Last week I spoke briefly about Lewis Laskin new take on the Landstill archetype from the StarCityGames.com Legacy Open in Philadelphia, but now that I’ve had time to run some games with it I feel it’s only fair that I do the deck justice and talk about some match-ups and strategy. First and foremost, I’m just going to say that I’m just as impressed with the deck as I was when I first saw it. I was skeptical if the deck would perform as well as I wanted it to, but I was pleasantly surprised. The cards in this deck are essentially my favorite cards in the game, and the deck does everything I like to do in Magic: draw cards, not attack with creatures, counter spells, and cast Jace.
Before I get too far into things, the list again for reference:
Planeswalkers (3)
Lands (23)
Spells (34)
I tested the deck exactly card-for-card, though I was pretty sure that the Isochron Scepter was simply too cute. That ended up being the case, but for the purpose of this article you should just keep in mind that in all my games I was playing with the singleton in the deck.
I started off my testing against NO Bant, and that was honestly not even worth my time. I find it hard to believe that a Counterbalance deck could ever actually beat Laskin’s deck, as I figure I would have had to try to lose nearly every game we played. Standstill is an insane beating, and it’s really hard to be afraid of Progenitus when you’re packing three maindeck Innocent Bloods and what amounts to three maindeck Diabolic Edicts. If for some reason you can’t resolve one of those spells (like, say, if they’ve got you under Counterbalance and you can’t resolve a two-cost spell and can’t find a Deed to blow up the enchantment), you could always Wish for the Tsabo’s Decree and just freeroll it naming Avatar. Tarmogoyf is their only other reasonable threat, and between infinite-blocking with Mishra’s Factories and your six-deep removal set that should never be a legitimate problem.
Twice against Bant throughout all of our session I came close to losing. Once it was because I resolved a Standstill at 16 life while all that was on the board was his Noble Hierarch. Fourteen turns later, I was on 2 life and had to break my own Standstill to kill his mana dork and stick a Jace. But yeah, still won that won. The second time I almost lost I was under CounterTop and was unable to resolve most of my spells. I realized however that I had lots of time against their deck, so I simply was able to craft a reasonable hand and force a Cunning Wish to resolve by end-stepping a Swords to Plowshares on his Tarmogoyf that made him flip Top (I’m quite sure it was his last Tarmogoyf, and so it was probably the only reasonable play for him). The alternative of course is just to cast Jace, since you can still use Force of Will and what have you to counter their in-hand countermagic. I suppose you could get unlucky there and walk into a flipped Natural Order, but with only three in their deck it isn’t as if that is a likely scenario. You can also just get to a lot of mana and cast lots of spells in a turn to run them out of mana with Top enough to land a crucial spell. But even in such an extreme scenario, a simple Pernicious Deed is often enough to win you the game, and that to me makes me feel absurdly confident in that match-up. Generally speaking, though, you can usually just play a Standstill on turn 2 and then hold onto Counterspell until they decide to break it.
Feeling good about the control match-ups (the traditional ones, anyway), I moved on to Goblins. Lewis mentioned in his decktech that he had beaten Goblins a few times that day, and became very clear to me very quickly why that was the case. To put it simply, I’m not sure it’s possible to lose. You have enough removal maindeck that it’s possible to just kill one guy in the first two turns, land a Deed on three, and then just halt their assault until you can cast Tsabo’s Decree. They really just can’t beat that card — it’s not a joke. If you cast it they simply lose, and literally nothing short of a Ringleader into Matron/Ringleader could get them back into the game. And, even if they rip the nuts like that, you could still very easily just be holding onto a Counterspell or a Force of Will. You have no way to regain lost life against them which kind of sucks, but it’s not as though it should be much of a concern — in most cases just keeping them off of Lackey and Vial is enough to keep your life total high enough for long enough that you can easily make a smooth transition into the late game. I suppose a Siege-Gang Commander could pose a threat, but chances are if they’re casting it you’re already very far ahead and if they’re putting it into play with Vial you’re in just as good of a spot. If they’re putting it into play off of Lackey, though, you probably just kept a pretty poor hand against Goblins anyway.
After sideboard they have powerful tools like Blood Moon and potentially Thorn of Amethyst, but as long as you keep on your toes and use Cunning Wish properly you can generally disregard their disruption. Once again, getting a Deed into play quickly is priority number one, since even if they stick Moon or something equally nasty you can clear their entire board in one fell swoop. The match-up definitely revolves around Deed and your Wishboard, so keep that in mind when evaluating opening hands and throughout all of your decisions.
Zoo was more or less the same as Goblins, with the main difference being that Zoo cares less about its board position and more about your current life total. That is, they don’t put all their eggs in one basket — you can’t rely on Deed to just shut them off, and Wishing for Decree doesn’t 7-for-1 them. That being said, the match-up is pretty reasonable, but probably one of the ones I’d like to avoid. Deed is still fine, and if you can get Loam/Wasteland online you’ll be in good shape, but in general they can overpower you really fast if you didn’t keep the removal-heavy hand. I’m actually not sure how to improve this match-up, either, since it’s not a though you can just play some lifegain spells or something, and your win condition (Jace) is pretty weak against them. I think the match-up would be a lot better if the Zoo deck wasn’t back to running Price of Progress, because that card really messes with this version of Landstill. Zoo is also getting more and more popular, so we’ll see if that keeps this deck off the map or not.
While we’re on the subject of awkward match-ups, I suppose it’s only fair I should talk about ANT. I’ll be honest, I only won a handful of games against the deck — it wasn’t very close. You simply don’t have enough business against them. Game 1 you’re sitting on Deeds and tons of removal, and you simply can’t do a whole lot with that. The awkward part is that in game 2 you’re still in the same awkward spot because there isn’t much you can sideboard in — after all, you need to keep Mindbreak Trap in the sideboard. The danger of the Wishboard is just like this, sadly: some match-ups will play out like that, and I’m not sure how to avoid it. The simple solution is just not having a Wishboard, but how silly would that be if that was the purpose behind the revamping of the archetype? I have been very impressed with Wish so far, but this is one match-up where I just wanted to have cards to board in so I could take out my bad ones. I don’t want to keep Swords to Plowshares in against Ad Nauseam, and I’m at a loss as to how to remedy the situation.
Now, ANT isn’t really the most popular deck in Legacy, and it hasn’t put up the numbers that Goblins, Zoo, Bant, and Reanimator has, so perhaps it’s not a huge deal to have a bad match-up against it. As I said, Zoo is manageable and the Counterbalance decks as well as Goblins are just strict byes. I didn’t get to test against Lands yet, but I can only imagine that it’s a fair match-up given that post-sideboard you have four Leylines an tutorable Extirpates. Seems okay to me.
Now, you’re no doubt wondering about Reanimator. The truth is that Reanimator is much like Lands in how the match-up plays out: you have the Leylines, and you have the Wishable Extirpate. You also have Ravenous Trap, which is of course for Dredge/Lands but can also perform well against Reanimator if you have to hardcast it. The biggest different between this match-up and the one with Lands is that against Reanimator you need to dodge countermagic and discard, but between Jace and Brainstorm you needn’t be concerned about the discard and the counterspells can be handled without too much trouble (Extirpate has split second, so if they’re dumb enough to let you resolve Wish they’re dead in the water). More importantly, if they manage to resolve an Exhume or a Reanimate you can Innocent Blood them out or Wish for Edict. If the creature they throw down is Iona, then you can just deal with her in whichever way you’re allowed to: via black you can Edict or Blood, with white you can Swords, and with blue you can Jace her. It’s all pretty easy to avoid, so this match-up isn’t one I’d be overly concerned with.
As I said, I only tested against the top of the gauntlet (save for Lands), but so far I have a very good outlook for the deck. Lewis got hold of me last week about developing the deck further, and I’m very excited to see what we can do with the deck. Charles Gordon, however, seems to be a step ahead of us and made Top 16 with the deck this past weekend in Seattle:
Planeswalkers (4)
Lands (23)
Spells (33)
Charles cut the Wishboard and streamlined the maindeck, adding Spell Snare and the fourth Jace (as one would expect, Lewis and I agreed that the Scepter should’ve just been the last Jace all along), and opted for a more defined sideboard strategy. While I don’t think that dropping Leyline can possibly be right, I like Plague and Perish as well as having cards to actually bring in against different decks as opposed to just having the Wishboard. On the other hand, he still has nothing going on for the ANT match-up, which is pretty much the only reason to leave the Wishes behind, so I personally don’t like his approach much. Granted, he has Spell Snares maindeck, so it’s not as though he’s skipping out on all of the potential hate, but he still would have to keep in removal and Deeds post-sideboard. Deed is at least passable since it blows up LEDs and Petals, but Ghastly Demise and Innocent Blood are pretty rancid. He also isn’t playing white at all, which means he leaves himself vulnerable to Iona.
Still, ideas are ideas, and maybe this is a good direction to take the deck. All I know is that this deck makes me very happy to be playing Legacy, and I find that particularly uplifting given that I’ve hated the way the format has been heading since the conclusion of Grand Prix: Chicago last March. It’s not too often that I am this thrilled about Legacy testing nights, but I’m dying to hop back into it each week knowing that I get to beat some face with Standstill again. I encourage you all to get to testing this deck and ship me your feedback!
Until next time…
Chris Jobin
Team RIW
Shinjutsei on MTGO