Card/Deck land destruction

CML

CML

Contributor
So Wizards, in all their wisdom and foresight, decided to stop printing efficient land destruction long ago (the last Stone Rain was in Champions, and things really came to a halt after the abusable Boom // Bust and the super-powerful Fulminator Mage). This plan has worked brilliantly, as everyone is totally excited to pick up a copy of Demolish 14th-pick in Theros draft, and there was never at all a Standard format six months ago based on taking people to "Slime Time." Anyway LD is pretty fantastic -- cards like Molten Rain are even a staple of Erwin-knuckle-dragging 720s of yore -- so I'm going to ask the forum some questions about how they implement this long-forgotten axis of "interaction":

what do your LD suites look like? card choices? favorites? (i kinda wanna try Sinkhole and Mwonvuli Acid-Moss ...)
what does it do for your cube?
which colors?
other mana-denial stuff? (thalia, blood moon, spreading seas, stifle, deus of calamity, etc.)
bouncelands are dead forever, aren't they? ditto signets (for the opposite reason)?
tec edge, wasteland, and/or strip mine? (i still have little idea how wasteland could be such a good fit in wadds's and a bad one in mine)
loam and/or crucible?
how does this interface with the utility land draft?
how does this interface with your gold sections?

the conflict i have is: the heavy fixing in my cube is meant to avert color-screw, but i also want this to be an axis LD decks can fight on, and i'm not sure if that's good design or rank hypocrisy. i do know that The Time I Added Wastelands And Ruined Christmas The Utility Land Draft was disastrous if also memorable and funny.

HAVE AT IT
 
Eric Chan

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
I love me some land destruction. Love with a capital L.

Mwonvuli Acid-Moss is sweet, especially if you can ramp into it on turn three. It works best in the green ramp deck facing off against the blue control deck, but I suppose it might have other applications elsewhere.

I've run Spreading Seas on and off, because there are some powerful lands that need answering, but it's otherwise kinda sketchy. A sideboard card at best here, and I'm on the verge of chopping it.

I mostly focus the land D package in red in green, though I suppose 'package' is overselling the theme a bit. More like a small, random sprinkling. As you mentioned, Fulminator Mage is surprisingly versatile, though I think Avalanche Riders takes the cake on power level. I ran Stone Rain for a while, but it was unpopular, so I'm trying Ruinblaster in its wake instead. I've thought about running Rain of Tears for a while, but land destruction in black just seems.. bad. I dunno.

I've got four Tectonic Edges in my utility land draft, and.. no one ever takes them but me. Which feels like it can't be right, but who can say. The fabled "land destruction" deck never actually comes together, so I don't think the handful of land D spells are inherently unfair. Sure, they sometimes set back some of the greedier multicolor decks for a couple of turns, but I like that they're there to provide a risk factor for diving into more than two colours.

And yeah, shoving bouncelands in a cube with any amount of land D would probably make for some reeeeal feel bads.
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
I don't think avoiding color screw is as important as setting up a good risk/reward dynamic with regards to color greed.
 
CML

CML

Contributor
"though I think Avalanche Riders takes the cake on power level."

nope!

wadds, i agree that the r/r dynamic is the end i have in mind, though "avoiding color screw" is an important part of that.
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
I love the disruption of Molten Rain, Wasteland, and maybe Pillage in theory.

Land destruction is a weird effect since it's (usually) really good and can lead to mana screw early, but utterly useless lategame (where Savannah lions would still attack and block)
More things need the molten rain or blightning treatment of a medoicore effect with a bit of damage stapled on

I'd love destructive revelry if it werent 2 colors and...still situational
 
CML

CML

Contributor
CT: it is not for nothing that the devotion-heavy gray ogre with some LD stapled on is the best LD effect printed since Wasteland
 
Goldenpineapple

Goldenpineapple

Land D is entirely red and green in my cube. I run molten rain, pillage, avalanche riders, destructive force, acidic slime, terastodon, woodfall primus, and mold shambler. The only land-breaking lands I have are ghost quarter and tectonic edge. After watching far too many games end simply because the only green source a GU deck has in their opener is tropical island and it gets wastelanded before they can cast the rampant growth in their hand I cut it. Mwonvuli acid-moss was also too much of a dick-punch when it happened on 3.

The other local cube goes so far to include strip mine and ark of blight. In the earliest versions of my cube I had a few too many boomerang effects on blue cards and a friend would constantly draft them all and play "mono blue land destruction" which I quickly purged.
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
Do you think it fits in black? I think due to the amount of times you'll be casting gravecralwer I'm not running it (Also price tag) but I might if it were white, who I think needs the disruption more. (See cross post from the print this wizards thread)
 
FlowerSunRain

FlowerSunRain

Contributor
It fits in the pox/braids/desolation aspect of blank nicely. While it does work poorly with gravecrawler, it works extremely well with Nantuko Shade, Nether Traitor, Reassembling Skeleton, Erebus and such in a way Armageddon doesn't.

Armageddon actually doesn't seem particularly white (mana denial for white?), but I let it slide under the grandfather clause and the fact that white really is hungry for that kind of card.

Related question! would you run at {2}{B}{B} ?
 
CML

CML

Contributor
as one of the few people in the world that unequivocally LOVES smokestack, i must say: fuck descent

CT: yes, esp. with gravecrawler theme. basically all the decks with black in modern are also running 4 somewhere in the 75. i know it doesn't look all that powerful, but Fulminator Mage is EXTREMELY strong.
 
Eric Chan

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
Why is Fulminator Mage that good in cube..? It's always been ok if unspectacular here, as the 2/2 body doesn't normally amount to much if it's not detonating lands. Avalanche Riders is the one that gives people fits, especially when it's an aggro curve-topper. I realize that Modern constructed is a different animal entirely, and no one plays Darwin Kastle there, but.. do your cube games actually play out like Modern ones?
 
FlowerSunRain

FlowerSunRain

Contributor
Is playing raze a sign of a deep commitment to aggro or a sign that you've gone too far trying to screw over decks that want to hit five mana?

Fulminator Mage is a fine card. If you do the utility land draft, there is rarely a time you won't have something to nuke. Being a creature is very useful for the occasion you don't want to kill a land as well as for recursion. Being hybrid gives you a lot of flexibility, particularly in the two colors that desire this effect the most. It's certainly the kind of card I want to cube 90% of the time.
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
CML, maybe you misinterpreted me, I meant do you think Nether Void makes sense in black :p
Fulminator mage I'm fine with in black, and he might find his way in. I'll take a look at the red/black 3 drops, see if there's something uninspired.
 
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