Shoot first, ask questions later [Deck] Landstill Revisited

[Shock Wave]

Is boarding vs Dragon even necessary? 5 Wastelands, 4 Disks and 3-4 Stifle is a hell of a beating vs Dragon. If Keeper does well against Dragon with out boarding H8, I don't see why Landstill should even bother.

Stifle means nothing in the face of Xantid Swarm. It's not as easy a matchup as you make it seem. It really depends on the Dragon build. If it's a good build, it's not going to be an easy ride.

[BreathWeapon]

Xantid swarms are usually a Lightning Rod if you catch my drift. Duress and Bounce are probably the better bet vs Landstill, forcing them to Cycle F/I. But, I haven't played this out enough to know for sure.

I guess it just depends on what you plan on facing at Gencon, Dragon just wont put up enough numbers to warrant Crypts IMO.

[MarkPharaoh]

Ok, so IF you even have the Fire/Ice for the Swarm, they're just going to animate it back into play.  No, for the Dragon matchup you need Crypts.

[BreathWeapon]

That's not actually a justification for "needing Crypts." You had just as well say, if I play an Animate Spell you'll Counter it. If I play another Animate Spell, you'll Counter it to. Why bother? In a deck that runs 8 Burn Spells your chance of simply killing the Swarm again are just as high.

Crypts are good vs Dragon, if I were going to play against Dragon I'd definately want to have them. However, I don't feel naked with out them. Everytime they Animate a Swarm, that's one less Animate for the Dragon. All your really trying to do is buy enough time to set up for Disk, at which point you should be in control.

[jazzykat]

I think the real power of crypts is to remove squee's from the graveyard. Dragon is capable of crushing you with overwhelming card advantage if you don't have a wasteland within 3 or 4 turns for that bazaar + multiple squee combo.


As to the overall meta game that is best left to pundits with more of a pulse on T1 than I.

[Batle]

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

[HuntedWumpus]

Well I played the deck at a semi major local vintage event yesterday. Here's how it went.

Note before starting the tourney i changed my board to the following
4 Oath of Druids
2 Darksteel Colossus
1 Gaea's Blessing
2 Blue Elemental Blast
3 Artifact Mutation
3 Red Elemental Blast

the main remained the same.

Round 1 vs Dan with Keeper:
Game 1
Me 20 19 18 17
Dan 20  19 17 16 14 12 10 6 2 out

So this game went my way. Through the use of standstill and ancestral + regrow I had the upper hand controlling most of the way. The climax of the game was his morph'ed angel which I fired, he forced, I forced. Factories go all the way.

-3 annul + 3 rebs

Game 2
Me 20 22 18 14 10 scoop
Dan 20 18 17 21 19 23 19 23

This game an early swords which i failed to deal with hurt pretty bad but the real damage came when he Fact of Fiction's with about 6 in hand. The fact comes up, angel, drain, angel, swords, underground. First I split the angels, but looking at the piles i saw that both were probably going to end my game due to him having either more control, and a huge threat, or removal and a huge threat. I put the angels together and As i planned he takes the 2 angel pile. I get a disk on the board a deal with angel 1.  I have conclaves and 2 fire/ice to deal with angel number two. Unfortunately, he plays a crucible. I at this point have sided out my annuls and have left my artifact mutations in the board. He wastes my two conclaves, and that makes life really hard to kill angel. When he takes me off double red I scoop.

Game 3
me 20 19
dan 20 18 16 14 13 11 End of 5 Turns

We get called on time only minutes into the game. He was forced to mull, on my last turn i played a second factory. If the game had been played it would have been mine without a doubt looking at my disk on the board and my hand.

1-1-1 Draw!
0-0-1

*Note* it was very bazaar in this event, with 23 players, in the first round we had 4 matches draw, or eight players depending on how you want to look at it, seems a little to high to me!

Round Two vs Joe with TnT
Game 1
Me 20 19 18
Joe 20 19 18 16 14 Scoop

I loose the die roll, Joe goes first and opens wit mox mox blood moon, go. I go strip go, he goes land go, I peel lotus, say lotus, waste, pop lotus, cast disk go. He draws and says go. I play a play volc, blow the disk and waste his lands. He get no land for the rest for awhile. I get a couple of factories and a sandstill. He blows standstill with ruby, annul it. I drop a third factory on my next turn he scoops with no perms.

I didn't right down my sbing sorry, but I brought in the oath board and artifact hate. Out with the responses and some others.

Game 2
Me 20 19
Joe 20 19 18 17 6 out

Joe gets another strong start against me with mox, land survival. Im feeling pretty good when I RIP oath of the top and answer back with land mox oath. So im thinking as long as i can keep mox monkey off the table, he is not going to have a way to get that colossus off the board via welder and that should be GG. He uses survival and squee to set up and put the welder on the board.  My next turn oath up colossus and kill welder. My hand at this point is basically perfect because I haven't had to respond to much. Colossus wins like the piece of shit card it is.

2-0
1-0-1
Again there are a couple of drawn matches.

Round three vs Joe with Donkey Staxxx
Game 1
Me 20 19 18 17
Joe 20 18 16 15 14 11 7 4 2 out

This game was pretty tight all the way. Joe gets some an early somkestack (yea i couldn't see FoW all day). It goes no higher than one and he eventually sacks it. We go awhile with a trinishphere and i get some crucial wastes on his workshops. I draw into 2 facts an 2 conclaves, sadly he get a crucible and starts the wasteland pain after he recovers his workshops. However I had 2 t-response's and a stifle. That bought me enough cards and time to run him town to low. The sundering titan came in and got my 2 volcanic islands. The titan was on blocking duty and I finished the game with a fire/ice to the dome for fun!, or i could have attacked with the 2 factories, the conclaves were gone to the crucible waste at this point.

-1 Stifle -1 standstill -1 fire/ice +3 artifact mutation
I hindsight i may have wanted to board in the oath, but it would have been difficult to bring in 11 card and still run well.

Game 2
Me 20 19 18 scoop
Joe 20 19

He takes total control with early tangle and sphere. I draw low on land and he get the crucible going. When the smokestack and two tanglewire's lock things down im almost ready to say gg. He get the titan into play, I cant force, because i don't have the 3 mana. GG
 
We have 30 seconds left after game 2.

1-1
1-0-2
Plague of draws.

Round 4 vs Sugrim (sorry if thats spelled wrong!) with sligh/red tec/beats

Sugrims deck is a bazaar tec'ed out deck with kird ape and r/g duals to make it crazy. It runs fanatics for fish, and lavamancer to help. Its a good deck, he's won and placed well in lots of places. The deck is scary.

Game 1
Me 20 19 18 17 14 11 5 4 out
Su 20 19

Yea what can I say, he burned me and overwhelmed me. Disk was to slow and kird ape is out of fire/ice range.

Out with standstills an annuls and crap in with oath and bebs.

Game 2
Me 20 19 17 14 10 6 2 out
Su 20 19

Yea oath didn't come fast enough.

Locally there is usually 1 player using conventional sligh, but sugrims is to savage. Props to him for another t8 and kicking my ass.

Round 5 Vs Fish

Sry I lost my piece of paper with the match notes and life totals for this match.

Game 1

I get some early counters in and establish board control, he has like 1 card in hand. I play a standstill. I have 3 lands and a factory. The next 6 cards he see's are 3 waste and 3 factory is some random order. SHIT! i have to break my own standstill with ancestral. I almost come back for the win.

Out with standstill and  annul with few others.

Games two and three:

I let him get a small army. Oath resolves. yea gg.

2-1
2-1-2

Well it was a pretty funky trial run. The oath board is here to say as long as workshops and fish stay a large portion of the meta. Had the keeper match been 2 mins longer I would have won. The donkey staxxx could have gone either way. I feel the deck has alot of potential.

Notes for the day.

Annul is really really strong, shit it even takes out curiosity or standstill vs fish game 1. It works well as a sinkhole and protected my but several times in matches.

Crucible causes huge issues. I was discussing that after the match and thought about crucibles of my own to help combat opponents, but that seems sub optimal. I need to watch for that card and keep and answer for it very close.

[Shock Wave]

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

God... what kind of Dragon deck were you playing against? I'll play any of you any day of the week and you can pack all the Stifles you want, Xantid Swarm will totally own you. Blessing is good against Dragon?! You can't be serious ....

[Gandalf_The_White_1]

Dragon has a difficult time with a properly constructed landstill deck.  Stifle for dragons means they usually need to go off with 2x force protection or under a swarm in order to be safe.  As long as you don't sb out the removal swarms get nuked pretty easily, and your strips can pwn their bazaars.  Crypt wouldn't hurt however, as it can slow dragon down enough for you to develope a hand or serve as additonal graveyard h8 vs other decks (probably not necessary, however).  Not to say the matchup is a walk in the park, but it is certainly winnable even without crypts.

[wuaffiliate]

Xantid Swarm will totally own you.

[Shock Wave]

Dragon has a difficult time with a properly constructed landstill deck.  Stifle for dragons means they usually need to go off with 2x force protection or under a swarm in order to be safe.  As long as you don't sb out the removal swarms get nuked pretty easily, and your strips can pwn their bazaars.  Crypt wouldn't hurt however, as it can slow dragon down enough for you to develope a hand or serve as additonal graveyard h8 vs other decks (probably not necessary, however).  Not to say the matchup is a walk in the park, but it is certainly winnable even without crypts.

Honestly dude, I suggest you re-test this matchup. Fire/Ice on a swarm does nothing but bait another Animate effect, of which the deck runs plenty. Yay, you trade 1 for 1 with an Animate effect. Dragon runs like 10 million tutor effects to find Bazaars, it has Compulsion .... ummmm, is any more explanation needed... ?

[Gandalf_The_White_1]

If I am wrong correct me, but isn't dragon rather dependant on it's outlets?  Wouldn't sbed naturalise help as it can nuke animate effects, and thus remove all permenants or just kill reanimated swarms, or kill compulsions?  (the bazzards having been taken out by your strips leaving them with no outlets in this case).  

Naturalise seems like a much more versatile sb card against dragon, because crypt is easily answered via animate+necromancy.  Naturalise would also be a card useful in other matchups, where crypt is rather confined to dragon.

[HuntedWumpus]

Really there is no dragon still wondering around locally for me, and Landstill should crush it anyways.

Turing my attention to annul,  they have recently become less enticing to me. I think its more of a tool to keep in the back of my mind for Meta's with heavy workshops. My match's against workshops have lessened, and perhaps its time to rethink their slots in the main.

Options for Filling the 3 slots.
4th Brainstorm
Mana leak's for early low U draws
Counterspell
Misdirection
Upping the Stifle count

Im thinking for now perhaps
-3 Annul
-1 Regrowth
+2 Misdirection
+2 Mana Leak

That would help my matches against Keeper and Hulk greatly, both are matches that can go either way. Adding misdirection could help keep the hand size more balanced during these matches which would be an obvious plus for me, rather than being down 3-4 cards if I can get a standstill up and running.

[wuaffiliate]

Stop playing type theory, and test landstill vs dragon. Hell, AIM me and ill test it with you on both sides of the table.

[Batle]

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

[Shock Wave]

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.

*sigh*. Again I ask, what manner of Dragon rubbish have you been testing against? What relevance does direct damage have to the Dragon matchup? If you're running 8 direct damage spells in Landstill, that means you're running less Stifle and Chain of Vapor, which in turn means you're in bad shape already. Disk is hardly ever an issue unless you're lucky enough to Drain into one. Otherwise, tapping out for Disk is almost an auto-loss.

Tutoring takes time? You don't have time against Landstill? Landstill is just about the slowest deck in the format. Are you well?

[Batle]

Again I ask, what manner of Dragon rubbish have you been testing against? What relevance does direct damage have to the Dragon matchup?

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.

Tutoring takes time? You don't have time against Landstill? Landstill is just about the slowest deck in the format. Are you well?

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

[Moxlotus]

I'm pretty sure that Rich made HUGE contributions to the original Landstill AND Dragon decks so I would be careful telling who to do some more testing.

  Not many dragon decks don't run Xantids main.  If they don't they have Duress instead.  You have Fow?  So do they.  Dragon also doesn't need to win turn 1/2.  Why would you think that?  It has a stronger draw engine and can sit and wait until it has a handfull of animate effects and protection in which case they will over run you.  They don't care about getting hit for 2 each turn when they are drawing 3 cards every turn, maybe more if a compulsion is on the board.  Sheer card advantage will win them the game.

[Shock Wave]

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.

You personally think that Dragon should not run Xantid Swarm. That, along with the rest of this paragraph, is an immediate indication for me to stop wasting my time in this debate.

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.

Sure, I'll put another 200 hours into testing the matchup, just because you're so brilliant that you can look at decklists and come up with the most assinine conclusions. Now *that* makes a whole lot of sense.

[firebird365]

I'm pretty sure that Rich made HUGE contributions to the original Landstill AND Dragon decks so I would be careful telling who to do some more testing.

Well said. Honestly, Dragon is a tough deck to beat, and that's what makes it good. It has the ability to fight through a huge amount of hate.

For example: I played against a Dragon deck playing UWR Landstill at Myriad Games. I was running the following cards that hurt dragon:

Maindeck:

4 Stifle
4 Swords to Plowshares
11 counters (FoW, Drains, MisD)

I brought in:

3 Annul
3 Tormod's Crypt

He took it 2-1, because he dropped Xantid Swarm. I had to Stifle the trigger to stop him from going off, and he Forced. I had an Annul in my hand, which didn't help much. You can't look at the decklists and say "Well, you did something wrong" - testing is the only way to figure it out.

[Batle]

I'm pretty sure that Rich made HUGE contributions to the original Landstill AND Dragon decks so I would be careful telling who to do some more testing.

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.

It has a stronger draw engine and can sit and wait until it has a handfull of animate effects and protection in which case they will over run you

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.

You personally think that Dragon should not run Xantid Swarm. That, along with the rest of this paragraph, is an immediate indication for me to stop wasting my time in this debate.

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.

Sure, I'll put another 200 hours into testing the matchup, just because you're so brilliant that you can look at decklists and come up with the most assinine conclusions. Now *that* makes a whole lot of sense.

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

He took it 2-1, because he dropped Xantid Swarm.

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.

[Shock Wave]

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.

Well you seem to be singing a different tune now. Your previous posts seem to imply that the matchup is strongly in favour of Landstill. Assuming equal playskill, the match-up is 50/50. The problem with your analysis is that you're assuming you'll always have the appropriate answer in hand. Landstill cannot run a full compliment of Chain of Vapor, Stifle, and 8-10 burn spells. There simply isn't enough room. Hell, I could build a Landstill deck that runs 4 Tormod's Crypt and claim a 100% win percentage versus Dragon, but would that be realistic?

Futhermore, Nevinyrral's Disk is NEVER cast in this match-up unless you're absolutely desperate or have mana to spare. It is hardly ever the deciding factor in the majority of the games.

This matchup is a control mirror. It is about drawing cards, not about resolving spells. The way Landstill wins is by hosing Dragon's draw engine, which sometimes works and sometimes does not. The problem is that Compulsion is a killer against Landstill and if it resolves, that's pretty much game over. Stifle and Chain of Vapor accomplish nothing except forcing the Dragon player to wait until they have sufficient protection to go off.

The other problem is that Landstill is so fucking slow that the Dragon player will have ample time to set up 90% of the time. If Dragon has 10 turns with the draw engine online in this matchup, it will win, I guarantee you that.

What does your Landstill build look like?

[Batle]

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:-/)

[Anders Noer]

I just want to chip in a comment...

While I have done little testing with standstill myself, I have been playing in a meta where Landstill was the dominant deck for months.
Landstill is a great deck and really isn't a walkover for any decks in the field besides Big O.

I know Batle and have faced him numerous times during the last couple of tournaments. He's one of the better players here and I know he does his homework before a tournament. On top of this, he's been playing landstill variants for what seems forever and he's tweaking different builds all the time (I'm sometimes called in for sparring ).

While he may not have 200 hours of playtesting under his belt, he has a good understanding of the deck.

[Shock Wave]

I just want to chip in a comment...

While I have done little testing with standstill myself, I have been playing in a meta where Landstill was the dominant deck for months.
Landstill is a great deck and really isn't a walkover for any decks in the field besides Big O.

I know Batle and have faced him numerous times during the last couple of tournaments. He's one of the better players here and I know he does his homework before a tournament. On top of this, he's been playing landstill variants for what seems forever and he's tweaking different builds all the time (I'm sometimes called in for sparring ).

While he may not have 200 hours of playtesting under his belt, he has a good understanding of the deck.

I never questioned Batle's understanding of Landstill, but rather pointed out that his analysis of the Landstill match-up is/was blatantly incorrect. That's understandable, considering that Dragon decks are generally *extremely* poorly built and just as poorly played. Against an optimally built Dragon deck, Landstill only holds an extremely slight edge. I wouldn't even say the matchup is 60/40.

Batle: I tested a version of Landstill that is almost identical to yours, except I didn't run Duress in the maindeck. I found that the deck just rolled over to aggro with the loss of Fire/Ice. Deed turned out to be far too cumbersome to cast and the lack of Stifle really makes your manabase susceptible to disruption. One thing your deck is missing is Fastbond. If you play Landstill with green, there is absolutely no reason not to run this card.

[HuntedWumpus]

I would think that Disk is the correct choice in the Bugstill version. Deed requires both off colors to come out while disk it the drain outlet and can actually come out same speed as deed, in which case its also just as fast unless you plan to deed 0.

Looking at this, at  that point is it perhaps best to Go U/r/b, employing both disk, fire/ice, and the advantages of running black. This version would still allow for the use of Wish with rack and ruin, reb, beb, edict, and sorts of that nature being targets. Perhaps ill try to draft up a list like this, although it already sounds like a pile.

[firebird365]

I think Landstill has some promise - it is a solid deck, and, with the slower metagame, should be a better option. However, we should first ask ourselves this question before going off in random directions and tossing in colors: How would this change impove Landstill? This seems obvious, but I feel like many of the changes meant to improve the deck really don't merit a change.

Let's look at the UGB version. To quote Batle:

The main idea was to build a landstill with a bigger variety of answers.

There are really only a couple things we need answers for. Looking at this decklist, it provides only one thing that traditional Landstill doesn't: hand disruption, but at the cost of more reactive cards. Landstill is inherently a reactive deck, and taking away from that weakens the strategy. As Shockwave said, it creates a huge vulnerability to aggro, which leads me to believe this change isn't strategically sound.

I haven't been testing Landstill extensively as of late, so it's very possible I'm missing something. If so, let me know - I feel like the reasoning behind these strategies is flawed.

[jshields]

Has anyone else tried running Desertion over Nevinyrral's disk?  I know that some may state that that would get rid of the main source of mass removal, but Desertion for 3UU counters a spell, and if it is an artifact or creature spell countered by Desertion, it comes into play under your control.  Could this be a possible answer to more troublesome matches such as Hulk, Man Show, and Control Slavery?

[PittSoothSayer]

While desertion may look like it solves some of Landstill's problems, it's Just too cumbersome to cast.  The only time you will ever be willing to pay 3UU to counter a spell is that rare instance where you actually hard cast Force of Will in a control mirror.

Against Hulk and Artifact Aggro/Prison, they will deploy threats before you get 3UU up.  The only time Slavery will hardcast it's namesake is if it's Drained into enough mana, in which case you won't have the requisite 5 mana available. Otherwise, it will just Weld in the Slaver, which can't be countersd by Desertion.

In short, no, Desertion will not work.

[Godot]

Has anyone else tried running Desertion over Nevinyrral's disk?

No.  Landstill revolves around Disk--its the card that makes the deck viable.  

Desertion for 3UU counters a spell, and if it is an artifact or creature spell countered by Desertion, it comes into play under your control. Could this be a possible answer to more troublesome matches such as Hulk, Man Show, and Control Slavery?

But to be more specific there are a whole slew of reasons why Desertion is bad.  First theres the casting cost.  Secondly, it only answers 1 threat.  Disk is an incredibly efficient answer that should net you mad card advantage.  Third, when you drop Disk against workshop decks for instance, they have 1 turn to answer it before you wipe their entire board--mana accelerants, creatures, and other utility artifacts.  So you not only answer a threat, but you also hinder their ability to produce further threats.  Dersertion doesnt do that.

Also, as for your idea that Desertion helps the Tog matchup--waiting to steal their Tog is completely the wrong strategy.  Disrupt their draw engine dont try and nuke the kill condition.