Bitterblossom Standstill

[Lycantivis]

4 wasteland
1 stripmine
4 underground sea
3 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand
4 Mishra's Factory
2 Island
1 Swamp
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox jet
1 Mox Sapphire
4 Bitterblossom
4 Spellstutter Sprite
4 Force of willl
3 Ninja of the deep hours
3 Mistbind Clique
4 Standstill
2 Echoing Truth
3 Null Rod
3 Durress
2 Thoughtseize
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm
1 Timewalk

Well I had tried a bitterblossom build of bomberman, Bman being what I have been runing for months.  I am a huge type 2 player for the most part and love the interaction between bitterblossom and stutter far to much.  But the playability of stutter in this format even without Bitterblossom seems strong to net cabals/duress/thoughtseize and have a beater/blocker.  Plus the idea of bitterblossom being good against just about everything but ichorid and long seems good.  Not alot of decks are going to be able to see it coming let alone handle it.

So the basis of what I think this deck should play out as is like a mix between fish and landstill.  Basicaly stick a bitter early followed by a standstill, ninjas/factorys to give you a game plan while a standstill is on the board because bitter will cause them to play something first or they lose to it.  Then after the standstill breaks you have tempo control with forces, stutters and bounce.  With null rod to keep things from geting crazy.  Plus the Mistbind cliques to tap your opponents lands and get a 4/4, I know its no where near as powerful in this format as it is in type 2 but it helps alot in the problem matchups like long.  I still havn't figured anything out for the ichorid matchup yet besides layline but thats hated on, I was maybe thinking extirpates.

As for the matchups, and don't take this uber serious as I don't know the format as well as I would like but I know the basics.  Long seems hard but null should help as should the discard, after board chalice should help.  Ichorid seems like a loss game 1 and a potential game 2/3 but that seems to be the same with all decks against ichorid.  Stax, oh boy this seems like a good matchup as bitterblossom just throws off their game plan of the tanglewires/stax being just about useless, and sphere effects dont hurt that much.  Oath seems very draw dependent on both sides of the table becuase if its not a turn 1 oath you can tempo them through it seeing as you have the aggro advantage, if they have an oath basicaly my game plan is bounce the creature and don't let them show and tell.  Goblins seems interesting as I could talk about this matchup after testing/playing because it will be a very reactive game based on the plays, jitte should help off the board.  Bomberman just hope they don't combo and tempo control your way through it let alone main board null rod really hurts them, but the problem is like I wanna side in the whole board against it.  Fish seems like a truely fun matchup as they have true removal but you have land tappers and free dudes, but both have rods and wastelands things could get interesting.

Don't have a sideboard yet but it would probly be like 3 jitte, 4 layline, 3 energy flux, 2 needle, 3 chalice of the void

I don't have much playing time with it yet as I just put it together this weekend, and was only testing against skys which I don't expect to see much of.  But this weekend I can post some more about it after playing it in a weekly tourney my store holds. 

[The Atog Lord]

Hi And Welcome. Please take the time to tell us more about this deck, rather than just posting a list. Why this? Why now? Why Bitter Blossom? What does this deck do well? How does it play? Please modify your post to include more information and data.

Rich

UPDATE: Thank you.

[Duncan]

Interesting idea, the deck looks quite solid. Don't know how this would work in the current field because I haven't been able to play some games with it. One of these days I sure will and try to get some more indepth feedback.

An idea I just want to throw out there is replacing Thoughtseize with Cabal Therapy. It is quite good with Bitterblossom and can devastate an opponents hand.

[eightywpm]

A more control-oriented approach was tried on this thread:  http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=35407

You may want to consider the following:

1) if your #1 goal is to resolve standstill, you want reactive countermagic, not proactive disruption.  Drawing Duress and Thoughtseize is terrible when StandStill is on the board.
2)  you DEFINITELY want Force of Will.  Perhaps I did not see it in the list but I believe its missing.
3)  the deck has almost no game vs shops.  The null rods will help but the mana curve is so high that Sprite turns into an overcosted 1/1 with instant abilities.
4)  Bitterblossom is a nightmare if your opponent drops oath the next turn.  The card is insane when it gets going, dont get me wrong, but you want to make sure you can stop your opponent from winning on one insane turn which is normally what people try to do when Standstill is on the table. 

If you PM me I will send you the list we came up with, I would post it here but I have to get to work   It was developed for the meta before the b&r list and really didnt lose a whole lot when blue was restricted, but with shops and ichorid expected everywhere, it definitely lost some of its potency.

[Lycantivis]

Yea my thinking about the 5 discards was a defensive gameplan for when you get a good opening hand without standstill as its not necessary to mull for it.  I hadn't really thought much of shops aggro as it hasn't seen much play around here lately let alone there is waste/strip which only gives them really 1-2 turns with a shop each time.  And oath like I said its preaty draw dependent on each side of the table.  If they oath its not like they are geting through blossom you can just out creature them and then bounce the angel when your geting in leathal.

And I can't seem to figure out the pm system if you could send me your list or post it that would be great.

Edit: just thought of sower some where in the main/board for oath could be hella fun.

[dawgie]

Do you really want Mistbind Cliques to be 3? I'm pretty sure you don't want to draw them really early in the game since it is 4cc and needs a Faerie in play to be really good. Also, I am not pretty comfy with Mistbind Clique though because it is a huge Mana Drain target and Drains are everywhere these days. It does look good vs Stax and that is if only you are not disrupted for the first 3 turns.  I really think 2 Mistbind Cliques will be better for the draw.

[Lycantivis]

Yea I'm still iffy about the mistbinds originally when I put the deck together the 3 slots were 2 misdirection and 1 bouncechain.  But I was runing into the problem of bitterblossom killing me, not being used to not having misbind/cryptic to get it off the board.

[Cavius The Great]

Is there any reason you're not running Cloud of Faeries?

[Lycantivis]

space in the deck is kinda tight let alone i hate the fact that when you play it and it gets drained or dazed you just get crushed becuase your lands don't tap, making the card not always free its not worth the slots/risk.

[eightywpm]

Okay, here's the working list that hasn't really been modified since RIGHT after the b&r announcements:

// lands - 18
4 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand
5 Island
4 Mishra's Factory
1 Swamp
2 Underground Sea

// dudes - 13
4 Cloud of Faeries
3 Ninja of the Deep Hours
4 Spellstutter Sprite
2 Mistblade Shinobi

// brown - 9
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Ruby
2 Umezawa's Jitte
3 Chalice of the Void

// Additional Counter - 10
4 Force of Will
3 Daze
3 Annul (shop/oath heavy meta, Annul beat out Spell Snare which hits bobs now)

// Rest - 10
1 Ancestral Recall
4 Standstill
4 Bitterblossom
1 Time Walk

SB:
1 Umezawa's Jitte
3 Echoing Truth
4 Energy Flux
4 Leyline of the Void (I never liked this in this slot)
1 Rebuild
2 Hurkyl's Recall

This deck has not been touched since RIGHT after the restrictions and before the new meta was setup, the Annul is strong against the deck's two worst matchups at the time:  oath and shops.  The ichorid plan would be to find leyline and guard it, or use E truth to bounce stuff (or leyline to jitte your own creature and nuke their bridges)

There were lots of possibilities, the Sb is definitely not optimal.  This deck slows the game down in the same way Landstill does, and has a fuckton of counters.  Jitte was added to handle the board control, and usually ended the game quickly because a 5/5 flyer every turn is pretty hard to deal with.

Factory was included instead of Mutavault becuase the additional faerie for SpellStutter Sprite was not worth the extra mana, whereas the 3/3 body was very useful for killing creatures (even Juggernaut!)

With drains running around everywhere, I do not know how I would modify this list but I would definitely start here.  Much of the deck may raise an eyebrow, but this is fine-tuned to match my playstyle in a meta where combo meant gushbond.

Good luck!