Yeah Cradle in particular… Tolarian Academy is the same but adds Blue for each artifact… that’s banned cause artifacts are easy to spam…. Cradle does Green for each creature. Gee wiz, I wonder what token decks do?
@@uitachi Tolarian Academy is definitely still a more busted card just because of how much faster it is. Like being able to drop a bunch of low cost rocks into each other and then tapping Academy for 3-4 on turn 1 isnt fair at all. It deserves to be banned, BUT Gaea's Cradle is an equally horrendously unfun card to look at across the table. It's a card that will never be doing anything remotely fair, and it will usually put the Green player so far ahead after being tapped once or twice that you'll be hard pressed not to start just running wasteland/strip mine in everything you play from then on. If Academy is banworthy (it is, don't even @ me.) Then Cradle should be kicked out of the format for virtually all of the same reasons, even if it is slower. If only marginally.
I would love to see Pleasant Kenobi do an analysis on how much of each color is effectively nullified due to the various social contracts. I say this because it really really seems like Green is the only one that is untouched by the shadow bans which is one of the reasons why we see things like turboramp in every other game.
Commander is like a fighting game tournament where zoners and rushdown is banned. It's not really a surprise when everyone plays grapplers in that scenario. The only problem is Magic, at it's most competitive, is a fighting game where grapplers suck.
Problem is, green rarely outright STOPS you from PLAYING THE GAME. Meanwhile blue basically FORBIDS you from playing the game, at all. White lets you cast spells, at least, even if they exile or tax them. Black kills all your creatures or throws your hand away. Red is out to speed blitz you by turn 4 or five with super cheap damage. And green? Green just wants to play big stompy creatures. Yeah green "can do everything" but usually it relies on having creatures to do anything. 😊
I think the game would be way more interesting if people punshied mana excelleration. With the amount of treasure, Mana Dorks, mana rocks, and ways to cheat cards into play. People can still bounce back after mass land destrucion. When the game keeps making mana source cards cheaper, it's not that hard to recover. Yugioh is an overpowered card game but even so, the game punishes players for over exstending. The edh community is the only one were players coddle the player base instead of punishing for their poor game decisions/ poor deck buildilng choices. @@coebaltraizure6137
I think we need more effects like Fall of the Thran or 'Balance, but just for lands'. Basically bring people down to a fair level instead of the all or nothing land hate cards.
I'm thinking about how Fall of the Thran from Dominaria was a really underrated card in retrospect. It really felt like an attempt at "fair" mass land destruction in that it gave everybody at the table a set number of lands back on the following two turns. It doesn't grind the game to a total halt, but it does punish the player who is ramping and cheating out lands too aggressively.
I've never seen Fall of the Thran used in EDH except in the way that makes it even saltier and less "fair" than mass land destruction - Fall of the Thran ---> any effect that exiles your opponent's graveyards = Fall of the Thran only gives you lands back and thus is even saltier. (I'm just it could be played fair, this is just the only way I've ever seen it used)
It's not perfect, but it's definitely more along the lines of what I would like to see out of mass land destruction. Instead of making it an abusable saga, just make it a sorcery that destroys all except for a certain number of lands. Hard reset, just not a reset to turn zero seems like an easy bar to clear imo.
The only bad part about it is how if anyone at the table has a Bojuka Bog, you're screwing yourself so hard. They're gonna blow up your graveyard in retaliation and then you're pretty much out of the game.
Fall of the Thran is so easily abused that it basically just becomes Armageddon costing 2 extra mana and other combo pieces to mess with graveyards or destroy the saga before it starts returning lands. So why not just play Armageddon in the first place? It just defeats the whole idea of white being the color that removes your stuff only temporarily. One way to fix this is to have a card that's a combination of Fall of the Thran and Out of Time. Instead of destorying lands, phase them out. And give them back little by little over the course of a few turns. However, the time counters on Out of Time can be abused with proliferate. So I guess, this hypothetical card should have an ability where opponents could remove time counters from it by paying some sort of cost.
I run land destruction in most of my decks and people are usually thankful when somebody decides to drop a nykthos or a cabal coffers and I destroy it on the spot. I leave the strip mine out for people to see as soon as it's drawn. If they want to play their value lands, that's the risk they're gonna have to take
i opt for the silly version of that, it doesn't quite work for nykthos but the old one blue spells that change the land word on a card so cabal coffers for islands
Crucible of worlds makes strip mine useless. Anydeck that's running the cradle is running at least 1 land recovery option if not more. Return to the Shire makes a strip mine slow me down for about as long as it takes to tap 2 and cast it. Getting a food token for my efforts. And if anything it usually means I get two taps out of the cradle in a single turn. Green mana go brrrrrrr!
I literally tell every player to run at least ghost quarter or demolition field. I play most of the big, unfair lands in a couple of decks, one if which is a lands matter deck. A single piece of destruction usually goes a long way. Edit because hindsight: I don't just tell random players I'm not interacting with, just players at my pods whenever deck design comes up. It's always solid to run some sort of targeted land destruction.
Someone else’s Blood moon against another’s landfall deck full of fetches and FoD taught me sometimes it’s okay to keep my opponents land hate on the field
The problem is that Blood Moon effectively locks most 3 color decks, and all 4-5 color decks, out of the game. It's really only useable in decks that run 1-2 colors. It solves one problem, but it can lead to a poor gaming experience for the decks that were not the problems.
@@CDour Pretty much. For me blood moon in casual is just a horrid card. Your potentailly screwing decks that are fine and honestly a deck running 3 or more colors is fine. I run a 5 color deck due to me just liking the commander. Its not being "greedy" to run lands to help with that mana base. Its kinda a crappy game if I am not allowed to do anything due to blood moon. I am fine people destroying the more disgusting land in casual but ideally leave the land that tap for more then one mana and so on alone. They are fine and not broken. IN a tourmanent do as you will as the point is to win. In my mind running a deck made to just destroy all your opponents lands and make them unusable tells me you do not really want a game and I wasted my time shuffling up.
I speak from experience when I say casuals never think "Does this affect my opponents more than me?" They only see their Timmy gameplan and everything slowing them down is taken personally.
@@CDourGreedy mana bases give you an edge in almost every match. It's only fair to get hosed every once in a while. Same with using life as a resource. If all players try to keep life totals more or less equal when one person is using it as a resource for getting card advantage, they basically don't have any downsides. I try memorizing how much life each player paid for fetches, shocks, Sign in Blood etc.
Yeah I just assumed targeted land removal was fine. Sometimes there just is a particular land in play that you have to get rid of. I also assumed Armageddon was frowned upon because it grinds Commander games to a halt.
Yeah, that's the main reason people hate any mass land removal, but are fine with target land removal against something like a Cabal Coffers or Gaia's Cradle. A single powerful land getting removed is fine, but grinding the game to a standstill just isn't that great of a game experience for anyone
If you beast within a nykthos or whatever I think that's solid threat assessment. Mass land destruction is a no. I run Rebuild, Pernicious Deed and Displacement Wave to get treasures gone though. I'm more scared of that
I have always been a more competitive minded player. It totally boggles my mind that certain greedy strategies are left unchecked at commander tables, then people ask how they got so far ahead or why that deck is so oppressive... its because people allow it to happen and refuse to change their build to compensate.
@@MrMarvelMikewell the game has moved away from land destruction for a while now so they dont really make new cards to do it or deal with it. Also most land destrution strategies are all or nothing aka this kills all you lands so you cant bounce back unless you already have a ton of artifacts out or GG
Players should get pounished for overexstending their resources. As our mana ramp gets slimmer and our commanders cost less, there should be a balance. Armagedden shouldn't be froned upon when players are willing to throw 5 lands on board on turn 3.I play boros so I am pretty mich screwed in the mana ramp race game. A vandleblast is pretty much an Armagedden to me. If my colors lack the speed to catch up, then it only makes for me to slow everyone down to my pace. @@PrettierNPastel
@@MrMarvelMike so with all the Enchantment and creature based ramp now in red white that just easily generateyou like 2 treasures after a vandal blast easy. A vandal blast should not be an Armageddon unless you just got unlucky on the draw and just pulled your rocks
@@MrMarvelMike whose throwing 5 lands on board on turn 3 commonly. Do you mean have 5 lands by turn 3. Thats not that bad especially since artifact ramp is more common and usually stronger. The problem with armegeddon is that 2 players probably get punished unnecessarily and probably are completly out of the game or the game grinds to be so slow they wish they lost. If your deck treats a vandalblast as an armeggedon rethink how mamy rocks you have and put in more white creatures and enchantments that grab you lands or ramp you through treasures
I've never had an issue with land destruction itself, like you've said it's pretty justifiable in plenty of cases as another form of interruption, but my problem comes with land-including board wipes. Armageddon and stuff is easy to explain why we all hate it: it resets just about everyone's progress. Games are slow enough as is, don't make us restart our mana bases. Even if you have enough stuff to win the next turn, I'd rather you just play a game ending now card. But yeah, I agree, play strip mine and stuff if your local meta seems to always have a problem land on board in each game, it's a good thing
mass land destruction usually just makes the game take longer if they're not coming late-game with a follow-up and commander games can already take hours but people absolutely need to get over single-target land destruction. we don't need to blow up someone's basic land on turn 3 just to slow them down necessarily but if someone plays a useful utility land go ahead and explode it if you think it'll be problematic and its worth using your removal spell or ability on it. if someone casts a couple ramp spells and are way ahead on lands an extra basic is fair game too but honestly i don't know that i'd personally want to spend removal on a basic land just to slow someone down a little.
Exactly if your going to do mass land destruction END THE GAME AFTER YOU BLOW THE LANDS UP. I prefer no mass land destruction but at least end the game. Otherwise your just prolonging the game and making it more tedious. Single land destruction i think is fine as some lands are disgustingly broken. Destroying all my lands is just horrible and take away from the game as now I can not play anything and I wonder why i shuffled up. I played a deck ages ago based on land destruction. I kept losing a land left and right and at the end maybe had two lands while my opponent was sitting on like 6 or 7. Was not a fun game in any way.
I thought targetted land removal was acceptable nowadays due to the problem children like Maze of Ith, Dark Depths, Field of the Dead, etc. Mass land destruction (3+ in one spell), or decks based on land destruction, like pox, are the pariahs in the format. Enchantments definitely need some more removal cards in certain colors. Red has 0 and black has 1 enchantment specific removal.
red and black 100% need more ways to get rid of enchantments, and artifacts to a lesser extent in black. the color pie should be relevant to how each color performs any given action or interaction not restrict colors from doing those things altogether or to the point of practical uselessness. more spells like chaos warp that get rid of the threat on the table but could result in something benign or even worse replacing it, for example.
@@themoops4006that's largely the direction we are heading in. Feed the swarm is an example of that, as is invoke despair. Both very recent. I think we will see something in red which will be a "when this creature deals combat damage" enchantment destruction at some point. Probs not for a while though.
Black got a second enchantment removal recently in Shatter the Oath (It's expensive but has no drawback). However, there are a few nuclear options via artifacts such as Oblivion Stone, Nevinyrral's Disk and Karn's Sylex. Are they the best? Obviously not, but they exist and are options.
Red has 1 - Chaos warp. Tho not true removal. Also red elemental blast and pyro blast can help and there is a couple colorless expensive permanent description. Though I do wish it had more, but dunno who else is fool enough to play mono red jank except me lol
I'm fine with cards like these so long as they come up in the pregame conversation like someone in my group plays back to basics and I'm cool with it because he warns people ahead of time so they know to fetch basics instead of duals or risk being blown out. my problem is people who don't mention they are playing land hate and clearly are reveling in the gotcha moment. Like I enjoy cutthroat games where what land you get matters because cards like blood moon can potentially come down just let me know that is the kind of game we are going to have beforehand.
There should be more punishing effects that deal damage (or otherwise discourage) players from dropping multiple lands each turn. Sure, they still CAN, but it will hurt them instead of simply destroying all their lands and sending them back to the bad-feels-stone-age.
The problem I have is not that people use land destruction to remove problem lands and set back ramp, but the fact that every time I see someone with land destruction, their sole reason is to make the table miserable. They either run a whole bunch of target land destruction and make it the focus of their deck or they intentionally play mass land destruction to piss people off and have no real game plan beyond that.
I dont blame that land destruction player. We have more ritua;s / mana rocks and cards that produce treasures. It's 2023, it's time for players to adapt.
I think you didn't read what I said. I said TO MAKE THR TABLE MISERABLE. I DO blame that player. He is not doing it because "ramp has gone out of control!", he does it because he wants to be aN ASSHOLE. ON PURPOSE.
The claim of this video is a good one. In commander, there's no easy analog to the aggro and tempo decks of 60 card formats that tend to punish greed really well. Voltron and linear combo decks can sort of play a similar role of pressuring people as they ramp, but those kinds of decks aren't ones that people are going to want to play against all the time either.
I think commander players should just build their decks to be more resilient to land destruction. With the curve and ramp getting slimer every year, there's no reason players can not recover when they lose. Just about every color has an enchament that will net them a ton of treasures or cards. More and more creatures gives you a treasures on in addition to the cards effect at this point.
@@MrMarvelMike it’s more than many people who play mass land destruction who I have encountered in the wild often deploy it at times where it doesn’t guarantee their win or engine and then it just ends up adding an extra hour to the game of top decking. It’s not really the experience i’m looking for in a casual game. If they can break parity, then I am much more open to playing against it.
(It’s similar to people playing Stax without breaking parity and casual. It just adds a bunch of unnecessary Time and turns to the game- just lock me out with a Drannith possibility storm or with an overwhelming board and Armageddon and we can just shuffle up and move the next)
Yes but but there are color combonations out their that can not compete when it comes to card advantage. Mono White and boros will never catch up to deck with a green identity in ramp nor can they produce card advantage like Blue. Let's not forget that green is known for artifact hate. So the arguemt of me needing more mana rocks goes out the window because blowing up my subpair ramp is no different than me blowing up all your lands. If Mono White/ Boros and can't keep up with the speed of ramp/card advantage your colors produce, then I will need to slow you guys down. Plus players should be punished for over exstending. and just how I have to work around your superior card advantage, it's your reposnbility as a deck builder to have your deck constructed to rebuild your board properly. Being casual has nothing to do with proper deck building and smart playing. @@Spirited_skiing
@@MrMarvelMike I literally play boros landfall so I’m not sure that holds up in 2023. Boros has gotten really good at pumping out lands through catch up ramp or recurring from graveyards, etc. You also can play things like scholarship sponsor, or archaeomancers map, or DGT to take advantage of green ramp
I'm so grateful for my play group, some folks play some crazy powerful stuff. I'm still learning so mine might be powerful but I don't know how to use it most of the time, but no one complains about it, no one complains that I make bad moves or slow the game down, I don't complain that sometimes I get pub stomped, but I still learn, and the play group helps me. Every now and then someone comes around who doesn't think like that and it's interesting to see how they handle the game. Some folks open up their thinking and stick around. It seems, some don't. But yeah I think I stumbled into a good play group 🙂 awesome video mate
Been thinking about this for a while. People hate land destruction then turn around and dump on red, white, Boros for being “bad”. A little land destruction would bring parity back to the color pie and to the game, especially if done right. Everyone (except total man babies) is fine with any other kind of removal-targeted and mass exile, edict effects, fight effects, etc. These all drag the game out, too. Sheoldred or Elesh Norn can lock certain deck strategies completely out, as can a simple Fleshbag Marauder in a reanimate deck, and yet, there’s nothing in the social contract about that. Everyone says “play more removal” whenever anyone takes issue with literally anything. Okay, Stone Rain is removal. Or we can start blinking Acidic Slime. Or let’s just animate all the lands and play chicken with those wraths everybody’s sandbagging. So, I guess play more ramp? 😂
I do like how you, a Tatiyova player, is talking about this issue. And I agree, that etiquette about land destruction comes from a time well before most of the current top-tier lands were created. Since then we've had things like Field of the Dead, Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, the Eldraine Castles, the Ixalan Enchantment-to-Land Double faced cards (some of which ae straight up Gaea's Cradle and Tolarian Academy.) I do tend to run a few pieces of land destruction in most of my decks; Field of Ruin, Ghost Quarter, Stone Rain/Sinkhole if the colors permit; for the problem lands, Nykthos, Coffers, Tron lands etc. There is one notable counter in recent years, Confounding Conundrum from Zendikar Rising (but that could backfire against certain decks.) But those can only help against lands, not this barrage of Treasures. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is simply this: As the times change, we need to as well.
idm effects like Blood Moon or Strip Mine (assuming you aren’t also playing Crucible of Worlds effects), a stax piece or piece of targeted land removal is fine, especially when some decks just get shut down by cards like Maze of Ith. Cards like Armageddon, though, just end up making the game take much longer more often than not.
if mass land destruction is treated as a wincon or at least as an enabler for your wincon i think it can be fine. if you cast an asymmetrical armageddon and it allows you to close the game out in a couple more turns by making sure your opponents have no responses and no board state to stop you then gg. i don't see that as functionally much different from comboing out or getting lethal or near-lethal damage in some other way. players just need to be really conscious of when and where to use those spells and effects and to not just chuck them in random decks, the decks need to be built to take advantage of them and close the game out after using them.
@@themoops4006 that’s a fair point. The issue is if mass land destruction was normalized most people would just use them the same way they use most boardwipes. But you’re right, my problem is when they’re used to essentially reset the game
The issue I've had when playing against land destruction is it almost exclusively get's play against me when I'm not playing a green deck, or one that ramps with lands at all. I've been at the receiveing end of one too many decks that blow up lands to lock people out of the game, all because they thought it was funny to prevent me from playing magic. So it's left a sour feeling in my MTG experience because I don't like denying people the ability to play the game with me. I don't find joy in my time being wasted, and I don't enjoy wasting other people's time. I'm against mass land destruction, but I'm not against targeted land destruction (or blowing up a few). I think the main issue is that we don't have many efficient options of doing that, so it's often better to try and out ramp the problem deck or counteract what they do with their abundant mana. Destroying 1 land is find, but most cards that do so feel too mana intensive to bother running. WotC hasn't printed many cards that allow us to target the problem deck without causing collateral damage to everyone else at the table, which signifanctly extends the length of the game. I'd love more cards aimed at tackling this issue, Lavaball Trap from Zendikar is a great example of this type of effect. scryfall.com/card/zen/135/lavaball-trap 10:06 Collector Ouphe is great in a deck that doesn't run artifacts with activated abilities, but it also has the unfortunate effect of shutting other decks down and limiting interactive gameplay (stony silence has the same problem). Most players don't enjoy playing with or against stacks effects. I like March of the Machines because it solves the issue with treasure/food/clue ramping without limiting interaction too much. Vandalblast and Filter Out are also great options for disrupting rampant artifact token creation.
I was a primarily blue player years ago. As a social experiment at my LGS, I routinely counter people's early game ramp instead of their big flashy finishers. Even with that being the main sweaty LGS in the area, it took about a month, but I very quickly became *that guy* at that LGS.
I find a lot of edh players absolutely hate any interactivity. they just want to play their cards like solitaire, and throw their toys out of the pram the second a counter or kill spell goes off. its a shame really. MTG and commander are at their best when everyone at the table interacts. It also leads into a wider conversation over people not wanting to change their decks to adapt or improve but that's a whole other conversation.
I've been arguing with my playgroup about this topic as well. Everyone is ok with hating on mana rocks by casually dropping a Vandalblast and screwing non-green decks' day, but no one likes lands getting blown up. I feel like if you do play Vandalblast, you cannot complain about Armageddon. That said, some cards are really pushed (mainly Dockside tbh), so we settled for: it's fine to play some stax cards to prevent people from going absolutely ballistic, but don't overdo it because we still want to play the game and we're trying to avoid two card combos at the table
I think the big problem with land destruction is that, counterintuitively, it's actually really bad against heavy ramp decks. The decks you would want MLD against the most are usually the ones that can most easily recover from it. So this leads to a situation where we want a solution to land ramping that somehow doesn't screw over those that aren't abusing land ramp. I think the answer is probably to start printing effects that either A. punish lands that were not played normally, B. destroy down to a set number ("everyone picks 5 and sacs the rest"), C. limits untapping (like each player can only untap X lands, X = # controlled by player with fewest), or D. punish high numbers of lands. Would also be nice to encourage more basics and I think Ruination, Blood Moon, etc. should be more accepted in an environment that has people running few or no basics sometimes.
Issue is your doing alot more damage and potentailly locking them out of being able to do anything. You might get some mana rocks with vandablasts but also non mana rock artifacts. Destroying the mana rocks slows them down but does not prevent them from playing. Destroying all their land is far far worse a snow they have no mana to do anything and have to slowly rebuild hoping to draw some lands to lay down one at a time. Just two very different things. If someone is set on running mass land drestuction fine but for the love of god end the game fast. Destroying all my lands and then doing a slow crawl of a game after trying to rebuild my mana base thats just pain. Hell i jsut scoop after rift at times due to not wanting to rebuild everything.
Literally no. So tell me, how in the hell does a non-green deck come back from an Armageddon? Other than crucible of worlds becoming a main deck commander staple, the green land ramp decks have a far better chance of recovery, so the normalization of mass land destruction doesn't even hinder the decks it would attempt to target as much as everyone else.
@@dhantefranklin336 I don't understand why people are under the assumption the Armageddon player will just drop it to even things out with the green player. When playing cards like that, you build your deck around it so you can get the upper hand. I built a Dihada deck when the precon came out (the planeswalker commander) whose plan was to cast cards like Obliterate, which destroy all creatures, artifacts and lands. It did nothing to planeswalkers, so Dihada survived alone on the board and it was capable of generating treasures. No one was coming back from that. Now, is that a fun play pattern? Nope. Vandalblast destroying non-green decks' mana rocks is the same. You're not winning a game against three other people if all the mana you have is from turn land drops
If only there was a card that would bring balance to the number of lands equal to the caster's. And in a color not green, as green doesn't need that effect
The problem is there's very little in between spending 4 mana to destroy a single land and just destroying all of them outright. We need more cards like Wildfire
tbf i get why shit like wildfire is frowned upon. Imo ghost quarter, wasteland and friends are the most "socially acceptable" options. They provide precision removal against literal P2W cards like cradle and dont blow up timmy the dinosaur players lands too.
As a player that started in 1993 and left circa 1998... I came back in 2022 and was excited about Commander (I still am)... but it seems silly that Mass Creature Destruction, Mass Artifact Destruction, Mass Enchantment Destruction were all 100% OK... but for some reason Mass Land Destruction was Verboten. With so many metas allowing infinite combos... manipulation of poison combos...the existence of Annihilator... incredibly powerful ETB Triggers etc. that Mass Land Destruction was considered too powerful/too unfun. Mass Land Destruction is fun, and encourages players to manage their land... rather than just putting all of them down every turn... in the same way that Boardwipes encourage players not to always put all of their creatures on on table.
Not sure if it's been mentioned, but we did get that 2 mana rock that turns into an equipment from WoE Also it'd be great if we got an opposition agent type effect but only for lands. The problem with that is it'd probably mostly get used by decks that are also looking to ramp
I run Catastrophe in my monowhite deck. I play it for the creature wipe. One time I had a guy be dishonest with the rule zero conversation (shocker i know) and had 7 gates with maze's end on turn 5. He even said he had something in hand to win the next turn. After a manarock i was able to Catastrophe on my turn choosing lands. Dude was pissed. The other 2 guys in the pod were also upset even tho they said i made the correct play. I don't know where i was going with this story, but just wanted to share.
Sowing Salt is part of the Lobotomy cycle. Tempest Block gave us the original Lobotomy, then Wizards gave each color a Lobotomy card of its own (Eradicate, Quash, Scour, Sowing Salt, Splinter). They've been making more Lobotomy cards ever since. Personally, have been a perpetrator and victim of it. I ran a Tempest/Urza's block deck with Lobotomy which was fun because you could get it off on turn 2 with a Dark Ritual. But there was also a time when a friend hit my Capsize with a Quash and- *I kid you not* - I literally shook my fist at him, saying "You'll pay for that!"
Random side thought. The taboo to land destruction is like the only reason Simic is such a powerhouse. Because the answer to that playstyle is "illegal".
As a Boros player I have a solid solution: They can't ramp if they're dead. Extra combats and doublestrike will make you get way further than you think with just a handful of creatures.
Also, I always understood fast mana to mean any permanent that produces more mana than it costs. So sol ring, crypt, mana vault, Mox diamond, chrome mox, JLo, mox opal and grim monolith
For me, this exemplifies the attitude of "I don't like it, so you can't play it" writ large. Like any player, I hate it when my game-plan gets shut down, but that is a part of playing. That someone's game-plan is stopped because of land removal isn't really any different from a game-winning combo being thwarted by the destruction of one of the combo pieces. Although someone might be out of the game entirely at an earlier point because of land destruction, I don't see any practical difference between this and other tactics that shut down someone's deck--it just happens quicker with land destruction.
I always use Beast Within, Generous Gift and Chaos Warp, Vindicate, Assassin’s Trophy, as answers to overpowered lands in commander. I think destroying lands is ok as long as it’s not your modus operandi.
Nice Inferi shirt! I used to hang with with some of those guys back in college. Good to see they're getting over across the pond. Their new song is called "Tainted Pact" 😂. Love that they're going full on mtg-metal now. Horns up, duder!🤘🤘
Commander is just different, I'm not a fan. Think of it like this; 1vs1 is medieval armies on the field of battle, charging at each other. Commander is a medieval siege, where 4 castles dig in and fortify their defenses, and their catapults fire huge firebals at each other, safely, and slowly, from a distance.
Totally agree. I run a fair degree of land removal where I can, as well as Blind Obedience, Thalia 2 and Stony Silence et al. Not to make people's lives miserable, just to pull them back to earth. My opinion is don't start none, wont be none.
I think you have an excellent point. Field of the Dead in particular is a land that must be answered the same way a Korvold must be answered. I'm always leary about mass land destruction, but targeted land destruction or disruption is fine. I think that the simplest answer to ramp, however... is ramp. As with most games, simply being good at the game - progressing your game plan, protecting your pieces, and deploying game-winning threats - will win you more games than focusing on disrupting your opponents.
I have never seen a single person claiming that removing individual lands fall under the same category mass land destruction. So I dont get why those 2 get mashed together so often. One can clearly be more unfun if not done well, the other is just removal like any other removalspell
I just want to push back a bit, at least anecdotally, i never hear that targeted land removal is an issue. Mass land destruction, yes, but not targeted. Same for blood moon. An individual may complain bc theyre mana base was too greedy, but as a whole in my area, its perfectly ok.
hard agreed that ramping should be absolutely punished. there's no reason to ban land destro or anything like that when people are OUT OF CONTROL with ramp having like 10 mana turn 3-4 and doing whatever they want. if I was running a crazy ramp deck and somebody blew up my shit I'd be like "oh.. LOL YA GOT ME"
The constant balance between "I could just boardwipe and take everyone down a peg, then destroy two of that players lands" and "and then this game takes... another fourty minutes before we end it and can shuffle up for a new game" isn't as easy as saying that we should just disrupt everyones ramp. Yes, it's absolutely viable to take someone down a peg, but disrupting all the ramp and making sure people play the game more fair, and then sit and struggle as people almost never draw enough cards to keep going after a blowout it'll just turn into a "Who can recover first" kind of game. Constant shifts in what cards a playgroup plays influences what kind of games will be played, and when it focuses too much on removal it shifts from a meta that is too fast, to a meta of "mother, may i?" every time something good drops on the board. What I think commander would need is more balance effects. Like, the land ramp player has to exile lands down to the same amount as the person with the second lowest. Destroying a land rampers lands isn't even good enough, because they just return it one way or another.
It's so funny how none of the power creep would've been an issue if they focuses more on ways to punish ramp. Stax and land destruction should stay around.
I agree with you. Land destruction should be more acceptable. And to tell you the truth, when I started playing commander and heard about the "unwritten rule" I actually thought it was kind of silly. There are so many ways to ramp, but not only that, the power creep is huge lately. So I say unban Sylvan Primordial and renegotiate land destruction.
Okay, you've convinced me. I'm removing all ramp from my decks. But seriously, I have a deck that runs all four Wildfire effects. It is a Lhurgoyf Tribal deck, so I want as much stuff in everyone's graveyard as possible. Terrivore can be a BEAST! Not only was Sowing Salt originally in Urza's Destiny, but the entire cycle was as well (Eradicate, Quash, Scour, Splinter). I used to play with Sowing Salt in my Standard/Modern/Extended sideboards, back when the format was not as fast.
One of my favorite cards in commander these days is Layline of Singularity. If the decks are fair, it barely affects the board. If you're making a million tokens/treasures... Surely you meant one token/treasure.
My problem with mass land destruction is that it's not an answer to ramp decks. If I Armageddon the board I ruin the fair players day meanwhile the big mana deck can easily rebuild.
Any green card that can make treasure tokens was absolutely a mistake. Treasure is primarily a red thing, and also kind of white cause white still barely has anything.
My answer to treasures is usually Disciple of the Vault, but that invariably falls to Swords to Plowshares from the same player with Smothering Tithe. But that’s my luck; in lieu of being answered anyway, I don’t run the hate and just stick mostly to pieces that further my game plan.
Targeted land destruction I'm totally fine with because you have to dedicate spots to it just like a ramp player does. However MLD just makes games last way too long and does just feel like it goes against the general spirit of casual commander.
I play mass land land destruction in my voltron deck. It’s one of my finishers. Some people get mad, but honestly most people accept it and we shuffle up for a new game. I think that because so few people run MLD due to the stigma, the idea that people are so against MLD has become over exaggerated. In my experience, people are reasonable when you play these cards responsibly. It’s petty/spiteful casts of Armageddon when the caster knows they can’t win that give MLD a bad rap. I think treasure/ token ramp is by far the most dangerous thing we’re seeing because not only is it ramp, but it also combos so easily with so many things. And with new mechanics like Bargain, treasures are only going to grow stronger and stronger.
My k'rrik deck had cards that punished everyone for playing lands. It ran desolation, small pox, pox, anhk of Mishra, polluted bonds, sink hole, strip mine, wasteland. I cut the Mana base hate, it made babies cry, the new decklist is on Moxfield(behold, blessed perfection)
I built a standard deck around Waking the Trolls, was Temur in colors and my absolute favourite play was having Field of Ruin out with a confounding conundrum…
In my opinion, everyone should run at least 1 land destruction card in Commander. Hell, I'd even consider 2 at times. I've specifically killed Gia's Cradle in a game before, and the entire table let out a sigh of relief. Play land destruction, just try not to go overboard with it; everyone should have fun!
Set everyone to a number of lands that isn’t zero: Urza’s sylex Keldon Firebombers Magus of the balance Cheap artifact sweepers=amazing: Seeds of innocence Brotherhoods end Serenity Etc. Run field of ruin and demolition field in every deck. You stay land neutral, color fix, and get rid of pesky good lands
I have only gotten to play commander a few times, but my worse experience was getting handed a Blue Green ramp deck. I didn't know what was in it, it was someone else's deck. That person then said my deck was busted and everyone needed to gang up on me on turn one to stop me. I was out of the game before turn 5.
I think if the other decks had ways to deal with the ramp, people wouldn't have made the decision to try and kill me before I had the chance to play more than two spells
That seems like absolutely awful table manners, first and foremost. Targeting a deck that's getting ahead too fast is one thing, but handing another player a deck *you made* with the intention to sell them out by turn 5? That's just being a bad gamer.
I think the fundamental problem is that certain magic players have an ideal deck plan, and the further they have to decide the more upset they become. Land destruction is often the apex of disruption for decks trying to follow side lines. Conversely some players prefer a more hybrid dynamic fluid approach, but in a straight race get their decks outpaced. It's almost two different games both called Magic, but you need players to understand both exist at the same time
I run a hatebears Breena deck. I played at a new shop recently and there was a newer player there that I ended up playing with. In the first match (as I ended up winning) he viewed me as a villain. In the second match played against two new people, he basically called me a hero. It's amazing how someone's perspective can change when you play against the degenerate decks and you see how good hatebears can be to even out a board.
There needs to be a discussion about the difference between MLD (Armageddon) and STLD (Field of Ruin) - problematic lands see play, so should single target land destruction. People used to understand this but it seems that the social contract that says no MLD has changed and now it's just "no land destruction"
All the LGS that i play at everyone had targeted land removal. Like mass land removal is frowned upon(unless you win the next round) but people try to have something in the deck to respond to any situation. Will be using march of the machines, thank you!
I don’t know, this is admittedly very anecdotal, but I don’t find many people seeing targeted land removal as a problem as long as you’re not being a dick about it. Blowing up a single utility land doesn’t receive any hate in the area I play. Same with taking a person off their winning land, it isn’t seen as problematic. The only time I see people getting salty about targeted land destruction is when someone uses land removal in the early game against someone without any real justification or strategic purpose gets some hate. If you picked one player in a casual game and take out their shock land on turn 3 just for giggles, that gets seen as a jerk move. Now, if someone is jumping way ahead and dumping a bunch of lands or rocks, then it makes sense to take them off their lands and everyone is cool with that. I think that at the end of the day, players have to figure out how to communicate their expectations better. We also need to be less salty and understand that someone doing something you find unfun isn’t always meant to be a personal attack.
I've had this conversation many times where (although I don't run land destruction (mostly)) if you can be punished for using creature or artifact ramp, you should be punished for land ramping. If I ramp out all my lands and then they get destroyed, alright. You got me. If I run and artifact deck and you vandal blast me, the. You got me! So that's why I play Confounding Conundrum. It's fair and keeps the table fair.
I used to play a Traxos artifact deck, and it RELIED on artifact mana. The green player who dedicates a literal eighth of his deck to ramp spells was happier than a pig in shit to play Bane of Progress after I took a few turns trying to build up a mana base (with bad rocks, mind you). When I finally decide to play a Boros or Mardu deck, I should be allowed to play an Armageddon or Ravages of War, as a treat.
We play often with upgrated precons, so there is no big ramping. With complete custom decks we all play some land destruction and at least 3-4 artefact and enchantment removals. But a well played dockside is always a bummer.
I agree with you. When I first got into Commander, I struggled to accept that Land Destruction wasn't okay. I'm primarily a Blue, or Black player; sometimes a mix, and I even occasionally level up to Grixis, but ramp isn't usually a thing for my decks, and I'm often a more conservative, less aggressive player. I wanted to figure out targeted Land Destruction, but it wasn't popular, even as ramping was rampant.
I really wish WotC would also walk back their stance on land destruction. Being told, "Oh well players dont like having their lands blown up, it doesn't feel good" in response to wanting more Land Destruction (and even stax) cards, is quite jarring. People don't like playing against counterspells or discard abilities, and they certainly feel bad a lot of the time. But guess what? They're a necessary evil. Discard abilities keep combo decks honest and counterspells keep both combo and ETB value decks in check. So I find it quite funny that land destruction is frowned upon, even on WotC's end... When land destruction is THE counter to mass ramp/greedy 5 color piles. So... What... Are ramp decks just exempt from counterplay? Are greedy 5 color piles supposed to be able to reign supreme because "Land Destruction bad"? It winds me up, especially as someone who really only plays Arena now (due to not having anyone around me who plays MTG anymore and LGS aren't my thing), it's absurd how ramp decks and 5 color piles feel like the golden child on pretty much every format on the client, because WotC just refuse to bring cards on to the client that punish these decks severely. This is what happens when you stigmatise and essentially shadow ban Scissors in a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors. It's not a particularly smart move... For obvious reasons, and it alienates a portion of the playerbase.
My interactions with Mass Land Destruction has always not been fun. It equalizes the Ramp decks that start snowballing sure, but most of the time it also punishes everyone else. The decks that do one land a turn get blown out and get shut out of the game -- I do think spot removal for problematic lands (Cradle, Coffers, etc) should be included more, but not Land Wipes..
Personally my groups seem to be ok with targeted removal - sometimes it's important - and would prob be ok with armageddon if (and its a big if) the game ends very quickly afterwards. But if you just blow up lands then the game crawls along for another hour then that'd suck
Targeted land destruction is an absolute necessity in commander. In any deck that has space for colorless lands, I put in a Wasteland/Strip Mine/Demolition Field as top priority. Too many Coffers and Nykthos and Cradles running around to not take care of them. MLD though has fallen flat when I've tried it out. Even when I had the strongest board, what ended up happening was people used their 1 and 2 mana removal on me to even the playing field and then the green player just ramped harder than everyone else again. Resetting to 0 lands just means the ramp player gets back ahead again.
I was in a game recently where I played an Energy Flux and a player in the group scooped on the spot and walked out of the store. Haven't seen em since
100% agree, people need to grow up. I played a Ruination a couple of months ago in a game. Had the ok of the 2 players and a 3rd joined last minute, warned him too. I threw a Ruination on like turn 6 which hurt 2 players and even myself. 4th player lost 1 land. He kept bitching and targeted me out when 1. I slowed down 5 color sliver guy who was popping off and actually helped him. What a twat!
I feel like there needs to be a mass land destruction cards that just targets ramp players. Something like. "Each player chooses up to 8 lands then destroys the rest." Mass land destruction makes everyone feel bad even if they were playing lands fairly, this way it just fucks over those dirty dirty green players.
the thing about mld is that, in my experience as a player who likes to ramp to the moon, i almost always win when someone else casts mld. that players gets hated out and i recover faster than anyone else at the table because my deck has more lands and more ramp.
I added an Armageddon to my lifht paws deck ,i rarely play it cause it usually goes off. My play group is like naw thats crazy but im like " we should just let omnath play 3 plus extra lands a turn and do nothing?" Have to bring heavy rampers back down to our level.
for the longest time i had a "win and let win" attitude, I win fast but i also lose fast. I'd rather watch my opponents pop off and play another game after than wasting card slots in my deck for stax and hard counters for certain strategies... then my friend made an Etali deck... no we will not play multiplayer while you ramp every turn and then get a sol ring, get a removal spell, get a tutor then combo off no no no. you will pay for your spells no nothing will enter from exile no you will not cast more than x spells this turn. If you want to do cool stuff you WILL run removal and not just all gas that is incredibly boring even when you win against it.
The problem with Armageddon effects is that it doesn't specifically punish land ramp decks. It punishes everyone for simply playing the game, and when not played to end the game in a turn or two, can drag them out unnecessarily long. So even though I personally don't care if it is played, I can understand who may have an issue with it. What I don't understand is the problem with countering greedy mana bases, such as by Ruination. That being said, Natural Balance is an effect that they should print more, but in white without the ramp part. Something like: {1}{W}{W} Sorcery Each player chooses up to four lands he or she controls and sacrifices the rest. This would actually be something that counters big land ramp.
Back in my day, there was this thing called "Mana Burn", which could be a way to tax those that ramp out 10 lands by turn 5. Things that tap all your opponents lands, would turn into a burn spell if you did it at a point where they couldn't spend the mana for a spell or ability cost. Is it time to bring that back?
Ugh the throwing models in the bin thing is so real. Early in 9th edition 40k, I played Imperial Guard vs Dark Angels, and this guy brought the sniper assassin. I get first turn and notice there's nothing protecting the sniper so I just shoot it with my tank, killing it instantly. This guy gets SO mad and starts saying "that was my favorite model, I don't know if I even want to play anymore. That's just so frustrating." Then he proceeds to mop the floor with me for the rest of the game as I'm respectful the whole time.
Honestly I don't know if it's land destruction, or just interaction that is seen as not sporting. And I'm so incredibly fed up with people playing busted stuff and getting salty when it doesn't stick around, and start spite playing. Removing vital game pieces is how the game stays more than just war (the playing card game), and who drew all the aces. Also, lands are often those vital game pieces, so yes please play land destruction.
Honestly, if all treasure entered tapped I think that would solve a major problem. Still allows the player to pop off the following turn, but doesn't let them pop off out of nowhere.
this is why I love that new Urzas sylex card so much, it strikes a good balance between actually disrupting ramp yet not locking people out of the game. also the blue enchantment Confounding Conundrum. I do think mass land destruction is unfun most of the time because it slows the game down so much, but I have zero issue with targeted land destruction or the rare card that actually counters ramp. I wish they played around with the idea of 'reverse landfall' more often, where something triggers every time an opponent plays a land. that would also be a nice way to punish ramp decks without things getting out of hand
I have no issues with single target land removal, as there are plenty of lands out there that have no business being in play. That being said, I think mass land destruction like Armageddon makes games more miserable than solving ramp. Restarting the game essentially, slowing it down to an unfun crawl, like stack effects. I think the answer to ramp in most multiplayer games isn't land destruction or tax effects generally, but interaction. If youre running blue, please run some counter magic in your deck. Run kill spells, board wipes, etc. Run as much removal as there is ramp at the table.
Every playgroup I’ve ever played with ran targeted land removal without any need for discussion or anger, but everyone agreed that mass land destruction (without a wincon to back it up) wasn’t desired.
Targeted removal of powerful lands is not frowned upon in commander. I can Generous Gift or Oblation your Glacial Chasm (defensive permanent), your Cabal Coffers (mana multiplier), or your Mutavault (manlands can be threats). What is frowned upon is preventing someone from being able to play by destroying all their mana (mass land destruction, or using repeated single target land removal to simulate mass land destruction). Even then, different playgroups are fine with things "commonly" frowned upon. If you are running a Stasis Stax, let me know and we will have a fun game where I struggle to use Collective Voyage while under your Winter Orb. Now your other question is "If someone is spending their mana ramping and not progressing their win con or their defensive board state, how do you interact with that"? If they have been doing that and you haven't, then your win con is further along and your have stronger defenses. Punch Face. Make them take time using their removal instead of their ramp. Or make it so their big creatures are less effective because you had time to play a control engine or defensive cards. I am glad you emphasis having this conversation with your playgroup. For my playgroup, MLD is a bad idea. The decks that ramp are about playing big inefficient spells. The ramp is the cost they pay to get to play the game. So we can use Beast Within (or Blood Moon*, or Winter Orb) for their scary lands but the game is fine without MLD. *Although Blood Moon is less effective in my playgroup since I help encourage more basic lands with Collective Voyage. It feels bad when it hurts the 5 color decks so I tend to not play it. Mana Rocks are nice! They have good advantages and disadvantages compared to land ramp. They refund some mana the same turn, but they are prone to mass permanent removal. It is very healthy for the format to have this good colorless option like Gilded Lotus and Thran Dynamo. Of course I consider that separate from treasures. Treasures are more akin to ritual spells like Dark Ritual or Seething Song. It really depends on if they are too efficient (Dockside, Smothering Tithe) but are fine if balanced (Goldspan Dragon?). Outside of the few pushed treasure cards, treasures are more an issue of consumer fatigue with an overused mechanic rather than a problem in a single game. It is the same with the "and draw a card". WotC just needs to be more creative. When you get to the crux you are missing the middle. We don't have to choose between "being allowed to play" and "being able to interact". The decks that ramp are about ramping, they are about playing big spells. This is THE format where we can fairly play those big spells (other formats only cheat in those cards). So a good balance is Deck A ramps and plays a big spell. Deck B has already developed their win cons during those turns and now gets to play 2+ spells vs Deck A's 1 big spell. An army of Goblins vs a single Hydra. Aka you can play the threats you want, but they will be interacted with. If you get into a position to try to win, don the archenemy cape and the others will team up to stop you. And repeat as hubris defeats the archenemies until one eventually succeeds (but hopefully after everyone got to at least play something).
Some lands are way too strong just leave around you need land destruction to stop them. Gia's cradle and coffers can't just be allowed to sit around.
Yeah Cradle in particular… Tolarian Academy is the same but adds Blue for each artifact… that’s banned cause artifacts are easy to spam…. Cradle does Green for each creature. Gee wiz, I wonder what token decks do?
@@uitachi Tolarian Academy is definitely still a more busted card just because of how much faster it is. Like being able to drop a bunch of low cost rocks into each other and then tapping Academy for 3-4 on turn 1 isnt fair at all. It deserves to be banned, BUT Gaea's Cradle is an equally horrendously unfun card to look at across the table. It's a card that will never be doing anything remotely fair, and it will usually put the Green player so far ahead after being tapped once or twice that you'll be hard pressed not to start just running wasteland/strip mine in everything you play from then on. If Academy is banworthy (it is, don't even @ me.) Then Cradle should be kicked out of the format for virtually all of the same reasons, even if it is slower. If only marginally.
@@WhipLash42oTolarian Academy isn't banned in Commander anyway?
Lmao Yall scared of a cradle? Lol do you actually play commande or?
@@tr4pkeedyoungking677Yes, that's why we are scared of it.
I would love to see Pleasant Kenobi do an analysis on how much of each color is effectively nullified due to the various social contracts. I say this because it really really seems like Green is the only one that is untouched by the shadow bans which is one of the reasons why we see things like turboramp in every other game.
Yeah players will complain about you slowing down the game and then Will proceed to ramp so far ahead that you can’t keep up with them.
Commander is like a fighting game tournament where zoners and rushdown is banned. It's not really a surprise when everyone plays grapplers in that scenario.
The only problem is Magic, at it's most competitive, is a fighting game where grapplers suck.
This please
Problem is, green rarely outright STOPS you from PLAYING THE GAME. Meanwhile blue basically FORBIDS you from playing the game, at all. White lets you cast spells, at least, even if they exile or tax them. Black kills all your creatures or throws your hand away. Red is out to speed blitz you by turn 4 or five with super cheap damage.
And green? Green just wants to play big stompy creatures. Yeah green "can do everything" but usually it relies on having creatures to do anything. 😊
I think the game would be way more interesting if people punshied mana excelleration. With the amount of treasure, Mana Dorks, mana rocks, and ways to cheat cards into play. People can still bounce back after mass land destrucion. When the game keeps making mana source cards cheaper, it's not that hard to recover. Yugioh is an overpowered card game but even so, the game punishes players for over exstending. The edh community is the only one were players coddle the player base instead of punishing for their poor game decisions/ poor deck buildilng choices. @@coebaltraizure6137
Don't forget folks, Generous Gift, Beast Within, and Assassin's Trophy can all be targeted land destruction in a pinch
Chaos Warp as well.
I think we need more effects like Fall of the Thran or 'Balance, but just for lands'.
Basically bring people down to a fair level instead of the all or nothing land hate cards.
We do. It's called land equalibrium.
@@CraigslistHotelsure, unfortunately the color that's the best at ramping also happens to be really good at enchantment removal
I like confounding conundrum, just wish it was symmetrical so you couldn't ramp either.
I'm thinking about how Fall of the Thran from Dominaria was a really underrated card in retrospect. It really felt like an attempt at "fair" mass land destruction in that it gave everybody at the table a set number of lands back on the following two turns. It doesn't grind the game to a total halt, but it does punish the player who is ramping and cheating out lands too aggressively.
I've never seen Fall of the Thran used in EDH except in the way that makes it even saltier and less "fair" than mass land destruction - Fall of the Thran ---> any effect that exiles your opponent's graveyards = Fall of the Thran only gives you lands back and thus is even saltier. (I'm just it could be played fair, this is just the only way I've ever seen it used)
It's not perfect, but it's definitely more along the lines of what I would like to see out of mass land destruction. Instead of making it an abusable saga, just make it a sorcery that destroys all except for a certain number of lands. Hard reset, just not a reset to turn zero seems like an easy bar to clear imo.
The only bad part about it is how if anyone at the table has a Bojuka Bog, you're screwing yourself so hard. They're gonna blow up your graveyard in retaliation and then you're pretty much out of the game.
Fall of the Thran is so easily abused that it basically just becomes Armageddon costing 2 extra mana and other combo pieces to mess with graveyards or destroy the saga before it starts returning lands. So why not just play Armageddon in the first place?
It just defeats the whole idea of white being the color that removes your stuff only temporarily.
One way to fix this is to have a card that's a combination of Fall of the Thran and Out of Time. Instead of destorying lands, phase them out. And give them back little by little over the course of a few turns. However, the time counters on Out of Time can be abused with proliferate. So I guess, this hypothetical card should have an ability where opponents could remove time counters from it by paying some sort of cost.
I run land destruction in most of my decks and people are usually thankful when somebody decides to drop a nykthos or a cabal coffers and I destroy it on the spot. I leave the strip mine out for people to see as soon as it's drawn. If they want to play their value lands, that's the risk they're gonna have to take
i opt for the silly version of that, it doesn't quite work for nykthos but the old one blue spells that change the land word on a card so cabal coffers for islands
I play both land destruction, and land recuperation^^. It's better when you have the gaea's cradle while you destroy other lands
Crucible of worlds makes strip mine useless. Anydeck that's running the cradle is running at least 1 land recovery option if not more.
Return to the Shire makes a strip mine slow me down for about as long as it takes to tap 2 and cast it. Getting a food token for my efforts. And if anything it usually means I get two taps out of the cradle in a single turn.
Green mana go brrrrrrr!
I literally tell every player to run at least ghost quarter or demolition field. I play most of the big, unfair lands in a couple of decks, one if which is a lands matter deck. A single piece of destruction usually goes a long way.
Edit because hindsight: I don't just tell random players I'm not interacting with, just players at my pods whenever deck design comes up. It's always solid to run some sort of targeted land destruction.
@@trizkit995 That's why I include Caustic Rain in my black decks. (=0
Someone else’s Blood moon against another’s landfall deck full of fetches and FoD taught me sometimes it’s okay to keep my opponents land hate on the field
The problem is that Blood Moon effectively locks most 3 color decks, and all 4-5 color decks, out of the game. It's really only useable in decks that run 1-2 colors. It solves one problem, but it can lead to a poor gaming experience for the decks that were not the problems.
@@CDour Pretty much. For me blood moon in casual is just a horrid card. Your potentailly screwing decks that are fine and honestly a deck running 3 or more colors is fine. I run a 5 color deck due to me just liking the commander. Its not being "greedy" to run lands to help with that mana base. Its kinda a crappy game if I am not allowed to do anything due to blood moon. I am fine people destroying the more disgusting land in casual but ideally leave the land that tap for more then one mana and so on alone. They are fine and not broken. IN a tourmanent do as you will as the point is to win. In my mind running a deck made to just destroy all your opponents lands and make them unusable tells me you do not really want a game and I wasted my time shuffling up.
by tap for more then one mana i meant things like sacred foundry that can give a white or red.
I speak from experience when I say casuals never think "Does this affect my opponents more than me?"
They only see their Timmy gameplan and everything slowing them down is taken personally.
@@CDourGreedy mana bases give you an edge in almost every match. It's only fair to get hosed every once in a while.
Same with using life as a resource. If all players try to keep life totals more or less equal when one person is using it as a resource for getting card advantage, they basically don't have any downsides. I try memorizing how much life each player paid for fetches, shocks, Sign in Blood etc.
Yeah I just assumed targeted land removal was fine. Sometimes there just is a particular land in play that you have to get rid of. I also assumed Armageddon was frowned upon because it grinds Commander games to a halt.
Yeah, that's the main reason people hate any mass land removal, but are fine with target land removal against something like a Cabal Coffers or Gaia's Cradle. A single powerful land getting removed is fine, but grinding the game to a standstill just isn't that great of a game experience for anyone
They could make more cards like Confounding Conundrum. Something that just won't allow more than 1 land per turn
If you beast within a nykthos or whatever I think that's solid threat assessment. Mass land destruction is a no. I run Rebuild, Pernicious Deed and Displacement Wave to get treasures gone though. I'm more scared of that
I have always been a more competitive minded player. It totally boggles my mind that certain greedy strategies are left unchecked at commander tables, then people ask how they got so far ahead or why that deck is so oppressive... its because people allow it to happen and refuse to change their build to compensate.
That's what I am saying. Players have a 100 card deck and they cant be bothered to build their deck to bounce back from land destruction.
@@MrMarvelMikewell the game has moved away from land destruction for a while now so they dont really make new cards to do it or deal with it.
Also most land destrution strategies are all or nothing aka this kills all you lands so you cant bounce back unless you already have a ton of artifacts out or GG
Players should get pounished for overexstending their resources. As our mana ramp gets slimmer and our commanders cost less, there should be a balance. Armagedden shouldn't be froned upon when players are willing to throw 5 lands on board on turn 3.I play boros so I am pretty mich screwed in the mana ramp race game. A vandleblast is pretty much an Armagedden to me. If my colors lack the speed to catch up, then it only makes for me to slow everyone down to my pace. @@PrettierNPastel
@@MrMarvelMike so with all the Enchantment and creature based ramp now in red white that just easily generateyou like 2 treasures after a vandal blast easy. A vandal blast should not be an Armageddon unless you just got unlucky on the draw and just pulled your rocks
@@MrMarvelMike whose throwing 5 lands on board on turn 3 commonly. Do you mean have 5 lands by turn 3.
Thats not that bad especially since artifact ramp is more common and usually stronger.
The problem with armegeddon is that 2 players probably get punished unnecessarily and probably are completly out of the game or the game grinds to be so slow they wish they lost.
If your deck treats a vandalblast as an armeggedon rethink how mamy rocks you have and put in more white creatures and enchantments that grab you lands or ramp you through treasures
I've never had an issue with land destruction itself, like you've said it's pretty justifiable in plenty of cases as another form of interruption, but my problem comes with land-including board wipes. Armageddon and stuff is easy to explain why we all hate it: it resets just about everyone's progress. Games are slow enough as is, don't make us restart our mana bases. Even if you have enough stuff to win the next turn, I'd rather you just play a game ending now card. But yeah, I agree, play strip mine and stuff if your local meta seems to always have a problem land on board in each game, it's a good thing
mass land destruction usually just makes the game take longer if they're not coming late-game with a follow-up and commander games can already take hours but people absolutely need to get over single-target land destruction. we don't need to blow up someone's basic land on turn 3 just to slow them down necessarily but if someone plays a useful utility land go ahead and explode it if you think it'll be problematic and its worth using your removal spell or ability on it. if someone casts a couple ramp spells and are way ahead on lands an extra basic is fair game too but honestly i don't know that i'd personally want to spend removal on a basic land just to slow someone down a little.
Exactly if your going to do mass land destruction END THE GAME AFTER YOU BLOW THE LANDS UP. I prefer no mass land destruction but at least end the game. Otherwise your just prolonging the game and making it more tedious. Single land destruction i think is fine as some lands are disgustingly broken. Destroying all my lands is just horrible and take away from the game as now I can not play anything and I wonder why i shuffled up. I played a deck ages ago based on land destruction. I kept losing a land left and right and at the end maybe had two lands while my opponent was sitting on like 6 or 7. Was not a fun game in any way.
This 100%
I thought targetted land removal was acceptable nowadays due to the problem children like Maze of Ith, Dark Depths, Field of the Dead, etc. Mass land destruction (3+ in one spell), or decks based on land destruction, like pox, are the pariahs in the format.
Enchantments definitely need some more removal cards in certain colors. Red has 0 and black has 1 enchantment specific removal.
red and black 100% need more ways to get rid of enchantments, and artifacts to a lesser extent in black. the color pie should be relevant to how each color performs any given action or interaction not restrict colors from doing those things altogether or to the point of practical uselessness. more spells like chaos warp that get rid of the threat on the table but could result in something benign or even worse replacing it, for example.
@@themoops4006that's largely the direction we are heading in. Feed the swarm is an example of that, as is invoke despair. Both very recent. I think we will see something in red which will be a "when this creature deals combat damage" enchantment destruction at some point. Probs not for a while though.
Was it ok in a game where i chaos warped the izzet players island when they were getting colour screwed?
Black got a second enchantment removal recently in Shatter the Oath (It's expensive but has no drawback). However, there are a few nuclear options via artifacts such as Oblivion Stone, Nevinyrral's Disk and Karn's Sylex. Are they the best? Obviously not, but they exist and are options.
Red has 1 - Chaos warp. Tho not true removal.
Also red elemental blast and pyro blast can help and there is a couple colorless expensive permanent description.
Though I do wish it had more, but dunno who else is fool enough to play mono red jank except me lol
I will never stop playing Blood Moon and Ruination as often as i can fit them into decks.
God, I love Ruination.
Yes! Punish those greedy mana bases
Blood Moon is truly awful and I love it.
@@PleasantKenobi One of my favorite cards ever printed :). I run almost entirely basics so its a great reminder of why they are a great mana base.
I'm fine with cards like these so long as they come up in the pregame conversation like someone in my group plays back to basics and I'm cool with it because he warns people ahead of time so they know to fetch basics instead of duals or risk being blown out. my problem is people who don't mention they are playing land hate and clearly are reveling in the gotcha moment. Like I enjoy cutthroat games where what land you get matters because cards like blood moon can potentially come down just let me know that is the kind of game we are going to have beforehand.
There should be more punishing effects that deal damage (or otherwise discourage) players from dropping multiple lands each turn. Sure, they still CAN, but it will hurt them instead of simply destroying all their lands and sending them back to the bad-feels-stone-age.
The problem I have is not that people use land destruction to remove problem lands and set back ramp, but the fact that every time I see someone with land destruction, their sole reason is to make the table miserable. They either run a whole bunch of target land destruction and make it the focus of their deck or they intentionally play mass land destruction to piss people off and have no real game plan beyond that.
I dont blame that land destruction player. We have more ritua;s / mana rocks and cards that produce treasures. It's 2023, it's time for players to adapt.
@@MrMarvelMike Who's "we?" Probably adapt to a different table.
I think you didn't read what I said. I said TO MAKE THR TABLE MISERABLE. I DO blame that player. He is not doing it because "ramp has gone out of control!", he does it because he wants to be aN ASSHOLE. ON PURPOSE.
The claim of this video is a good one. In commander, there's no easy analog to the aggro and tempo decks of 60 card formats that tend to punish greed really well. Voltron and linear combo decks can sort of play a similar role of pressuring people as they ramp, but those kinds of decks aren't ones that people are going to want to play against all the time either.
I think commander players should just build their decks to be more resilient to land destruction. With the curve and ramp getting slimer every year, there's no reason players can not recover when they lose. Just about every color has an enchament that will net them a ton of treasures or cards. More and more creatures gives you a treasures on in addition to the cards effect at this point.
@@MrMarvelMike it’s more than many people who play mass land destruction who I have encountered in the wild often deploy it at times where it doesn’t guarantee their win or engine and then it just ends up adding an extra hour to the game of top decking. It’s not really the experience i’m looking for in a casual game. If they can break parity, then I am much more open to playing against it.
(It’s similar to people playing Stax without breaking parity and casual. It just adds a bunch of unnecessary Time and turns to the game- just lock me out with a Drannith possibility storm or with an overwhelming board and Armageddon and we can just shuffle up and move the next)
Yes but but there are color combonations out their that can not compete when it comes to card advantage. Mono White and boros will never catch up to deck with a green identity in ramp nor can they produce card advantage like Blue. Let's not forget that green is known for artifact hate. So the arguemt of me needing more mana rocks goes out the window because blowing up my subpair ramp is no different than me blowing up all your lands. If Mono White/ Boros and can't keep up with the speed of ramp/card advantage your colors produce, then I will need to slow you guys down. Plus players should be punished for over exstending. and just how I have to work around your superior card advantage, it's your reposnbility as a deck builder to have your deck constructed to rebuild your board properly. Being casual has nothing to do with proper deck building and smart playing. @@Spirited_skiing
@@MrMarvelMike I literally play boros landfall so I’m not sure that holds up in 2023. Boros has gotten really good at pumping out lands through catch up ramp or recurring from graveyards, etc. You also can play things like scholarship sponsor, or archaeomancers map, or DGT to take advantage of green ramp
I'm so grateful for my play group, some folks play some crazy powerful stuff. I'm still learning so mine might be powerful but I don't know how to use it most of the time, but no one complains about it, no one complains that I make bad moves or slow the game down, I don't complain that sometimes I get pub stomped, but I still learn, and the play group helps me. Every now and then someone comes around who doesn't think like that and it's interesting to see how they handle the game. Some folks open up their thinking and stick around. It seems, some don't. But yeah I think I stumbled into a good play group 🙂 awesome video mate
Been thinking about this for a while. People hate land destruction then turn around and dump on red, white, Boros for being “bad”. A little land destruction would bring parity back to the color pie and to the game, especially if done right.
Everyone (except total man babies) is fine with any other kind of removal-targeted and mass exile, edict effects, fight effects, etc. These all drag the game out, too. Sheoldred or Elesh Norn can lock certain deck strategies completely out, as can a simple Fleshbag Marauder in a reanimate deck, and yet, there’s nothing in the social contract about that.
Everyone says “play more removal” whenever anyone takes issue with literally anything. Okay, Stone Rain is removal. Or we can start blinking Acidic Slime. Or let’s just animate all the lands and play chicken with those wraths everybody’s sandbagging. So, I guess play more ramp? 😂
I do like how you, a Tatiyova player, is talking about this issue.
And I agree, that etiquette about land destruction comes from a time well before most of the current top-tier lands were created. Since then we've had things like Field of the Dead, Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, the Eldraine Castles, the Ixalan Enchantment-to-Land Double faced cards (some of which ae straight up Gaea's Cradle and Tolarian Academy.) I do tend to run a few pieces of land destruction in most of my decks; Field of Ruin, Ghost Quarter, Stone Rain/Sinkhole if the colors permit; for the problem lands, Nykthos, Coffers, Tron lands etc.
There is one notable counter in recent years, Confounding Conundrum from Zendikar Rising (but that could backfire against certain decks.)
But those can only help against lands, not this barrage of Treasures.
Anyway, what I'm trying to say is simply this: As the times change, we need to as well.
idm effects like Blood Moon or Strip Mine (assuming you aren’t also playing Crucible of Worlds effects), a stax piece or piece of targeted land removal is fine, especially when some decks just get shut down by cards like Maze of Ith. Cards like Armageddon, though, just end up making the game take much longer more often than not.
if mass land destruction is treated as a wincon or at least as an enabler for your wincon i think it can be fine. if you cast an asymmetrical armageddon and it allows you to close the game out in a couple more turns by making sure your opponents have no responses and no board state to stop you then gg. i don't see that as functionally much different from comboing out or getting lethal or near-lethal damage in some other way. players just need to be really conscious of when and where to use those spells and effects and to not just chuck them in random decks, the decks need to be built to take advantage of them and close the game out after using them.
@@themoops4006 that’s a fair point. The issue is if mass land destruction was normalized most people would just use them the same way they use most boardwipes. But you’re right, my problem is when they’re used to essentially reset the game
The issue I've had when playing against land destruction is it almost exclusively get's play against me when I'm not playing a green deck, or one that ramps with lands at all. I've been at the receiveing end of one too many decks that blow up lands to lock people out of the game, all because they thought it was funny to prevent me from playing magic. So it's left a sour feeling in my MTG experience because I don't like denying people the ability to play the game with me. I don't find joy in my time being wasted, and I don't enjoy wasting other people's time.
I'm against mass land destruction, but I'm not against targeted land destruction (or blowing up a few). I think the main issue is that we don't have many efficient options of doing that, so it's often better to try and out ramp the problem deck or counteract what they do with their abundant mana. Destroying 1 land is find, but most cards that do so feel too mana intensive to bother running. WotC hasn't printed many cards that allow us to target the problem deck without causing collateral damage to everyone else at the table, which signifanctly extends the length of the game. I'd love more cards aimed at tackling this issue, Lavaball Trap from Zendikar is a great example of this type of effect. scryfall.com/card/zen/135/lavaball-trap
10:06 Collector Ouphe is great in a deck that doesn't run artifacts with activated abilities, but it also has the unfortunate effect of shutting other decks down and limiting interactive gameplay (stony silence has the same problem). Most players don't enjoy playing with or against stacks effects. I like March of the Machines because it solves the issue with treasure/food/clue ramping without limiting interaction too much. Vandalblast and Filter Out are also great options for disrupting rampant artifact token creation.
I was a primarily blue player years ago. As a social experiment at my LGS, I routinely counter people's early game ramp instead of their big flashy finishers.
Even with that being the main sweaty LGS in the area, it took about a month, but I very quickly became *that guy* at that LGS.
I find a lot of edh players absolutely hate any interactivity. they just want to play their cards like solitaire, and throw their toys out of the pram the second a counter or kill spell goes off. its a shame really. MTG and commander are at their best when everyone at the table interacts. It also leads into a wider conversation over people not wanting to change their decks to adapt or improve but that's a whole other conversation.
Land destruction is absolutely needed! Be it through spells or abilities, I’d say at least one piece of this interaction is a must
I've been arguing with my playgroup about this topic as well.
Everyone is ok with hating on mana rocks by casually dropping a Vandalblast and screwing non-green decks' day, but no one likes lands getting blown up. I feel like if you do play Vandalblast, you cannot complain about Armageddon.
That said, some cards are really pushed (mainly Dockside tbh), so we settled for: it's fine to play some stax cards to prevent people from going absolutely ballistic, but don't overdo it because we still want to play the game and we're trying to avoid two card combos at the table
I think the big problem with land destruction is that, counterintuitively, it's actually really bad against heavy ramp decks. The decks you would want MLD against the most are usually the ones that can most easily recover from it. So this leads to a situation where we want a solution to land ramping that somehow doesn't screw over those that aren't abusing land ramp. I think the answer is probably to start printing effects that either A. punish lands that were not played normally, B. destroy down to a set number ("everyone picks 5 and sacs the rest"), C. limits untapping (like each player can only untap X lands, X = # controlled by player with fewest), or D. punish high numbers of lands. Would also be nice to encourage more basics and I think Ruination, Blood Moon, etc. should be more accepted in an environment that has people running few or no basics sometimes.
Issue is your doing alot more damage and potentailly locking them out of being able to do anything. You might get some mana rocks with vandablasts but also non mana rock artifacts. Destroying the mana rocks slows them down but does not prevent them from playing. Destroying all their land is far far worse a snow they have no mana to do anything and have to slowly rebuild hoping to draw some lands to lay down one at a time. Just two very different things. If someone is set on running mass land drestuction fine but for the love of god end the game fast. Destroying all my lands and then doing a slow crawl of a game after trying to rebuild my mana base thats just pain. Hell i jsut scoop after rift at times due to not wanting to rebuild everything.
Literally no. So tell me, how in the hell does a non-green deck come back from an Armageddon? Other than crucible of worlds becoming a main deck commander staple, the green land ramp decks have a far better chance of recovery, so the normalization of mass land destruction doesn't even hinder the decks it would attempt to target as much as everyone else.
I tend to draw distinctions between rocks and lands because barring ramp you only get one a turn. Meanwhile you can drop multiple rocks per turn.
@@dhantefranklin336 I don't understand why people are under the assumption the Armageddon player will just drop it to even things out with the green player.
When playing cards like that, you build your deck around it so you can get the upper hand. I built a Dihada deck when the precon came out (the planeswalker commander) whose plan was to cast cards like Obliterate, which destroy all creatures, artifacts and lands. It did nothing to planeswalkers, so Dihada survived alone on the board and it was capable of generating treasures. No one was coming back from that.
Now, is that a fun play pattern? Nope. Vandalblast destroying non-green decks' mana rocks is the same. You're not winning a game against three other people if all the mana you have is from turn land drops
If only there was a card that would bring balance to the number of lands equal to the caster's. And in a color not green, as green doesn't need that effect
Balance, I used to love that card!
White Sorcery: 1WW, choose another player. Everyone with fewer lands can search for basic lands equal to the difference and put them into play.
PK say these words with me:
"I support common sense stax strategies"
The problem is there's very little in between spending 4 mana to destroy a single land and just destroying all of them outright. We need more cards like Wildfire
tbf i get why shit like wildfire is frowned upon. Imo ghost quarter, wasteland and friends are the most "socially acceptable" options. They provide precision removal against literal P2W cards like cradle and dont blow up timmy the dinosaur players lands too.
Wildfire is a cool card but it's honestly closer to a ramp payoff than a ramp hoser.
We need more cards like Balance.
Everyone gets mad when I play Armageddon but then they refuse to scoop when I play Faith’s Reward.
That's just a wincon, not MLD. Not scooping to that is their problem, not your's.
As a player that started in 1993 and left circa 1998... I came back in 2022 and was excited about Commander (I still am)... but it seems silly that Mass Creature Destruction, Mass Artifact Destruction, Mass Enchantment Destruction were all 100% OK... but for some reason Mass Land Destruction was Verboten.
With so many metas allowing infinite combos... manipulation of poison combos...the existence of Annihilator... incredibly powerful ETB Triggers etc. that Mass Land Destruction was considered too powerful/too unfun.
Mass Land Destruction is fun, and encourages players to manage their land... rather than just putting all of them down every turn... in the same way that Boardwipes encourage players not to always put all of their creatures on on table.
Not sure if it's been mentioned, but we did get that 2 mana rock that turns into an equipment from WoE
Also it'd be great if we got an opposition agent type effect but only for lands. The problem with that is it'd probably mostly get used by decks that are also looking to ramp
I run Catastrophe in my monowhite deck. I play it for the creature wipe. One time I had a guy be dishonest with the rule zero conversation (shocker i know) and had 7 gates with maze's end on turn 5. He even said he had something in hand to win the next turn. After a manarock i was able to Catastrophe on my turn choosing lands. Dude was pissed. The other 2 guys in the pod were also upset even tho they said i made the correct play. I don't know where i was going with this story, but just wanted to share.
Sowing Salt is part of the Lobotomy cycle. Tempest Block gave us the original Lobotomy, then Wizards gave each color a Lobotomy card of its own (Eradicate, Quash, Scour, Sowing Salt, Splinter). They've been making more Lobotomy cards ever since.
Personally, have been a perpetrator and victim of it. I ran a Tempest/Urza's block deck with Lobotomy which was fun because you could get it off on turn 2 with a Dark Ritual. But there was also a time when a friend hit my Capsize with a Quash and- *I kid you not* - I literally shook my fist at him, saying "You'll pay for that!"
Thats super interesting, and something I didn't know. Thank you. :)
100% agree. Lands are a part of the game and if you are making them a core part of your strategy it's fair game to attack them!
Random side thought. The taboo to land destruction is like the only reason Simic is such a powerhouse. Because the answer to that playstyle is "illegal".
Only if you play with sheep
As a Boros player I have a solid solution: They can't ramp if they're dead. Extra combats and doublestrike will make you get way further than you think with just a handful of creatures.
Also, I always understood fast mana to mean any permanent that produces more mana than it costs. So sol ring, crypt, mana vault, Mox diamond, chrome mox, JLo, mox opal and grim monolith
For me, this exemplifies the attitude of "I don't like it, so you can't play it" writ large. Like any player, I hate it when my game-plan gets shut down, but that is a part of playing. That someone's game-plan is stopped because of land removal isn't really any different from a game-winning combo being thwarted by the destruction of one of the combo pieces. Although someone might be out of the game entirely at an earlier point because of land destruction, I don't see any practical difference between this and other tactics that shut down someone's deck--it just happens quicker with land destruction.
I always use Beast Within, Generous Gift and Chaos Warp, Vindicate, Assassin’s Trophy, as answers to overpowered lands in commander. I think destroying lands is ok as long as it’s not your modus operandi.
They should unban Balance, or print more effects like that, and that don't cost like 7 mana or 7 suspended turns.
Nice Inferi shirt! I used to hang with with some of those guys back in college. Good to see they're getting over across the pond. Their new song is called "Tainted Pact" 😂. Love that they're going full on mtg-metal now. Horns up, duder!🤘🤘
Commander is just different, I'm not a fan. Think of it like this; 1vs1 is medieval armies on the field of battle, charging at each other. Commander is a medieval siege, where 4 castles dig in and fortify their defenses, and their catapults fire huge firebals at each other, safely, and slowly, from a distance.
Totally agree. I run a fair degree of land removal where I can, as well as Blind Obedience, Thalia 2 and Stony Silence et al. Not to make people's lives miserable, just to pull them back to earth. My opinion is don't start none, wont be none.
I love Kenobis relationship to commander players. It is honest, fair and absolutely funny to listen to.
I think you have an excellent point. Field of the Dead in particular is a land that must be answered the same way a Korvold must be answered.
I'm always leary about mass land destruction, but targeted land destruction or disruption is fine. I think that the simplest answer to ramp, however... is ramp.
As with most games, simply being good at the game - progressing your game plan, protecting your pieces, and deploying game-winning threats - will win you more games than focusing on disrupting your opponents.
I have never seen a single person claiming that removing individual lands fall under the same category mass land destruction. So I dont get why those 2 get mashed together so often. One can clearly be more unfun if not done well, the other is just removal like any other removalspell
I just want to push back a bit, at least anecdotally, i never hear that targeted land removal is an issue. Mass land destruction, yes, but not targeted. Same for blood moon. An individual may complain bc theyre mana base was too greedy, but as a whole in my area, its perfectly ok.
hard agreed that ramping should be absolutely punished. there's no reason to ban land destro or anything like that when people are OUT OF CONTROL with ramp having like 10 mana turn 3-4 and doing whatever they want. if I was running a crazy ramp deck and somebody blew up my shit I'd be like "oh.. LOL YA GOT ME"
The constant balance between "I could just boardwipe and take everyone down a peg, then destroy two of that players lands" and "and then this game takes... another fourty minutes before we end it and can shuffle up for a new game" isn't as easy as saying that we should just disrupt everyones ramp.
Yes, it's absolutely viable to take someone down a peg, but disrupting all the ramp and making sure people play the game more fair, and then sit and struggle as people almost never draw enough cards to keep going after a blowout it'll just turn into a "Who can recover first" kind of game. Constant shifts in what cards a playgroup plays influences what kind of games will be played, and when it focuses too much on removal it shifts from a meta that is too fast, to a meta of "mother, may i?" every time something good drops on the board.
What I think commander would need is more balance effects. Like, the land ramp player has to exile lands down to the same amount as the person with the second lowest. Destroying a land rampers lands isn't even good enough, because they just return it one way or another.
Yeah, I’m onboard man. You’re pretty much right. Now I don’t play Commander much, but overall your points are correct.
It's so funny how none of the power creep would've been an issue if they focuses more on ways to punish ramp. Stax and land destruction should stay around.
I agree with you. Land destruction should be more acceptable. And to tell you the truth, when I started playing commander and heard about the "unwritten rule" I actually thought it was kind of silly. There are so many ways to ramp, but not only that, the power creep is huge lately. So I say unban Sylvan Primordial and renegotiate land destruction.
Okay, you've convinced me. I'm removing all ramp from my decks.
But seriously, I have a deck that runs all four Wildfire effects. It is a Lhurgoyf Tribal deck, so I want as much stuff in everyone's graveyard as possible. Terrivore can be a BEAST!
Not only was Sowing Salt originally in Urza's Destiny, but the entire cycle was as well (Eradicate, Quash, Scour, Splinter). I used to play with Sowing Salt in my Standard/Modern/Extended sideboards, back when the format was not as fast.
One of my favorite cards in commander these days is Layline of Singularity. If the decks are fair, it barely affects the board. If you're making a million tokens/treasures... Surely you meant one token/treasure.
My problem with mass land destruction is that it's not an answer to ramp decks. If I Armageddon the board I ruin the fair players day meanwhile the big mana deck can easily rebuild.
Any green card that can make treasure tokens was absolutely a mistake. Treasure is primarily a red thing, and also kind of white cause white still barely has anything.
This is something I've been telling my play group for ages. Why should my mana rocks be free game and their green-ramped lands aren't?
My answer to treasures is usually Disciple of the Vault, but that invariably falls to Swords to Plowshares from the same player with Smothering Tithe. But that’s my luck; in lieu of being answered anyway, I don’t run the hate and just stick mostly to pieces that further my game plan.
Targeted land destruction I'm totally fine with because you have to dedicate spots to it just like a ramp player does. However MLD just makes games last way too long and does just feel like it goes against the general spirit of casual commander.
I play mass land land destruction in my voltron deck. It’s one of my finishers. Some people get mad, but honestly most people accept it and we shuffle up for a new game. I think that because so few people run MLD due to the stigma, the idea that people are so against MLD has become over exaggerated. In my experience, people are reasonable when you play these cards responsibly. It’s petty/spiteful casts of Armageddon when the caster knows they can’t win that give MLD a bad rap.
I think treasure/ token ramp is by far the most dangerous thing we’re seeing because not only is it ramp, but it also combos so easily with so many things. And with new mechanics like Bargain, treasures are only going to grow stronger and stronger.
My k'rrik deck had cards that punished everyone for playing lands. It ran desolation, small pox, pox, anhk of Mishra, polluted bonds, sink hole, strip mine, wasteland. I cut the Mana base hate, it made babies cry, the new decklist is on Moxfield(behold, blessed perfection)
Who is saying no single target Land removal? I’ve been playing commander for six years and never seen that complaint once
Because any sensible player knows there shouldn't be a complaint
I built a standard deck around Waking the Trolls, was Temur in colors and my absolute favourite play was having Field of Ruin out with a confounding conundrum…
In my opinion, everyone should run at least 1 land destruction card in Commander. Hell, I'd even consider 2 at times. I've specifically killed Gia's Cradle in a game before, and the entire table let out a sigh of relief. Play land destruction, just try not to go overboard with it; everyone should have fun!
Set everyone to a number of lands that isn’t zero:
Urza’s sylex
Keldon Firebombers
Magus of the balance
Cheap artifact sweepers=amazing:
Seeds of innocence
Brotherhoods end
Serenity
Etc.
Run field of ruin and demolition field in every deck. You stay land neutral, color fix, and get rid of pesky good lands
I have only gotten to play commander a few times, but my worse experience was getting handed a Blue Green ramp deck. I didn't know what was in it, it was someone else's deck. That person then said my deck was busted and everyone needed to gang up on me on turn one to stop me. I was out of the game before turn 5.
I think if the other decks had ways to deal with the ramp, people wouldn't have made the decision to try and kill me before I had the chance to play more than two spells
That seems like absolutely awful table manners, first and foremost. Targeting a deck that's getting ahead too fast is one thing, but handing another player a deck *you made* with the intention to sell them out by turn 5? That's just being a bad gamer.
I think the fundamental problem is that certain magic players have an ideal deck plan, and the further they have to decide the more upset they become. Land destruction is often the apex of disruption for decks trying to follow side lines. Conversely some players prefer a more hybrid dynamic fluid approach, but in a straight race get their decks outpaced. It's almost two different games both called Magic, but you need players to understand both exist at the same time
I run a hatebears Breena deck. I played at a new shop recently and there was a newer player there that I ended up playing with. In the first match (as I ended up winning) he viewed me as a villain. In the second match played against two new people, he basically called me a hero. It's amazing how someone's perspective can change when you play against the degenerate decks and you see how good hatebears can be to even out a board.
There needs to be a discussion about the difference between MLD (Armageddon) and STLD (Field of Ruin) - problematic lands see play, so should single target land destruction. People used to understand this but it seems that the social contract that says no MLD has changed and now it's just "no land destruction"
All the LGS that i play at everyone had targeted land removal. Like mass land removal is frowned upon(unless you win the next round) but people try to have something in the deck to respond to any situation. Will be using march of the machines, thank you!
We either need better ramp in other decks, or more cards like Urza's Sylex
I don’t know, this is admittedly very anecdotal, but I don’t find many people seeing targeted land removal as a problem as long as you’re not being a dick about it. Blowing up a single utility land doesn’t receive any hate in the area I play. Same with taking a person off their winning land, it isn’t seen as problematic. The only time I see people getting salty about targeted land destruction is when someone uses land removal in the early game against someone without any real justification or strategic purpose gets some hate. If you picked one player in a casual game and take out their shock land on turn 3 just for giggles, that gets seen as a jerk move. Now, if someone is jumping way ahead and dumping a bunch of lands or rocks, then it makes sense to take them off their lands and everyone is cool with that.
I think that at the end of the day, players have to figure out how to communicate their expectations better. We also need to be less salty and understand that someone doing something you find unfun isn’t always meant to be a personal attack.
That is why I run tutor cancels. Hard to ramp if you're only looking at the top four cards or you gotta sacrifice a creature an day 19 life :,(
Tutor punishment often punishes ramp as well, so maybe more tutor punishment cards?
I've had this conversation many times where (although I don't run land destruction (mostly)) if you can be punished for using creature or artifact ramp, you should be punished for land ramping. If I ramp out all my lands and then they get destroyed, alright. You got me. If I run and artifact deck and you vandal blast me, the. You got me! So that's why I play Confounding Conundrum. It's fair and keeps the table fair.
I used to play a Traxos artifact deck, and it RELIED on artifact mana. The green player who dedicates a literal eighth of his deck to ramp spells was happier than a pig in shit to play Bane of Progress after I took a few turns trying to build up a mana base (with bad rocks, mind you). When I finally decide to play a Boros or Mardu deck, I should be allowed to play an Armageddon or Ravages of War, as a treat.
We play often with upgrated precons, so there is no big ramping. With complete custom decks we all play some land destruction and at least 3-4 artefact and enchantment removals. But a well played dockside is always a bummer.
I agree with you. When I first got into Commander, I struggled to accept that Land Destruction wasn't okay. I'm primarily a Blue, or Black player; sometimes a mix, and I even occasionally level up to Grixis, but ramp isn't usually a thing for my decks, and I'm often a more conservative, less aggressive player. I wanted to figure out targeted Land Destruction, but it wasn't popular, even as ramping was rampant.
I really wish WotC would also walk back their stance on land destruction.
Being told, "Oh well players dont like having their lands blown up, it doesn't feel good" in response to wanting more Land Destruction (and even stax) cards, is quite jarring.
People don't like playing against counterspells or discard abilities, and they certainly feel bad a lot of the time. But guess what? They're a necessary evil. Discard abilities keep combo decks honest and counterspells keep both combo and ETB value decks in check.
So I find it quite funny that land destruction is frowned upon, even on WotC's end... When land destruction is THE counter to mass ramp/greedy 5 color piles. So... What... Are ramp decks just exempt from counterplay? Are greedy 5 color piles supposed to be able to reign supreme because "Land Destruction bad"?
It winds me up, especially as someone who really only plays Arena now (due to not having anyone around me who plays MTG anymore and LGS aren't my thing), it's absurd how ramp decks and 5 color piles feel like the golden child on pretty much every format on the client, because WotC just refuse to bring cards on to the client that punish these decks severely.
This is what happens when you stigmatise and essentially shadow ban Scissors in a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors. It's not a particularly smart move... For obvious reasons, and it alienates a portion of the playerbase.
My interactions with Mass Land Destruction has always not been fun. It equalizes the Ramp decks that start snowballing sure, but most of the time it also punishes everyone else.
The decks that do one land a turn get blown out and get shut out of the game --
I do think spot removal for problematic lands (Cradle, Coffers, etc) should be included more, but not Land Wipes..
Ruination is your friend. If people want to spend 600 dollars on their mana base you should remind them what a couple dollars can do.
Personally my groups seem to be ok with targeted removal - sometimes it's important - and would prob be ok with armageddon if (and its a big if) the game ends very quickly afterwards. But if you just blow up lands then the game crawls along for another hour then that'd suck
Targeted land destruction is an absolute necessity in commander. In any deck that has space for colorless lands, I put in a Wasteland/Strip Mine/Demolition Field as top priority. Too many Coffers and Nykthos and Cradles running around to not take care of them.
MLD though has fallen flat when I've tried it out. Even when I had the strongest board, what ended up happening was people used their 1 and 2 mana removal on me to even the playing field and then the green player just ramped harder than everyone else again. Resetting to 0 lands just means the ramp player gets back ahead again.
I was in a game recently where I played an Energy Flux and a player in the group scooped on the spot and walked out of the store. Haven't seen em since
100% agree, people need to grow up. I played a Ruination a couple of months ago in a game. Had the ok of the 2 players and a 3rd joined last minute, warned him too. I threw a Ruination on like turn 6 which hurt 2 players and even myself. 4th player lost 1 land. He kept bitching and targeted me out when 1. I slowed down 5 color sliver guy who was popping off and actually helped him. What a twat!
I feel like there needs to be a mass land destruction cards that just targets ramp players. Something like. "Each player chooses up to 8 lands then destroys the rest." Mass land destruction makes everyone feel bad even if they were playing lands fairly, this way it just fucks over those dirty dirty green players.
Urza's sylex does this but it also wipes away the rest of the board which is an issue.
the thing about mld is that, in my experience as a player who likes to ramp to the moon, i almost always win when someone else casts mld.
that players gets hated out and i recover faster than anyone else at the table because my deck has more lands and more ramp.
I added an Armageddon to my lifht paws deck ,i rarely play it cause it usually goes off. My play group is like naw thats crazy but im like " we should just let omnath play 3 plus extra lands a turn and do nothing?" Have to bring heavy rampers back down to our level.
for the longest time i had a "win and let win" attitude, I win fast but i also lose fast. I'd rather watch my opponents pop off and play another game after than wasting card slots in my deck for stax and hard counters for certain strategies... then my friend made an Etali deck... no we will not play multiplayer while you ramp every turn and then get a sol ring, get a removal spell, get a tutor then combo off no no no. you will pay for your spells no nothing will enter from exile no you will not cast more than x spells this turn. If you want to do cool stuff you WILL run removal and not just all gas that is incredibly boring even when you win against it.
The problem with Armageddon effects is that it doesn't specifically punish land ramp decks. It punishes everyone for simply playing the game, and when not played to end the game in a turn or two, can drag them out unnecessarily long. So even though I personally don't care if it is played, I can understand who may have an issue with it. What I don't understand is the problem with countering greedy mana bases, such as by Ruination.
That being said, Natural Balance is an effect that they should print more, but in white without the ramp part. Something like:
{1}{W}{W} Sorcery
Each player chooses up to four lands he or she controls and sacrifices the rest.
This would actually be something that counters big land ramp.
Back in my day, there was this thing called "Mana Burn", which could be a way to tax those that ramp out 10 lands by turn 5. Things that tap all your opponents lands, would turn into a burn spell if you did it at a point where they couldn't spend the mana for a spell or ability cost. Is it time to bring that back?
Ugh the throwing models in the bin thing is so real. Early in 9th edition 40k, I played Imperial Guard vs Dark Angels, and this guy brought the sniper assassin. I get first turn and notice there's nothing protecting the sniper so I just shoot it with my tank, killing it instantly. This guy gets SO mad and starts saying "that was my favorite model, I don't know if I even want to play anymore. That's just so frustrating." Then he proceeds to mop the floor with me for the rest of the game as I'm respectful the whole time.
Honestly I don't know if it's land destruction, or just interaction that is seen as not sporting. And I'm so incredibly fed up with people playing busted stuff and getting salty when it doesn't stick around, and start spite playing. Removing vital game pieces is how the game stays more than just war (the playing card game), and who drew all the aces. Also, lands are often those vital game pieces, so yes please play land destruction.
Honestly, if all treasure entered tapped I think that would solve a major problem. Still allows the player to pop off the following turn, but doesn't let them pop off out of nowhere.
this is why I love that new Urzas sylex card so much, it strikes a good balance between actually disrupting ramp yet not locking people out of the game. also the blue enchantment Confounding Conundrum. I do think mass land destruction is unfun most of the time because it slows the game down so much, but I have zero issue with targeted land destruction or the rare card that actually counters ramp. I wish they played around with the idea of 'reverse landfall' more often, where something triggers every time an opponent plays a land. that would also be a nice way to punish ramp decks without things getting out of hand
I have no issues with single target land removal, as there are plenty of lands out there that have no business being in play. That being said, I think mass land destruction like Armageddon makes games more miserable than solving ramp. Restarting the game essentially, slowing it down to an unfun crawl, like stack effects. I think the answer to ramp in most multiplayer games isn't land destruction or tax effects generally, but interaction. If youre running blue, please run some counter magic in your deck. Run kill spells, board wipes, etc. Run as much removal as there is ramp at the table.
Every playgroup I’ve ever played with ran targeted land removal without any need for discussion or anger, but everyone agreed that mass land destruction (without a wincon to back it up) wasn’t desired.
Targeted removal of powerful lands is not frowned upon in commander. I can Generous Gift or Oblation your Glacial Chasm (defensive permanent), your Cabal Coffers (mana multiplier), or your Mutavault (manlands can be threats). What is frowned upon is preventing someone from being able to play by destroying all their mana (mass land destruction, or using repeated single target land removal to simulate mass land destruction).
Even then, different playgroups are fine with things "commonly" frowned upon. If you are running a Stasis Stax, let me know and we will have a fun game where I struggle to use Collective Voyage while under your Winter Orb.
Now your other question is "If someone is spending their mana ramping and not progressing their win con or their defensive board state, how do you interact with that"? If they have been doing that and you haven't, then your win con is further along and your have stronger defenses. Punch Face. Make them take time using their removal instead of their ramp. Or make it so their big creatures are less effective because you had time to play a control engine or defensive cards.
I am glad you emphasis having this conversation with your playgroup. For my playgroup, MLD is a bad idea. The decks that ramp are about playing big inefficient spells. The ramp is the cost they pay to get to play the game. So we can use Beast Within (or Blood Moon*, or Winter Orb) for their scary lands but the game is fine without MLD.
*Although Blood Moon is less effective in my playgroup since I help encourage more basic lands with Collective Voyage. It feels bad when it hurts the 5 color decks so I tend to not play it.
Mana Rocks are nice! They have good advantages and disadvantages compared to land ramp. They refund some mana the same turn, but they are prone to mass permanent removal. It is very healthy for the format to have this good colorless option like Gilded Lotus and Thran Dynamo.
Of course I consider that separate from treasures. Treasures are more akin to ritual spells like Dark Ritual or Seething Song. It really depends on if they are too efficient (Dockside, Smothering Tithe) but are fine if balanced (Goldspan Dragon?). Outside of the few pushed treasure cards, treasures are more an issue of consumer fatigue with an overused mechanic rather than a problem in a single game. It is the same with the "and draw a card". WotC just needs to be more creative.
When you get to the crux you are missing the middle. We don't have to choose between "being allowed to play" and "being able to interact". The decks that ramp are about ramping, they are about playing big spells. This is THE format where we can fairly play those big spells (other formats only cheat in those cards). So a good balance is Deck A ramps and plays a big spell. Deck B has already developed their win cons during those turns and now gets to play 2+ spells vs Deck A's 1 big spell. An army of Goblins vs a single Hydra. Aka you can play the threats you want, but they will be interacted with. If you get into a position to try to win, don the archenemy cape and the others will team up to stop you. And repeat as hubris defeats the archenemies until one eventually succeeds (but hopefully after everyone got to at least play something).