Land Destruction

Trine

Hey all, first post in the MTG forum (if you don't count my activation code thread that got nuked ). I've only been playing for all of two nights (MTGOnline), so sorry for any stupid questions!

Anyway I was just wondering what everybody's view on Land Destruction decks are. I got interested in playing MTG, strangely enough, from playing Guild Wars, which for anybody who hasn't played it, isn't far from a stripped-down real-time version of MTG. Kinda. Anyway, my favourite tactic in Guild Wars was energy-denial, so I wanted to replicate this tactic in MTG. From reading up on it, my choices seemed to be control or land destruction, so I went with land destruction, RG.

Big mistake it seems! A really common thing to see in the chat rooms where people are looking for a casual game is "no LD decks". Lots of people I've beaten have been really bitter about it, leaving before I finish them off, leaving messages like "sad, you'd get destroyed after sideboard". I'm sure that's 100% true (especially since I've no idea how to make a decent sideboard) but can I expect this kind of reaction all the time? Is it the same in real-life MTG? Is LD frowned upon and seen as a no-fun tactic?

Ivan

Yes, its true. LD is seen as a cheap tactic. You are basically the mesmers of GW. You prevent people from doing their thing and that is never fun. Its made even less fun in MTG cos you cant even auto attack :P Getting beat down by a little weenie guy because you are mana screwed, is never going to be fun. Still, its pretty enjoyable for the LD player and you win a decent percentage

Anyway, so long as you have fun, thats the main thing.

MatthewVII

Land destruction is a great deck to play. The current U/R magnivore decks are based around wildfire, thoughts of ruin, stone rain etc and back it up with counters and bounce for a big finish with a hasty magnivore. The ideal game plan is use of Boomerang, Eye of Nowhere etc to continuously return your opponents land to his hand for the first few turns and totally deny him mana, then go off with a big wildfire while having signets/mana producers on the field. tis heaps of fun!

Trine

Good to know I'm not alone in liking LD! UR looks like the best LD alright, guess I was just in a bit of a rush to build a deck and get playing so I went for GR!

Yeah my original deck was to have Wildfires until I realised I couldn't afford them after a few Magnivores and Pyroclasms blew my budget! Boomerang, Wildfire and Eye of Nowhere look nice for keeping aggro decks at bay, the only creature removal I have in my deck is Pyroclasm and Volcanic Hammer, so yeah, big weakness there. Sure would love some Wildfires!

I'm still messing around with the deck, but right now my plan for getting the Magnivores into play is through Weird Harvest. If I can get Weird Harvest and a Seething Song together I can usually get 2 or 3 of the Magnivores into play that turn and it's pretty much game over. I don't see many people use Weird Harvest so I'm kinda happy about that, but maybe you guys know a quicker way of getting the Magnivores into play on a RG deck and would like to share?!

MatthewVII

Elvish Piper
Chord of Calling

with blue in the deck you could use gifts ungiven. not much else i can think of.