Much Abrew: Splendid Landfall (Standard)

Tweet by SaffronOlive // Mar 13, 2017

video standard Much Abrew About Nothing

Hello, everyone! Welcome to another episode of Much Abrew About Nothing. Last week, we had a pretty tight race for most popular Instant Deck Tech between Splendid Landfall in Standard and Eldritch-osaurus Elves in Modern. While the Modern deck put up a good fight (and if you want to see Eldritch-osaurus Elves, check out the stream replay), in the end, it was the Splendid Reclamation combo deck that came out on top. As such, this week, we are heading to Standard to play a deck that's looking to fill its graveyard with lands and then get them all back with Splendid Reclamation to get a ton of landfall triggers from Retreat to Hagra and Retreat to Emeria. While the deck looks interesting and has some powerful cards in Walking Ballista, Tireless Tracker, and Grim Flayer, it's also very different from anything else happening in Aether Revolt Standard. Will it actually work? Let's see!

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Splendid Landfall: Instant Deck Tech

Splendid Landfall vs. GB Constrictor (Match 1)

Splendid Landfall vs. WB Aggro (Match 2)

Splendid Landfall vs. Abzan Panharmonicon (Match 3)

Splendid Landfall vs. UR Colossus (Match 4)

Splendid Landfall vs. GR Energy (Match 5)

Splendid Landfall: Wrap-Up

Discussion

First off, we finished our matches 3-2, which is pretty reasonable, and we even managed to take down one of the big three Standard decks in GB Constrictor.

On the other hand, most of the times when we lost, it felt like we were losing to ourselves, mostly because our mana can be incredibly clunky.

While I understand the reasoning behind the mana base (we need lots of basic lands to search up with various effects), the breakdown of two dual lands, 8 colorless land tutors (Evolving Wilds, Blighted Woodland, and Warped Landscape, which are helpful with Splendid Reclamation), and 17 basics felt really bad. There were simply too many games where we couldn't cast our stuff on time in the early game. As such, if I play this deck again, the first thing I want to do it tighten up the mana, with maybe 8 duals, 6 colorless land tutors (likely dropping Warped Landscape), and maybe 11 basics. This, in and of itself, will improve the deck a ton.

The good aspects of the deck are that it does a great job of gumming up the board thanks to Retreat to Emeria and that the combo of Retreat to Hagra and Walking Ballista worked really well.

We also just have a reasonable number of good Magic cards in Grim Flayer, Tireless Tracker, and Walking Ballista, which helps our cause.

Apart from the lands, the only real change I'd make to the deck is cutting some of the one-ofs. Yahenni's Expertise is likely better as a sideboard card than a main-deck card at the moment, Ghirapur Orrery was super-high variance, being a dead card many games and then game-winning in others. And don't get me started about World Breaker. While the Eldrazi itself is fine, the fact that it forced a copy of Wastes into our deck was amazingly annoying. While the colorless land probably isn't as bad as it felt, it provided a constant reminder of just how bad our mana was in this deck every time we drew it.

So, should you give Splendid Landfall a try? I think the answer is yes, especially if you fix the mana base. The idea was fun, and it was more competitive than it looked. I could imagine it being good enough to take down some games at FNM, especially if you aren't losing to your own mana base too often!

Conclusion

Anyway, that's all for today. Don't forget to vote for next week's deck by liking, commenting on, and subscribing to Instant Deck Tech videos. As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.