I played my version to a turnament today, it was so weird, I lost my good match-ups but won against both RG beats and FCG. I got a 4-3 score. not good, but ok since I was lacking 2 moxen and turnament experience with the deck.


my deck list:

4 Wasteland
1 Island
4 Faerie Conclave
4 Mishra's Factory
1 Strip Mine
4 Tundra
2 Flooded Strand
2 Polluted Delta
1 Lotus Petal
1 Black Lotus


3 Rootwater Thief
4 Spiketail Hatchling
4 Meddling Mage
3 Voidmage Prodigy
1 Stern Proctor

3 Æther Vial
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
4 Standstill
4 Force of Will
4 Curiosity
4 Swords to Plowshares



SB:
2 Stern Proctor
2 Gilded Drake
2 Silver Knight
1 Voidmage Prodigy
2 Waterfront Bouncer
1 Æther Vial
2 Serenity
3 Blue Elemental Blast



Just summing up the turnament:

1. 2-1 vs FCG                  1-0
2. 0-2 vs Stax                  1-1
3. 2-0 vs. Goblins             2-1
4. 1-2 vs. Drain slavery    2-2
5. 0-2 vs. UW fish(no vial) 2-3
6. 2-0 vs. affinity              3-3
7. 2-1 vs. RG beats           4-3


Atle- the creator of UW vial fish

I have been testing this for weeks now, and I will start by saying that I would never go 3 collours because the vials give you an oppertunity to run a rather weak mana base, but adding a third collour kind of forces you to focus on the mana base again. I will not post my deck list before tomorrow because I'm taking it for a turnament tomorrow, but the vial gives you some interesting sb trix:-P


-Atle, the creator of UW vial fish.

I'm pretty sure the guy you played was me. I made this deck some weeks ago, but it's nothing like this though, it uses Vial to make broken playes, and giving the fish deck an element of suprise. That Exalted angel is just bad, and I would never play samurai in main. I also think the seals could be replaced with somthing better.

How are you able to beat 4/4 dorks with 1/1 dorks? last time i looked a 4/4 did beat a 1/1. UG Madness got bigger creatures, better counter, more stabile mana base and wonder making a mongrell able to buy wings. So saying that fish beats madness is kind of a weird statment.

About the misdirection issue, I think we should add 2 annul instead of the 2 misD. just look at the card. it's gold. with all the stax decks in the meta it's brilliant. And against 4CC you can still counter some mana, to prevent a fast angel. It's also a first turn counter for the belcher. And that's not all. It also takes the oath of druids if that will get popular again.

And never play brainstorm and standstill in the same deck. That's like asking bush and kerry to work together. Brainstorm is a great eot play and great a great mana solver, but having a standstill in play kind of makes it a bad eot, so don't run those two cards together.

There is no question about power makes the deck better though. recall and time walk are so important to the deck. I'm not sure if i'm so keen on the loa. Fish is an aggresive deck, wich means it will normaly not have 7 cards in hand.

I'm sorry if I have been a bit to eager on the match-up beeing a walk over

To win, you must shut of the draw engine, as you said. But I think that with 4 annul after sb, you should have a fair chance of countering the compulsion. But the strip vs. Bazzar can be a bit random though. But I removed 1 shivan reef for a petrefied Field, wich turned out to be great. specially in mirror and vs. dragon.


instead of just talking about the old landstill, I want to show you my own version, wich took me to the T8 in the Danish championship.

1 Library of Alexandria
4 Polluted Delta
4 Faerie Conclave
4 Mishra's Factory
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
3 Tropical Island
3 Underground Sea
1 Island
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Lotus Petal
1 Black Lotus

3 Duress
2 Misdirection
4 Mana Drain
4 Force of Will

4 Pernicious Deed
2 Diabolic Edict
1 Stifle
1 Regrowth
1 Mind Twist
1 Time Walk

4 Standstill
1 Ancestral Recall

3 Cunning Wish
1 Demonic Tutor

SB:
1 Diabolic Edict
1 Misdirection
1 Blue Elemental Blast
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Oxidize
1 Naturalize
1 Coffin Purge
3 Planar Void
4 River Boa


The main idea was to build a landstill with a bigger variety of answers.
There were some questions I'm still not sure about. for example the Deed vs. Disk question.

Disk can be drained down wich is a great +, but deedcan be activated the turn it hits play, and it's not an artifact meaning it doesen't roll over to null rod. though stifle is a much bigger threat.

Also the duress is kind of bad with standstill, but it's a great in mirror and vs. 4CC and it helps alot on the combo match-up as well.

The 4 river boas in sb, was mainly for the mirror wich I expected at lot of, but I found myself siding them in several times vs. aggro, and it worked great. They made the big O match-up so much better, and also madness got better because of it. against fish they are also great.

I don't know if fire/ice or REB is the worst loss of cutting red. I think the duress does a good job filling in for the rebs, the fire/ice is a bit harder, but I was suprised on how good the edicts was.

any ideas, or thoughts?

Atle.

just to chip in a comment: that hand on his picture was against my oath still in the T8 quarter:-)(I felt pretty bad when people started taking pictures of his hand:-/)

I know that shokwawe is a well respected person, and what he writes on tmd is high quality stuff, but I do think that he is wrong about this one. If the landstill player has the correct strategy, landstill should have a favorable match-up vs. dragon.



that is right, but how often do you get to keep the bazaar for severeal turns? With 5 strip effects landstill have a great weapon against the draw engine. And now that landstill also includes annul either in MD or sb, it has gotten more denial for both the animate effects and the compulsion. My testing has proven the match-up to be pretty though for dragon.



Well, I must admit that I'm not a dragon expert, but I have been testing landstill alot for a long time. And I really find it hard to argument for the dragon.dec beeing in favor in the match-up. Landstill got all the answers. It got some of the best dragon hate in it's MD, running drains, Fow and annul as denial, 6 burn spells for the swarm, and 5 strips for the bazaar. In my testing that has just been to much for the dragon deck to handle.

I'm sorry if I have offended you. I know you write tons of quality stuff, but imo your wrong on this one.

That is just my point. Xantid swarm is the only way dragon can win this match-up. But by running 6 burn spells, and chain of vapor, you should be able to remove it. And then annul helps alot if he tries to animate it.

I'm not saying that it's a walk over for landstill, but my testing has showed me that it is in favor for the landstill deck, because it got answers to both the dragon and the draw engine. But I'd like to se some testing facts, if sombody else has gotten another result though.

Atle.

I really don't know how to responds to that. the only dragon version that can threaten landstill is the versions running xantid swarm. I do personally think that dragon should not run green because it makes is slower, but not running xantid swarms means loosing to landstill. you MUST make a T1-T2 kill to have any chance at all, and normaly T2 is to late since you got both chain of vapor and stifle online. And what is that talk about tapping out for a disk? It seems to me that you assume that all landstill players are bad players. And "get lucky to drain disk through"? what are you talking about? Unless dragon wins turn 1 or turn 2, it will always go into a long game, where the dragon player tries to build up a combination of control ellements and necromancy, and the landstill player just keep on playing lands, and keeping mana open, until they got enough mana to start beating with a factory.



Yes the deck is slow, BUT!!!!!! it got fows always.  chains and stifle online on turn 1, and mana drains on turn 2. what are the odds of having neither of them? dragon just can't deal with that kind of hate MD. you should really considder testing the match-up again. it's really a no brainer if you just look at the deck-lists.


Atle

Wall, I must say that if you find Landstill to be an easy match-up for dragon you must either have been playing bad players or bad builds.

Dragon runs like 8-10 animate effects. landstill runs 6-8 direct damage spells. sure dragon runs tutors and stuff, but tutoring takes time, and that is not somthing you got against landstill. landstill runs chain of vapor, stifle, disk, and for not to mention 5 strip effects for the bazaars. I really don't see dragon as a threat to landstill. I rather focus on other more difficult match-ups.

I'd love to test the match-up some time though.

I'm also not to keen on the brainstorm idea. I think that landstill runs to few shuffel effects for it to be a good card. Brainstorm rocks when it says draw 3 cards, put 2 cards back and shuffel your deck.
But when it says draw 3 cards, and draw crap for the next 2 turns it's not that good anymore. I'd rather test the impulse digging deeper, and the fact that your putting 3 cards at the bottom isen't that big a deal for landstill.

I don't like the mana leak either  it's good in urphid where you have good odds of saying island, mox go. but in landstill with only 1-2 moxen it's just kind of a bad counterspell.

going for a couple of annul MD is a great idea though. all decks have good targets. against aggro you just save it for null rods. and at least you can counter a lotus or somthing. and against stax it's just great.

I'd been testing a lot of different landstill decks lately. I'd been playing BUG-still(a bgu landstill ) Wich took me to the danish championship T8. And it proved to be pretty good, beating stax in the quarter. The main differences between BUG-still and ordinary landstill is that I run cunning wish, adding a more flexibility to the deck. And also beeing able to run planar void in sb is nice, all the decks that card hurts

I will proceed testing different landstill builds though. and hopefully find something good for the meta.

Atle

With the transformation sb, you eat stax and any artifact based deck for dinner Packing 1-2 Woodripper in sb, meaning that you only need to keep smokestack and crucible of the table. And specially if your opponent don't know you play them, they will win you game 2, and having 4 disk, 4 oath meaning GG, you should be able to win the match-up unless they do somthing broken, wich they of course can do, but it still gives you a great tool to compete with.

And also against dragon I think there is no reason for running crypt. stifle and blessings will just win you this match-up. I played oath still many times at turnaments, and never lost to dragon facing it 5-7 times.


Atle

Everyone seems to be a big fan of the "combo" going of Turn wery fast. why?
Why not make it a more controlish deck with a combo kill.

running both drains and Fow would be grat in this deck I think, because the you can cast your salvager of the mana and go off.

Artificer's Intuition would also be a great card, finding all of your combo pieces, and with full power you should always have cards to discard to it. and also it can fetch bot lotus AND a win condition in pyrite spellbomb, and not is the spellbomb only a win condtion, it removes welders wich makes the slavery match-up alot better.

People compares this combo to the dragon saying that the dragon is so much faster, and better. But what people is not saying is that this combo doesn't die to stifle. you don't loose all of your permanents to chain of vapor, STP, diabolic edict, disenchant, naturalize.

Also the graveyard hate is not that dangerous to this deck, because you will propobly not have both the lotus and the diamond in your graveyard before you have played a salvager, and when salvager is in play you can just return them in respons on a crypt, coffin purge, whatever. And against hate the control element als shines through.

The only problem in the deck might be the mana base going into 4 collors, but it should still not be a big problem.
I'm not saying that it's the new tech, but it's worth testing at least.

-Atle

Avoid posting two copies of the same post by hitting "Submit" only once. -Dr. Sylvan

My friend and I have been working on a WB wheenie build for some times. He has played it in 4 turnaments, where it has made 3 T8. And we are playing in a very good meta with alot of power.

and now for the deck-list:

Disruption/Destruction:

1 Demonic tutor
1 Vindicate
4 Swords to plowshares
4 Duress
4 Seal of cleansing
4 Sphere of resistance
4 wastelands
1 strip mine

Kill

4 Savannah lions
4 Withered wretch
2 Spectral lynx
4 Carnophage
4 Bonesplitter
4 mishras factory

Mana

1 Sol ring
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox jet
4 caves of coilos
3 city of brass
4 scrubland

sideboard:

2 flesh reaver
4 ication javelineers
2 spectral lynx
4 serenity
3 Engineered Plague



Card explenation:

0 fetches: Is he an idiot?  nope, but with only 14 permanent mana sources, you can't afford to thin out your deck. And the mana base works pretty well the way it is.

1 Vindicate: It might seem a little random but it has worked great. It's your only answer to all permanents, and since you have a tutor, it's like playing 2 of them.

4 Seal of cleansing: This is a meta choice. There is a lot of scepter around, and that is not a good match-up, so therfor we need to kill it.

4 Sphere of resistance: This is so great. It's really a hoser against a lot of decks. And combined with 5 strips, it really kills decks like grow and Hulk smash.

4 Bonesplitter: We started out by playing unholy strenght in this slot, but the fact that you can tap it to a tangle wire, and attach it to your factories, makes it far supperior to unholy strenght.

4 Ication Javalineers: These are great sb cards against wheenie decks, welder and a xantid swarm killer.

we are right now considering chains in sb.

please post your thoughts aboute it.

Edited to remove the matchup analysis because some were obviously flawed. Flame wars over this kind of data suck.
-- Toad

I'm not saying that power should be dropped, but still I think that at least 2 are gold. Specially in mirror, and against landstill. Yes Turn 1 daze is ok, but I still don't like that card, because it's a major loss of tempo, and against  TnT loss of tempo, is really not a thing that you can afford.

Removing the conclaves will be a big mistake. Conclave is 1 of the cards making standstill a great card. The problem of not having a Turn. 1 stifle I think is somthing that you some times must live with, and the only match--up this might be a problem is the Scepter match-up, were you really don't like T1 scepter with fire/ice.

And how often do rectal agony "go off" first turn?  

I think that 1 Arcane LAboratory in sb is way to random.

Arcane is a card that you REALLY want to draw or don't want at all.

And I really don't think it fitts the build, the only deck it will help you against is rector and Reborn long, but stifle and counterspells should make that a fair match-up.

Besides that I really never liked daze in fish decks. you want to keep your lands down in play, so that you are able to keep 1 open for stifle and still beeing able to throw around with creatures.


And Nexus can't replace conclave because:

1. does not give blue mana
2. cost 1 to pump(major draw-back)

And NEVER take those stifle out, they are gold right now.