31Land

sc4rs · Joined: 23 Mar 2006 Posts: 406

Here's my newest work - I didn't take an existing version of the extended deck or the bad T2 deck, instead I build the deck with the cards as I thought would work, then edited as necessary to stabilize the mana and the game vs. various decks.

// Deck file for Magic Workstation (http://www.magicworkstation.com)

// Lands
4 [TSP] Terramorphic Expanse
7 [MI] Forest (1)
4 [7E] Island (4)
4 [9E] Quicksand
3 [US] Mountain (2)
2 [TSP] Urza's Factory
1 [TSB] Desert
2 [GP] Stomping Ground
2 [DIS] Breeding Pool
2 [GP] Steam Vents

// Creatures
4 [RAV] Drift of Phantasms

// Spells
4 [RAV] Life from the Loam
4 [9E] Trade Routes
4 [TSB] Stormbind
4 [9E] Summer Bloom
4 [TSB] Hail Storm
4 [RAV] Muddle the Mixture
1 [9E] Naturalize

// Sideboard
SB: 2 [9E] Naturalize
SB: 4 [CS] Freyalise's Radiance
SB: 4 [RAV] Shadow of Doubt
SB: 2 [9E] Defense Grid
SB: 3 [GP] Savage Twister

Here's the thoughts behind the choices.

The deck is obviously based around the LftL + Stormbind "combo" With six mana out it deals 4 damage per turn, and with eight mana it deals 6 per turn. (If you only have four, it deals 2, but normally by the time you get both out you'll have around six.) With 31 lands in the deck, eight of which sacrifice on their own account, you'll have plenty of ways to get the lands in your graveyard early on for LftL. Stormbind is great board control even without LftL. Plus, with Trade Routes, you can pay 1 to toss a land to your hand for Stormbind, or dig for LftL, or even dredge it back if it's past your draw step. These three are essential to the deck functioning, and the core of the deck as is.

Muddle the Mixture and Drift of Phantasms both serve double duty as tutors (Drift gets Stormbind and Hail Storm, and Muddle gets literally everything else, including sideboard) as well as anti-control and anti-agro, respectively. Muddle is great against the odd maindeck Mortify and Disenchant that are aimed at your Stormbinds, and Drift is great for slowing down larger creatures in agro (ones that don't die to the Hail Storms)

Hail Storm is a metagame call against WW and BDW, because Soltari Priest and Paladin En-Vec (though unpopular) both have protection from red, meaning Savage Twister and Stormbind can't hit them. The Savage Twisters are on sideboard for green based agro that have creatures that Hail Storm won't kill (Ohran Viper, CotH tokens, Burning-Tree Shaman, etc etc).

The 1x Naturalize main is for a tutor target, for annoying win conditions, (Sacred Mesa, Debtor's Knell, Stormbind) protection (Worship), and other various cards (Gauntlet of Power, Phyrexian Arena, etc)

Summer Bloom = the best mana accel possible in this deck. Will almost always give you six mana on turn three if you draw it. Even with five lands, you can hit six if you also have a Terramorphic Expanse and a LftL if you play the Bloom turn 2, drop the two lands you do have in hand, play LftL, get back Expanse, and play it the same turn. This allows for turn 3 Stormbind with Muddle backup for against Mortify, etc.

The lands - Quicksand and Terramorphic Expanse are houses with LftL, the land mix generally has been giving me enough of what I need, especially with the expanses, so I don't think the colored sources need fixing. The 1x Desert is a preference call, because I hate Soltari Priest (note the Hail Storms) and Savannah Lions, and the 2x Urza's Factory are alternate win conditions if worse comes to worse and they drop an Ivory Mask and counter my Naturalize or something equally dumb.

Sideboard contains Freyalese's Radiance tech against snow control (keep their board tapped down for fourish turns, more late game), Shadow of Doubt for against Dragonstorm, Defense Grid for mono U or other control decks, Savage Twister for agro, and more Naturalizes for COP: Red, etc.

This deck seems to be doing very well against control, because usually resolving an early Stormbind is enough to sit behind, and all their creature removal is dead. Against agro, it depends on how many Quicksands/Deserts you draw and how many Hail Storms or Drifts you can draw/tutor your way into. Against Dragonstorm, I have so far never failed to lose game one about as hard as I possibly could. Usually, though, the second and third games are 50/50 after being able to tutor up an answer to Dragonstorm and (usually) having enough lands not to have to worry about Gigadrowse. Every once in a while I set up the combo fast enough to win before they combo off, but not often. As usual, Dragonstorm is the worst enemy of a deck with no disruption.

Feel free to comment, etc. I'm trying to come up with a rogue idea and refine it every two or so weeks, if you like these ideas and want to play around with this or other decks I've built, feel free. The other ones are on the forums, one is WUB Blinking Touch, and the other is Gardening Gloves, a Gr sort-of-Mana Ramp variant.

theironman46 · Joined: 03 May 2006 Posts: 8

I think you could really use Remand. The one downside to playing a lot of enchantments is that you leave your opponent a lot of ways to kill those enchantments considering most decks (barring Satanic Sligh), run enchantment hate. Then again, you do have a lot of them. Either way, Remand is one of (if not the) best cards in Standard so I wouldn't be afraid to run it. I think you could also use another kill condition besides Stormbind. Stormbind is great, but I think it'd be nice to have 6-8 kill conditions. Possibly even Jolrael for all those tender lands (3/3 beats ftw!), or a good old fashioned Demonfire. Either way, I think it's dangerous to rely on four cards to win.

Also for the sideboard, Teferi > Defense Grid in my opinion. If you can support the blue I'd go for him, but then again, you don't have many creatures.

KeySam · Joined: 14 Oct 2005 Posts: 619

i played a quit similar deck but not with stormbind i played it with lightning storm, you could realy use this good and in addition i also would play with conflagrate i think 2 versions should be enough. Then i would kick 2 drift of phantasam add therefore 2 lightning storm. Kick 1 muddle the mixture 1 hailstorm and add 2 conflagrate. I had some serious problems with the deck cause its just damn vounarable to counter or enchanment destruction cause to realy go off you need Trade Routes and you have no way to bring it from grave to play. Thats why i threw it away. But maybe with all your transmuters you can do something against this Smile

gl hf with the deck i hope i could help a bit

P.s. you could also add 1 kheer keep also nice vs aggro to block 1 creature per turn. (block orhan viper is just nice with a 0/1 token)

Craze · Joined: 30 Jan 2005 Posts: 5647 Location: Indiana, U

I think the biggest question to be asked here, is where are your counters?
Land.dec's NEED counters

DRINKALCOHOL · Joined: 28 Mar 2006 Posts: 265 Location: New Gunsqu

actually, the biggest question is, why 31land.dec?????????????

ant900 · Joined: 11 Oct 2004 Posts: 2505 Location: somewhere

43 land.dec is soo much better Razz

sounds interesting I might try it out

Pete278 · Joined: 03 Jun 2005 Posts: 48

Hold on. Bad t2 deck? That bad t2 deck, regardless of how good it is or not, still owns this bad piece of crap.

JonPatton · Joined: 11 Dec 2005 Posts: 157

I've been toying with a pet deck for some time that works similarly, and here's what I've found:

First, you need, NEED a way to handle large things that come out of graveyards and kick your butt. Two points of red damage will not do that.

Second, the deck really, really, wants trade routes on the board . . . and wants it in its opening hand . . . but never wants to draw more than one. You can transmute for one with Muddle. Why play more than two?

Summer Bloom just doesn't do enough. Yeah, sometimes you get to drop your hand into play, but lands just aren't that powerful in type 2 right now. You can handle weenies with them, but anything bigger than a 2/2 requires more than one card (stormbind) or more than one turn (two quicksands) to deal with. You can shore this up by playing mouth of Rhonom, but then you start running into another problem . . . namely, that you don't want to see more than one copy of those lands per turn, and there's no good Intuition-style card in Type 2 that dumps the extra copies in the grave and makes sure you don't get color screwed.

Hail Storm deals with the same things quicksand and factory deal with . . . which are not the cards you are going to lose to. This is fine against Boros, but against ANY other creature deck in the game, you're at a severe disadvantage.

Drift may transmute for Storm Bind . . . but do you ever need more than one? Try wall of Roots. It comes down a turn sooner, and gives you mana against decks that you don't need the blocker for. Also, you have no way to win besides dealing a few damage per turn. You have all this mana -- what's wrong with adding in a hard-to-kill critter or two? What about DEMONFIRE? Rar! But then, you still run into the problem where you have to mobilize too many resources to stay alive.

sc4rs · Joined: 23 Mar 2006 Posts: 406

Void06 · Joined: 31 Dec 2004 Posts: 179

Karoos???????????????????

JonPatton · Joined: 11 Dec 2005 Posts: 157

I know that other version is terrible. In fact, I said so at the time. I feel like there's a shell of a deck here, it's just missing a few tools to make it truly competitive. And the biggest thing it's missing is lands that turn into creatures. (Sviglos doesn't count because you need to run lots of creatures.) Basically, we have lands that make creatures very slowly, and lands that kill creatures. We also don't have lands that destroy other lands (Quarter doesn't count because they'll still get a land unless they're Solar Flare), which is something legacy does have . . . dust bowl would have been killer in this enrivonment. We also can't reuse a Summer Bloom effect.

I'm interested in some match data. Can you give us a sample game against a few architypes, or at least describe what you've run into, what problems you've had?

A couple karoos wouldn't be a terrible idea. Have they been tested? Make your land drop, same amount of mana being spent, and you send a land to your hand to be used . . .

I probably mispoke on the color screw issues; you're right, your deck does run a lot of colored mana sources. BUT. When you have a tutor-style effect, you can run only one or two of those utility lands . . . which means you can dip into more dual lands. Which in turn frees up spell slots. Right now, this deck is closer to a port of extended CAL, even running basically the same number of cards. Of course, no Confinement. So.

I actually run four colors in mine (4 Trokairs + 2 Ghost Quarter engine), base green-white, and run Trade Routes as my blue card. This gives you Wrath, which can kill utility creatures, COP:Red, which is a way to deal with Solifuge (who's bad news, by the way), optional condemns, and the Trokair engine is every bit as good as basics + expanse. But it loses the transmute, which I think is the best aspect of your deck. (Aside from the Trade Routes - Life engine, which I feel wasn't given enough consideration). But you have a big advantage -- you could run Blood Moon in the SB.

Oh, one card that I felt gave me a lot of trouble was Faith's Fetters. It shuts down your victory conditions or, worse, Trade Routes, and there isn't a flashback way to destroy enchantments in the environment. It leaves you top decking your Naturalizes.

P.S. Consider a man-plan in the side, which has always been a good option for creature-less decks. Kudzu would get huge with recurring expanses, and they can't keep in good creature kill AND good enchantment kill in high enough numbers and still keep their own plan.

GRAH · Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 599

Call of the Herd would be a good move. It's midgame defense and you can play it even if you Dredge it.

Chaosweaver · Joined: 07 Apr 2005 Posts: 1350 Location: Igloo town

seriously, just build the old one, and just take out the azuza for counter's and other crap. then you have urza's factory, be like turn 3 ex. 2/2 or wtv from that you have kudzu, and the curent meta doesnt have that much hate, like worst case any given flare deck bc they have wog, and mort if its black, then your like infi karoo, invoke win, demonfire win, token win, and the rest gets silly, you dont need storm bind that much, its just not needed that much ( god i love comma's) ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,and,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,f,u,r,t,h,e,r,,,m,o,r,e,
yeah

sc4rs · Joined: 23 Mar 2006 Posts: 406

I have no idea what BigShow just said.

As for the pertinent question, as of right now, the deck can't beat green-based agro because the land creature-hate just isn't strong enough, or it sets you back too much, to take out 3/3s like Watchwolf and Scab-Clan Mauler, let alone Loxodon Heirarch, Firemane Angel, and the like. This deck beats Boros but only after heavy metagame calls, and against control, the matchup is iffy at best. Plus, Dragonstorm rapes the deck. No good matchups = a sign that the deck is fundamentally just not that good.

While the Stormbind + LftL + Trade Routes engine works, I don't think the combination of RGU gives enough board control to back it up. The board also needs too many cards in too little space. Aside from adding another color or completely overhauling the entire idea, I think this is chalked up to a big "for-fun-only" for this deck. Not nearly as competitive as the other two I posted. I'll try to do better next week.

Chaosweaver · Joined: 07 Apr 2005 Posts: 1350 Location: Igloo town