I can't test this right now, so you can be the guinea pig and let us know. It should work conceptually, but I don't know off-hand how picky the EntriesCount tag is going to be about its context.

<mt:Pages tags="whatever">
    <mt:If tag="EntriesCount" ne="0">
        Your list output goes here.
    <mt:Else>
        Otherwise, this will be shown.
    </mt:If>
</mt:Pages>

You can, of course, just drop the Else.

We're hopefully taking advantage of the fact that as far as the data is concerned, pages are mostly just a special variety of entries(They're even in the same db table.) On the off chance this doesn't work, like if EntriesCount demands to be inside an Entries block(there's no PagesCount equivalent), you might try re-doing the Pages container as Entries with the class_type attribute set to "page" to force it to look at pages instead.

Thanks Su. Your first guess works. :)

It doesn't quite solve my problem though because if mt:pages is empty, it won't spit out what's inside of it anyways (my "list"). What I want to hide is the title of the list, if there is no list to show...

eg:

Now I guess I'd have to put all that html that's outside the Pages container, inside of it and then, if there is a list to print, keep it from being iterated and repeated...

sorta like this:

List of pages

anyways. in my current case, i only wan tto show the one most recent anyways so it's ok, but what if...

Now I need to go find out why multi-blog include_blog= doesn't work in Dynamic templates... and how to fix that.

um... totally forgot about mt:PagesHeader and mt:PagesFooter

case closed. thnx to Su.

I have actually used this, without the PagesHeader/Footer tags. Perhaps some of it does what you want?

<!-- filtered pages. Show only pages from some folders. -->
<mt:setvarblock name="mainpagelist">
<!-- I use this to generate a variable block, and then just call
the variable block in the main index template -->
<MTPages lastn="5" tag="NOT @sticky" sort_by="authored_on"
    sort_order="descend">
    <MTIfNonEmpty tag="pagefolder">
    <!-- will not show pages without a folder-->
    <!-- set variables -->
    <mt:setvar name="docsfolder" value="Docs">
    <mt:setvar name="webnotesfolder" value="Webnotes">
    <mt:setvarblockname="thisfoldername"><mt:folderlabel></mt:setvarblock>

    <!-- exclude docs and webnotes folders. There must be a more
        efficient way to do this; I just don't know it-->
    <mt:unless name="thisfoldername" eq="$docsfolder">
    <mt:unless name="thisfoldername" eq="$webnotesfolder">

    <!-- this is to 'auto-expire' pages after a given date using
        a date custom field for each page using the DateTags
        plugin from staggernation.com-->
    <mt:ifnonempty tag="PageDataExpiryDate">
    <!--pagedataexpirydate is the date custom field-->
    <!-- if expiry date has not yet passed-->
    <MTIfDateBeforeOrEqual date="[MTDate format='%m/%d/%y']"
        target="[MTPageDataExpiryDate format='%m/%d/%y']">
    <div>
    <h2>
    <a href="<mt:pagepermalink />" title="<mt:pagetitle>">
    <$MTPageTitle filters="markdown_with_smartypants" remove_html="1"$>
    </a>
    </h2>
    <div>
    <!-- what follows is a cocktail of macros. I use Andy Yaco-Mink's
        better word limit from
        http://tech.huffingtonpost.com/2006/03/better-word-limit.html
        to generate a trailing ellipsis (...) after 45 words in the
        page body. Then I use MTMacros to swap the ... for "more"
        with "more" linked the page's permalink -->
    <MTMacroDefine name="paras" string="...">
    &#133;[<a href="<$MTPagePermalink$>#more"
        title="Continue reading &quot;<$MTPageTitle$>&quot;">
            more
            </a>]</p>
    </MTMacroDefine>
    <$MTPageBody process_tags="1" formatted_words="45"
        apply_macros="1"$>
    </div>
    <div>
    <mt:pagedate format="%B %e, %Y">&nbsp;&#124;&nbsp;<mt: folderlabel>
    </div>
    </div>
    </MTIfDateBeforeOrEqual>
    <mt:else>
    <!-- if no expiry date is explicitly set: same as above, but it
        uses DateTags offset functionality to create an expiry date
        60 days from the date of the post, and only shows the post
        or page if it is within that 60 day stretch -->
    <MTIfDateWithin date="[MTDate format='%m/%d/%y']"
        start="[MTPageDate format='%m/%d/%y']"
        end="[MTPageDate format='%m/%d/%y']" end_adjust="60">
    <div>
    <h2>
    <a href="<mt:pagepermalink />" title="<mt:pagetitle>">
        <$MTPageTitle filters="markdown_with_smartypants"
        remove_html="1"$>
    </a>
    </h2>
    <div>
    <MTMacroDefine name="paras" string="...">
    &#133;[<a href="<$MTPagePermalink$>#more"
        title="Continue reading &quot;<$MTPageTitle$>&quot;">
        more
    </a>]</p>
    </MTMacroDefine>
    <$MTPageBody process_tags="1" formatted_words="45"
        apply_macros="1"$>
    </div>
    <div>
    <mt:pagedate format="%B %e, %Y">&nbsp;&#124;&nbsp;
        <mt:folderlabel>
    </div>
    </div>
    </MTIfDateWithin>
    </mt:else>
    </mt:ifnonempty>
    </mt:unless>
    </mt:unless>
    </MTIfNonEmpty>
</MTPages>
</mt:setvarblock>
<!-- end  -->

<!-- print lists -->
<mt:if name="mainpagelist" like="/</h2>/">
<!-- This SHOULD check if the 'mainpagelist' varblock has even
    one entry with a Title <h1> tag. If it does, then proceed;
    if not, exit. For some reason I couldn't get the Count
    function to work with Pages, and hence this -->
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%">
<tr>
<td align="left" width="50%" valign="top">
<!-- Spits out a list title -->
<h1>This is my list</h1>
<!-- pulls the varblock -->
<mt:var name="mainpagelist">
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</mt:if>

You could actually use this with the

unique="1"

Not claiming this is great code or even terribly efficient, but it seems to do the job.

By the way, if you do copy-paste this code, you may have to remove some line-breaks I had to add in here.