whether U/W or U/R landstill is better is again about preference. I personally like U/W because I feel the Main deck is stronger (STP is better removal and Decree is better kill condition) but of course U/R has a much stonger SB (But I alwasy consider SB as secondary which is why I like U/W). You can all debate about which one was better, but if one weren't tournament worthy you wouldn't be debating in the first place would you?

I know 5 ppl that will most probably be there, but with it on mother's day I can't speak for them. As for me, I probably won't know until about a few hourse before it starts   .

How often are these power tournies going to occur at Gems now? Cus' the more power tournies in So Cal the merrier.

On misdirection, The number of misdirection you should run depends again on the metagame (the more powered the metagame the less misdirection you shoudl play). however, since you already are running FoW adding more misdirections just makes thigns worse because it is very card disadvantagous which goes against the way the deck wants to play.

Also, 3 decrees is the right number because they give you the board contorl and card advantage you need. I look at decree as a win condition not just some extra card to put into the deck. As for leaving it open for balance why woudl you play balance?

Balance is so anti-synergetic with the rest of the deck. When you play landstill you're trying to get more lands out then your opponent, more cards in your hand, and if you're playing decree the way you should then more creatures. PLaying a balance woudl be a lose, lose, lose situation. The only time the card works is if you're lossing the match and if you're in that situation already it probably won't turn the tide for you. And even if it does, balance is too likely to be a dead draw to deserve a main deck slot.

On mana leak, Landstill definately needs the boost of counters. It's not dead wait. I've tested with it extensively and foudn it to be very useful.

I've extensively tested with Landstill variants. Specifically, U/W and U/W/R. What I have found is that U/W/R Landstill actually has a more stable mana base. Of course this is because I take the concliaves out all together. When you do this you get a more stable mana base and a little more tempo. However, to get a full affect of puttign in both colors you run a lot of three ofs, like disk and flooded strand, which takes away from the deck. I think that running either U/W or U/R would be the better choice.

IMO, I think that U/W is the strongest maindeck version of landstill (U/R landstill is really only better in the SB). After testing so much ( I've logged too many hours playtesting landstill cus its my favorite deck) I have come to this build.

// control
        4 Swords to Plowshares
        4 Nevinyrral's Disk
        4 Force of Will
        4 Mana Drain
        3 Stifle
        2 Misdirection
        2 Mana Leak
// draw
        1 Fact or Fiction
        4 Standstill
        1 Ancestral Recall
// utility
        3 Decree of Justice
        1 Time Walk
// mana
        4 Mishra's Factory
        4 Flooded Strand
        4 Wasteland
        4 Tundra
        3 Faerie Conclave
        3 Island
        1 Strip Mine
        1 Library of Alexandria
        1 Black Lotus
        1 Mox Sapphire
        1 Mox Pearl
// sideboard
SB:  3 Energy Flux
SB:  3 Tormod's Crypt
SB:  2 Meddling Mage
SB:  3 Disenchant
SB:  2 Chalice of the Void
SB:  2 Blue Elemental Blast

Tefri's response is not here because stifle is just flat out better. Tefri's response costs 2 mana and is very specific on what is coutners. While stifle costs only 1 mana and is much more liberal.

Also, Dust bowl is just crap in this deck. Once you start loosing your colored mana your just really screwing yourself over.

I run three decree of justice because it is just the perfect number.4 is too many and 2 is just not enough making you hold them in hand until your ready which can mess you up.

Mana Leak gives you those few extra counters that Landstill needs. I have never regretted putting them into the deck. And why over counterspell. Because Landstill doesn't run enough blue mana sources in relation to the blue cards in the deck so another UU costing spell would be that mcuh more difficult to cast.

i geuss the SB can be better, but its also metgame dependent. And also I want to put impulse into the deck, but I'm not sure what to get rid of.
Any remarks?

First off, I have to say that Keeper is the deck that brought me into T1 (Of course that's because I started playing online) and I geuss I do have a biased attachment to it. But I will attempt to look at it in two different perspectives.

When I first began playing Keeper, I sucked balls. I could never win because I just couldn't play the deck (I think it is the most difficult deck to play in Magic). But after about two months of redundant playtesting (jeese how did I ever get myself to do that) I started wooping ass with it. I played so solid especially since I perfected the use of Future Sight (I still run one in my Keeper build today). The bottom line is that Keeper is really just a pile of broken cards that you have to learn to play right. (I will also note that Long.dec was originally considered a pile of cards before people figured out how to play it). So a player who says keeper sucks, IMO, is just not really dedicated to learning to play something because they don't want to figure things out and go through trial and error in play testing. Keeper really shows the player and not the deckbuild(although of course metagming correclty is very important) because its all on the player to make Keeper work. IMO, I can't say Keeper is an excellent deck ( and currently I think the gaunlet is so diverse that there is no really excellent deck) but it is still a vialbe deck that is still competative.

However, Keeper is a very very old archetype. It originated when T1 was still not as diverse. Considering the gaunlet then Keeper was an excellent deck (or sometimes a sub-par deck, but I will refer to that later). I can't rember the person who said this, but I rember reading in an article where the player said in 96 or 97 that Keeper was only good because there were no other good decks at the time. So is keeper dying now because the gaunlet is so diverse that it is shoving keeper out of top-tier spot?

I can't really say much about whether Keeper is dieing. I can refer to the fact that Keeper is a deck that has stayed in T1 for the longest time( and as Zherbus called it "Clinger" in his new primer). The fact of the matter is that Keeper has gone through stages of tier 1 to sub-par, with each new set bringing new cards and thus "morphing" Keeper into a new form. My opinion is that Keeper may be going through one of its sub-par phases and may blossom yet again later. Of course I don't want to be bashed on this because I may be wrong, its just a thought to discuss and go ahead and give your thoughts if you think I am wrong.

You guys are all talking about how a little smirk or laugh or something like that will put mental pressure on someone because (s)he is now afraid of what you have

However, many forget what doing nothing can do. I think many of you follow enough texas hold 'em to know who Phil Ivey is. When he plays he says and does nothing past what he has to ( I can actually only recall him saying check a few times). The thing is a monotonous face will give nothing away, and backed with good preperation and playtesting will lead to solid play.

A monotonous face gives you the advantage of a player not beign able to read you, versus a likely possibilty that your opponent will see through your smirk.

Of course I agree that solid play with minimal mistakes has to be there. But when you get into a field where everyone plays good, you need that extra edge to get the win.

I've seen the mad-dragon builds in my area. And all of them are doing exceptionally well. It may be slight changes in the build. I'm not exactly sure what all I know is that most of them run 4 animate dead, no necromancy, and more gorgers. I'll come back with the deck list.
   
After discussing it the deck is actually very powerful when played correctly. I think many of you play the deck by trying to do what seems to be the best option with cards you got in ur hand. Either going aggro, or trying to combo. However, the deck runs best when you focus on the aggro. The combo is relly like a back-up plan when ur aggro starts slowing down or gets controlled.
     
Usually, you drop your aggro creatures and start doing beatdown. This will usually result in attracting cards such as swords (sometimes even stifle for ur arrogant wurms), and boardsweepers against your aggro element. Most of the time, this leaves your opponent wide open for the gorger combo and you win.
     
If the opponent knows you're running the combo and decides to keep cards for your dragon. Then you just go aggro beatdown. I've found it very difficult to play aginst this deck because it plays like this.
     
Mad-Dragon is a house against control. and the hybrid deck offers it more  options which evens out its mathcup againts many decks. I think this deck deserves some attention as it is rather powerful and I have seen it do well in my Metagame.

I believe the metagame is distorted when there are NO proxies. That is because many play suboptimal decks.

In my own metgame there are a few powered players( probably about 15-20%) the rest unpowered. Luckily, my local card shop has 5-proxy tournaments.

even so, I wish it were 10 proxies which would fit perfect for my 6 power cards( including LoA) and 4 drains.

10-12 proxies seems to me to be the best number for the most competative and fun metagames.[/code]

I see the speed in this deck and I also see it's inconsitency. Unfortuantly, this deck is just asking for blue control ownage. Mana drain, especailly aginst myr enforcer and broodstar is a huge boost to any deck. And you're also very vulnerable to cards like hurkly's recall, nevinryyals disk, rack and ruin. The list goes on. There is just too much artifact hate, IMO, for this deck to be viable. But. i will test it out and see how it works. How has your testing gone?