I agree with the use of Standstill in this deck. I see this as an aggressive Landstill deck. Chrome Mox looks terrible, btw. The tempo isn't impressive enough for the costs; I prefer lands (which play nicely under Standstill).

// Lands - 24
4 Flooded Strand
2 Windswept Heath
2 Polluted Delta
1 Plains
4 Island
3 Hallowed Fountain
4 Mutavault
4 Tectonic Edge (gotta make sure that Standstill is consistently asymmetrical)

// SFM Package - 8
4 Stoneforge Mystic
1 Batterskull
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
1 Sword of Feast and Famine
1 Umezawa's Jitte (the first equipment card that belongs in an eternal deck)

// Bombs - 10
4 Standstill
4 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Elspeth, Knight-Errant (very good with equipment, and excellent Landstill control card and win con)

// Control - 18
4 Path to Exile
4 Mental Misstep
4 Spell Snare
4 Counterspell
2 Cryptic Command


peace,
4eak

You are right about the anti-synergy created by having both in your deck. However, I believe that there is no clear cut winner here... I think that a turn 2 Standstill is far superior to a turn 2 Ancestral Visions, however a turn 9 Standstill is far worse than a turn 9 AV.

I've cut all the Standstill's from my deck, upping my AV count to 4 and adding a single Fact or Fiction to the main deck. So far it's been pretty stellar.

@Standstill: Playing a card with the expectation of a misplay is just poor deck building.
That being said, it isn't wrong to play Standstill, just have to make sure you want it for the right reasons.

I don't know what anyone means about Vial + Standstill being an anti-synergy. It's the perfect synergy, and drives a lot of Legacy aggro-control shells. With the unbanning of Vial, it might be worth a serious look, as Vial provides a lot of services to a deck like this, or even a Faeries shell:

1. It allows you to slip creatures under countermagic once it resolves.
2. It's bait for countermagic while you sculpt your hand and use your efficient counters.
3. It baits them into using their Pridemage/Grudge early, as Vial can easily bury them in mana advantage just as quickly as a swinging Feast and Famine does.
4. You can, in fact, play Standstill.

In all honesty, I would probably even go as far as to test Standstill in Faeries if I could afford them. As you stated earlier, so many people have absolutely no idea how to play against it properly, and 3 cards is rarely something to scoff at, especially when it didn't cost you full retail.

What are your thoughts about having both standstill and vial in this deck after unbanning vial? Isn't the creature count to low for the vial to be effective? It is sure that standstill's interaction with vial is quite nice but still both cards are possibly blank in the late game as is vial with no creatures in hand. Having visions in place of standstill requires some changes to the manabase to ensure probability of turn 1 suspend. Are the visions better than standstill?