MTG Salvation

The most common misplays I've seen people (including myself) make are playing lands in the wrong order and fetching incorrectly (be it lands or equipment).

I board in Jitte versus merfolk, but had gotten into the bad habit of always fetching Batterskull first. Pithing Needle wrecked me. Jace wasn't even enough. The next game, I (correctly) got Jitte first, on turn two no less and it STILL WASN'T FAST ENOUGH EVEN THOUGH I PATHED HIS LORD OF ATLANTIS.

Goddamn!

Quote from Nil

Can any one explain me how works man lands and equipment?

I thinkwhat you mean is this:

At EOT, your man becomes a land again (corny pun, but I couldn't help it). When state-based actions are checked, your equipment becomes unequipped as it is equipping an illegal target (equipments basically have "enchant target creature you control"). Next turn you will have to reequip it.

On Merfolk: when I was deciding which version to use, Fish is the reason I decided against pure UW. I never won a practice match. If you expect Merfolk fish, I would reccomend testing UWr for Lavamancer and Firespout post sb, or playing black for discard.

Raggedjoe,

Thanks for the explanation against Merfolk. I'm very curious about this. I'm primarily a B/W pilot, but I am trying to slowly acquire something blue for my second deck of choice.

In your opinion, would it be good to start acquiring u/w or Merfolk? It seems like your answer is Merfolk. If you could explain why, that will be great. I'm curious especially as recent tournaments has seen a decline in the number of Merfolk decks. Do you think it's future is bright? Would love to know.

Thanks!

If you're running U/W and expect a lot of Merfolk, you could always try some Llawans.

Merfolk, however, is still the most consistently powerful deck in the format right now.

Quote from glurman

The most common misplays I've seen people (including myself) make are playing lands in the wrong order and fetching incorrectly (be it lands or equipment).

Do you have any off-the-top-of-your-head examples of land plays in the wrong order? I'd be really interested in seeing some discussion on that.

I haven't thought about it too deeply but I find myself doing things like - say I have a mystic and a fetch and a dual in my opening hand - I'll drop the fetch first, so I can drop the mystic even if they have wasteland (I am not sure if this is right or not, but it seems reasonable, and I take things like 'do I have a brainstorm I want a fetch for later' into account, and this might be too basic a discussion for a deck thread ...)

Quote from glurman

If you're running U/W and expect a lot of Merfolk, you could always try some Llawans.

Merfolk, however, is still the most consistently powerful deck in the format right now.

This. Merfolk is one of the oldest and most powerful legacy decks, and for a good reason. Merfolk has few to no terrible matchups, and a handful of very good matchups. UW Landstill is one of thier very good matchups, so it is not surprising that UW Stoneblade would be as well. Grim Lavamancer should improve your matchup by picking off their lords as they hit. BW decks should have an easier time as well, as merfolk has never been a fan of discard decks.

As a merfolk player, I'd just like to say that UW stoneblade can actually be a pretty rough matchup for us if you just swords/counter our Lord of Atlantis and stick an early stoneforge into batterskull. Batterskull is easily the biggest pain I've ever dealt with as merfolk, worse than lavamancer and SoFaI. Both of those can be played around by sticking two lords in one turn and getting their P/T to 3, or by playing Kira, Great Glass-Spinner. I've won many games in which one of the two was played without much trouble, especially out of the board with dismember. Also, if you see a lot of merfolk in your meta, play visions as opposed to standstill. Standstill is only doing us a favor, and visions is only counterable by FoW as merfolk in most cases.

Merfolk's best card against Stoneblade of any variety is Coralhelm Commander.

Hi all. I've lurked these boards for a while and this is my first time posting. I wanted to ask for some advice for my UW Stoneforge Mystic deck. I figured this thread was the place for it even if it started out as UW Landstill because it gradually evolved into Stoneblade after adding the Stoneforge Mystic package:



Ignore the really bad mana-base. I'm currently in the process of getting three more Tundras to replace the Hallowed Fountains and while I don't have the Flooded Strands for a proper fetchland base, the ones I've got haven't given me problems yet.

So anyway, my questions:

1. Does Daze make sense in this deck? I know that it is incompatible with the Landstill strategy but I find it's nice to have another free counterspell to protect Stoneforge Mystic long enough for her to drop Batterskull into play. Still not sure about it, though.
2. Vendilion Clique is notably absent from my list. Some lists run a couple of them yet others run only one or none at all. Is it vital to the deck?
3. I wanted to get some opinions on Standstill vs. Ancestral Vision. I have a playset of Standstill and they're downright amazing in some matchups, but hilariously bad in others. Ancestral Vision seems like it's less exciting or potent, but it is consistently good. Still don't know which to include.

Quote from Grand Superior

Hi all. I've lurked these boards for a while and this is my first time posting. I wanted to ask for some advice for my UW Stoneforge Mystic deck. I figured this thread was the place for it even if it started out as UW Landstill because it gradually evolved into Stoneblade after adding the Stoneforge Mystic package:

glurman's DeckMagic OnlineOCTGN2ApprenticeBuy These Cards
4 Stoneforge Mystic 4 Brainstorm 2 Daze 4 Force of Will 4 Mental Misstep 3 Spell Snare 4 Swords To Plowshares 4 Jace, the Mind Sculptor 4 Standstill 1 Batterskull 1 Sword of Body and Mind 1 Crucible of Worlds	4 Island 1 Plains 1 Flooded Strand 3 Hallowed Fountain 2 Marsh Flats 4 Mishra's Factory 4 Polluted Delta 1 Tundra 4 Wasteland	Sideboard 1 Batterskull 1 Manriki-Gusari 2 Pithing Needle 1 Relic of Progenitus 1 Tormod's Crypt 2 Vedalken Shackles 3 Path to Exile 2 Llawan, Cephalid Empress 2 Meddling Mage

Ignore the really bad mana-base. I'm currently in the process of getting three more Tundras to replace the Hallowed Fountains and while I don't have the Flooded Strands for a proper fetchland base, the ones I've got haven't given me problems yet.

So anyway, my questions:

1. Does Daze make sense in this deck? I know that it is incompatible with the Landstill strategy but I find it's nice to have another free counterspell to protect Stoneforge Mystic long enough for her to drop Batterskull into play. Still not sure about it, though.
2. Vendilion Clique is notably absent from my list. Some lists run a couple of them yet others run only one or none at all. Is it vital to the deck?
3. I wanted to get some opinions on Standstill vs. Ancestral Vision. I have a playset of Standstill and they're downright amazing in some matchups, but hilariously bad in others. Ancestral Vision seems like it's less exciting or potent, but it is consistently good. Still don't know which to include.

1) No, it doesn't. Daze is a strictly tempo card. While we do run Misstep and Spell Snare, which are also run in some tempo decks, those are hard counters. We can't afford to run soft counter "tech". We're a control build.

2) Vendilion Clique is essential. Try out two or three main, with the ability to go to four post-sb. This is very important with Show and Tell decks still sneaking around.

3) I used to run Standstill, and I can say that Vision is just... way better. The lack of usefulness immediately is completely fine considering that sometimes Standstill is flatout dead. Decks still run AEther Vial and Planeswalkers.

Quote from glurman

Merfolk's best card against Stoneblade of any variety is Coralhelm Commander.

Too true. I play Bw and bring in Pyhrexian Revokers from the board which always name Commander unless they have a vial before I get a Revoker. I even have more defense to the Commander than the Uw builds in the form of Bitterblossom.

At the last tourney I played in, I had a guy side out half his Commanders. He laughed when I named it with Revoker, telling me afterwards he sided them out, and I laughed because it's the only thing I really don't want to see hit their side of the table.

@ Grand Superior:
Drop the two dazes and put in 2 Cliques and you'll be golden. Also, Vision vs. Standstill is totally just a meta call. If you're playing against a ton of control I'd recommend Vision. However, one really isn't better then the other, although Standstill builds do have a higher win percentage.

That's why Wrath of God is played, one might say.

Quote from Qwerty

Kira is annoying to Stoneblade, really really really annoying, and decks that run truth are exceptional at alpha striking out of nowhere.

When playing against fish we need the mass removal, they will out tempo us, and its up to us the blade player to answer them, weve got to take the game to them or we will lose.

IMO the builds dipping for firespout, EE and lavamacer have the best chance of hurting fish, the problem is we need to slow them down while avoiding their tempo gain, only mass removal will do this

If you're playing Uw I agree, however, like I said in my post, I'm playing Bw and that's simply not the case for me.

Kira is annoying, but I have a ton of removal, and discard, and she often comes down too late for the fish player.

I'm something like 9-2 against Fish in big tournaments and would love to play against them every round. One loss was due to a mulligan to 4 with 3 Dark Confidants and a Wasteland... and the other was a misplay on my part right after Batterskull came out and I wasn't used to the card in general.

Quote from glurman

That's why Wrath of God is played, one might say.

I still think Retribution of the Meek would be better. It lets mana dorks, Bob, and Lavamancer live, but except for Zoo, what decks might we want a sweeper against that runs these things?

Not like that it isn't. To be blunt, its a poor legacy version of a bad pre-ban standard deck. You need more disruption and card advantage to survive in legacy. That deck is fundamentally different from StoneBlade, in that that list looks like it wants to be an aggro deck rather than a control based deck. The lack of any creature removal is just horrible... there's a reason every deck that plays white has StP or PtE in it. I would suggest you look at mono-white Taxes, as it is closer to what I think you want than StoneBlade is.

Quote from Qwerty

[Center]

But at best we see that in the board and frankly any deck that can run wrath, will most likely be better off running EE just because it gives more utility. I use 3 slots for mass removal. Cards like spout and EE rarely are dead in game 1, where as wraths 4cc can be relegating it to the board. And is it worth us running cards main deck just for one deck type?

The reason you run Wrath is that it is a flexible sweeper that kills Thrun. EE doesn't kill Thrun.

Since i have 4 stoneforge mystics i was testing a deck like this.

But after a bit of thought i think the following deck is a bit better?

Any thoughts about this?

the first deck is to deny the lands from your opponent with vindicates, wastelands and stifleing the fetches.
So he gets a slow start and giving you a chance to build up a better boardposition then him

the second has the hand disruption package to slow him down a bit.

And a chance to go totally nuts:
T1 mox diamond, land, stoneforge mystic
T2 land mirran crusader
T3 sword of fire and ice swing for a load and draw 2 cards and have a creature with pro red, blue, black and green

a man can dream right?

@ ibraman,

your second list is very close to the current Deadguy Ale 2.0 lists. There is a thread (non-stickied) discussing the deck if you want more in depth discussion on that particular style of Stoneblade. You might find it more helpful than this as it's so much more focused.