43Land.dec

[sephorusFR]

The good old Land.dec has resurfaced recently with decent
results. After some tests overthere, I decided to discuss
the list and see where we can lead this. First, the more so
original list :

Deck
Enchantments 4 Exploration 4 Manabond Sorceries 4 Life From The Loam 3 Mulch 2 Roar Of The Wurm Lands 2 Barbarian Ring 1 Forgotten Cave 1 Glacial Chasm 4 Maze Of Ith 4 Mishra's Factory 2 Nantuko Monastery 1 Riftstone Portal 4 Rishadan Port 3 Savannah 1 Secluded Steppe 1 Slippery Karst 4 Taiga 2 Tranquil Thicket 3 Treetop Village 4 Wasteland 2 Windswept Heath 2 Wooded Foothills	Legendary Lands 2 The Tabernacle At Pendrell Vale	Sideboard: 3 Engineered Explosives 2 Zuran Orb 2 Pyroblast 3 Armageddon 2 Gaea's Blessing 2 Meltdown 1 Glacial Chasm

The game plan is easy : resolve an early Manabond or exploration and
then abuse uncounterable threat like heavy beater (nantuko monastery, treetop
village), lock component ( rishadan port) or mana denial strategy (wasteland).
The deck is backed up by Life from the Loam that LOVES to be discarded eot with Manabond.

The sideboard looks strange but the Armageddon is a real threat : dropping armageddon
with 2 mana floating, cast life, get back Tabernacle and watch the opponent's board dies.

From there, I evolved the list using ideas from TMD topic and some personnal testing.
I included 4 Burning wish and increased the solution pack. I also added a
Boseiju, who shelter's all to helps against control (T2 uncounterable wish
on tsunami, T3 uncounterable tsunami). I also added crop rotation
to smooth the land access and reduce the number of Maze of Ith and Tabernacle.
Crop also helps to get a T1 maze vs goblin lackey. I also included a basic forest to helps
against blood moon.

Deck
Lands 4 Mishra's Factory 3 Windswept Heath 3 Tranquil Thicket 3 Taiga 3 Nantuko Monastery 3 Treetop Village 3 Rishadan Port 2 Barbarian Ring 2 Maze of Ith 2 Forgotten Cave 2 Wooded Foothills 2 Savannah 2 Wasteland 1 Glacial Chasm 1 Riftstone Portal 1 Forest	Legendary Lands 2 The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale 1 Boseiju, Who Shelters All 1 Dark Depths Enchantements 4 Exploration 4 Manabond Sorceries 4 Burning Wish 3 Life from the Loam 1 Recoup Instant 3 Crop Rotation	Sideboard 4 Zuran Orb 1 Savage Twister 1 Hull Breach 1 Pyroclasm 1 Devastating Dreams 1 Flashfires 1 Meltdown 1 Armageddon 1 Tsunami 1 Demonfire 1 Rude Awakening 1 Life from the Loam

The game plan is now the following : Bring out an early manabond or exploration then
abuse the fact that you can recover 10x faster from an armageddon effect than your
opponent by wishing for any of the 4 pseudo-armageddon ( armageddon, flashfires,
tsunami, devastating dreams or even meltdown vs affinity ),
resolving it and then restart by loaming back your lands.

The kill conditions now include :
-> the usual man-land
-> a recurring Barbarian ring loop.
-> a sideboard Rude awakening.
-> a sidebaord Demonfire.
-> a main deck Dark Depths, yeah it looks janky but
we can easily removes 2 or 3 counters at opponent's eot. If the token get bounced, Life can get the land back into business.

The lock aspect is still there as a manabond on turn 1 dropping 2 port +1/2 other lands usually slow the
opponent enough to let you gather large amount of active lands.

Why playing recoup ? Sometimes you'll end up with 3 burning wish
in the yard and a desperate need for a rude, a hull breach or anything
that can save your ass. Recoup allow you to replay those discarded
wish from the graveyard and get your solution.

Now, the question is : "how well can we do with this ??"
I'm currently amassing data for MU analysis but from a rough experience of 20+ matchs between variosu deck, the conclusions are :

Goblin, affinity and aggro in general : Very favorable match-up. Unless they draw those incredbile WTF hands,
gob and affinity are a huge bye for you. Maze, tabernacle and even man land keep their beasts at bay. A single
active Monastery is enough to make any piledriver thinks twice before attacking. Pyroclasm, savage twister,
meltdown and even armageddon help a lot. last resort is tutoring/loaming for a glacial chasm. Chasm + active
LftL == damage proof during their turn. It doesn't protect from disciple nor upkeep sharpshooter or siege-gang
activation but it hinder their main plan : attacking FTW. Burn and sligh deck MAY play Blood Moon or Price of Progress.
For theses, side in Zuran Orb and resolve one. Then dig into a wish, then Hull breach the moon after fetching the basic forest.

Treshold and alike : not easy, but manageable. MVP is an early Crop rotation on a boseiju. Once Boseiju is up,
all your LftL will resolve and you can rely on any SB sorcery as Savage twister cleans the board, tsunami + tabernacle
rape mongoose etc ... Maze helps keeping early beasts away. Again a last resort action is Glacial Chasm that make them
cries.

Control deck : rifter and all non U based control decks are complete bye. Psychatog is tough and so does Mono-U.
Uncounterable Tsunami just makes the game easier.

Combo : Well, somethign must hurts : combo match up are bad and good
bad cause you're just a bye for them if you don't get 2 actvie port by turn 2.
good because you can sign the result sheets 0-2 and get 50mn of fresh air Unless you get an insane first turn
(land, bond, discard LftL, 2 port, 2 mishra or such), game is over.


Ok, that's all for the moment. I hope ppl will catch on this and will help us to improve it if needed. Thanks for the read

sephorusFR

[emidln]

Originally Posted by sephorusFR

Control deck : rifter and all non U based control decks are complete bye.

That looks like a nice list, but I'd challenge that you have a complete bye against Stax, which is the other non-U control deck of the format. You have to deal with Pithing Needles, Chalices (which @ 2, wrecks you btw), and a deck that is just as fast out of the gates, if not faster on the play. It runs your same win condition and has an all-encompassing road block of Ensnaring Bridge, Propaganda, or Ghostly Prison which you will have great difficulty getting around. Don't forget, they run Crucible/B.Ring as a win too, and will be happy to needle it until you've ran out of cards with Life from the Loam then watch you sac your board until they b.ring you out.

While this probably has good matchups against Rifter and Mono Black Control, any deck that decides to board Pithing Needle will trouble you. Chalice too. Cards like Moat are also highly effective against you.

[sephorusFR]

Originally Posted by emidln

That looks like a nice list, but I'd challenge that you have a complete bye against Stax, which is the other non-U control deck of the format. You have to deal with Pithing Needles, Chalices (which @ 2, wrecks you btw), and a deck that is just as fast out of the gates, if not faster on the play. It runs your same win condition and has an all-encompassing road block of Ensnaring Bridge, Propaganda, or Ghostly Prison which you will have great difficulty getting around. Don't forget, they run Crucible/B.Ring as a win too, and will be happy to needle it until you've ran out of cards with Life from the Loam then watch you sac your board until they b.ring you out.

I wish i could have more insight on this question but stax is underplayed in my environnement and I still wait Stax to do somethign serious to consider it a nuisance.

Needle is a problem yes, but what will you name ?
nantuko + treetop ? Fine lemme wish a rude awakening or pop my
Marit Lage. BRing, then ok, let's start the Mishra's beatdown. They'll need 4 needle on board to stop mishra+nantuko+treetop+bring ... while I'll have plenty of time to wish for an additional, non-pithable win. And well, Boseiju laughs at chalice @2 btw

Same for propaganda. Pop a ML and then pay your messy 2 or 4 ...

I'm aware that the deck has some messy match-ups but I never said it was a perfect deck, neither a perfect list. But, currently, in the european meta, it fits the bill nicely. I'm still aware to MD suggestion to overcome those problems but I fear that unless Wotc print a needle land, a meddling land or a stifle land, it'll remain unsolved.

[Stormscape Master]

I think if STAX were to set chalice, it'd be for 1, so the 43 land player cannot get massive amounts of land into play all at once. Anyway though it seems that the European meta is lacking a lot of combo, so it doesn't appear that you'll need to worry too much about that. Why are the zuran orbs in the sideboard? Maybe for your combo matchup you could replace the zuran orbs with mana maze or pyrostatic pillar, although that kind of hurts you as well.

[sephorusFR]

Chalice @1 on the play is horrible I concede.
As for the zuran, they get removed for +3 tormod's crypt and +1 gaea's blessing

[rocked]

the deck is really good and has a nice concept but it automatically dies to price of progress

NOTHING "automatically dies" to anything. Please add something constructive next time, or I'll be forced to be a not-nice mod.

[Xathrax]

Well Price of progress really hurts. Getting 12-14 damage for 2 mana can be really lethal. You will almost always die if 2 of those resolve. As I remember only burn runs PoP, but that's probably a pretty bad matchup anyway ?

[Georgjorge]

I would definitely prefer the second version including Burning Wish, because as mentioned above, there are some (frequently-played) cards which can really give the land deck headaches, such as Chalice, Ghostly Prison or recurring Wastelands via Crucible. Burning Wish, or something similar flexible, is therefore probably a Must in order to answer those cards.

Does the combo matchup really hurt that bad, even with the ability to play a second-turn Devastating Dreams via Wish ? Maybe cutting some cards from the Wishboard (for example Flashfires and Tsunami) in order to play Abeyance or Orim's Chant...

[Xathrax]

Devestating Dreams doesn't save you vs combo since they can kill you with just 1 land on the board. Also recurring wasteland isn't that bad since you can play 2 lands from your yard with exploration and cruicible

[Merlyn]

I have played this deck a lot over a few months and have tried many different maindeck ideas.
The problem arises with one thing.... dredging.
The deck engine is LFTL and the continual dredging usually means your answers end up in the graveyard.
The new MVP of my sideboard is OBLITERATE. I have a high amount of threshold decks here and against them or any control deck you play the deck in stall mode until you get to 10 mana, float 1G and BOOM, cast a LFTL and since your exploration/MB stays you are away, whileyou opponent is going WTF?!?!
Against bloodmoon i use flashback answers, Ray of Revelation being the best if your meta runs Blood Moon or Price Of Progress.
Here is my current decklist

Deck

2 Vesuva 1 Secluded Steppe 1 Forgotten Cave 2 Tranquil Thicket 2 Nantuko Monastery 4 Mishra's Factory 2 Barbarian Ring 2 The Tabernacle At Pendrell Vale 4 Windswept Heath 3 Savannah 4 Taiga 4 Wasteland 1 Ghost Quarter 4 Rishadan Port 3 Treetop Village 4 Maze Of Ith 2 Roar Of The Wurm 3 Mulch 4 Life From The Loam 4 Exploration 4 Manabond S/B 3 Obliterate 1 Riftstone Portal 1 The Tabernacle At Pendrell Vale 4 Zuran Orb 4 Rule Of Law 2 Ray Of Revelation

I would like to lose the Roar of the Worm's, perhaps put 2 more manland in. The 4 Rule Of Law are pretty good against combo, giving you a bit more time to geta lock in with ports.

[sephorusFR]

I run my list on variosu field lately.
Burn is definitively a hard or even unwinanble match-up. The 4 SB Zuran Orb is a must and should stay. I've been disappointed by dark depths ( I was warned) and MD bosiju/glacial chasm as they either clutter my startign hands or came too late despice 3 crop rotation.

Merlyn raised a very valid point and I think we should work from there :
we dredge our answer away so we need a way to replay them. My initial
attempt was 1-2 recoup but they proven themselves too slow especially when you need to flashback the recoup itself. MD flashbackable answers are needed. Ray of Revelation is good vs blood moon and suppresion field(if you have some basic forets running), ancient grudge is good vs ankh of mishra,tsabo' web (i lost like 7 matches vs this horror).

I also like the ghost quarter as they help to deprive opponents from valuable basic lands. I think a 2/2 split with wasteland is maybe doable. Vesuva is however a bad card I think,
as the lands you want to copy are either legendary or sacrifiable. I may see it copy a man land but it's really subpar IMHO.

The SB obliterate is also very good and probably better than tsunami/flashfires vs any control deck. Same for Rule of law and combo decks. Maybe the size of the wishboard could be resized to incorporate this as I still think the BWish is the way to add versatility and undredgable kill to thte deck. I also ponders the way to add Living Wish to hide some needed lands in the SB and maybe a random Kamahl, fist of krosa in it.

[Avatar of Kokusho]

Rude Awakening, sirs.

Burning Wish is definitely the way to go, here. There are so many things that you can go look for (Boiling Seas comes to mind) that will help certain matchups...and there's some cruddy card from Kamigawa that gives you life equal to the number of lands you control. If you had some blue sources, Prahv could help, but as it is, I think you pretty much have to use Orbs against Burn and the like.

[emidln]

When me and my friend John tuned 43Lands against Combo for the Kettering Lotus tournament we ended up including 3x Burning Wish, 2x Recoup with notable cards like Boiling Seas and Haunting Echoes in the sideboard. Haunting Echoes serves as an additional win condition and an out to some matchups we were finding somewhat difficult. I think we ended up with Chalice of the Void in the sideboard or maindeck as well, although I don't remember where exactly it ended up.

[Xathrax]

Why use Prahv when you have maze of ith ? Oh and I really like Vesuva there. Seems like really good tech to me.

Chalice seem really bad SB material. You can't set it at 1 or 2 since it really hurts your deck

[Merlyn]

Thanx Xathrax, the vesuva are a good inclusion but no more than 2. At worst they are another CITPT green source or Rish Port, At best they are Wasteland 5 & 6 or Maze in aggro matchup.
As i said, i have really tried the burning wish route, but more often than not see them tossed in the graveyard when getting my Loam back.