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October 27, 2004
Gods, I hate LD in Prismatic
You know, I don't care at all about sports or baseball, but it's still a bit embarrassing to be in the same state as the Cardinals are from as they play like crepe.
And now, a rant on Land Destruction and the Prismatic format.
Prismatc is one hell of a fun format. It's so wonderfully random. And I just recently created a Singleton Prismatic deck and it's proving even more random and even more fun. But, out there, there is a scourge against funkind. And that is lots of land destruction in Prismatic.
Thankfully, Sundering Titan has been banned in Prismatic with the recent set of bannings, but there are still tons of Land Destruction spells out there. The format is based in trying to build a deck that consistently builds a 5 color mana base, even with it's hugeass size. You get colorscrewed all the time, even with the best decks around. Being colorscrewed is no fun. Why do you think it's a good thing to build your deck around colorscrewing your opponents? Seriously! Magic isn't fun unless you're doing things. This is why a heavycounter deck is no fun, either. (Counters have their place in a deck, but not as the whole deck. That's just stupid.) A counter in the right place can dramatically turn the tide of a game. That's exciting. Having every spell countered over and over is not. Same with this. You're searching hard to find the color land you need, only to have it taken away the moment you find it. No fun.
That said, land destruction does have a part in building a truly good prismatic deck. "Man-lands" like Blinkmoth Nexus and Stalking Stones, and other lands who aren't around for mana (Like Minamo at Water's Edge, perhaps) need answers, just like you have to pack answers for all those artifacts, creatures and enchantments. But Stone Rain isn't the right answer. Land Destruction shouldn't be the primary focus of a card in a Prismatic deck, it should be a secondary benefit for when those lands like I stated above are pissing you off. Perfect Example is Reap and Sow. Reap and Sow is a damn good land searcher, because it puts the land directly into play and can gank up your painlands, fetchlands... whatever nonbasic you want. That's good. Lands that produce more than one color of mana are an obvious benefit in Prismatic. That's the primary reason you put Reap and Sow in there. And if you happen to have the mana to entwine it when one of those annoying lands are lurking about, then nobody is going to complain. Demolish and Creeping Mold are two other examples of cards that can take out those frustrating lands, yet LD isn't the primary reason they're there. I pack those in my decks for that reason. Sometimes I entwine Reap and Sow and destroy a land when an annoying land isn't out, but when I do, I just cut down the number of mana, attacking whatever color my opponent has the most of. Now, I don't expect everyone to be as nice as that, but still. I played a game today where I got 9 land destruction spells thrown at me. That's just uncalled for. All of that's guy's red must have been LD. It made me mad.
So I ranted. So there. In general, though. Land Destruction is okay. It's an important piece of Red's arsenal, and a little bit in green's. And it has its place, in tourney-level stuff and in spiffy decks that rely on it (Like decks involving Terravore, for example.) But it should stay the fuck out of my prismatic matches...
Posted by poetfox at October 27, 2004 08:59 PM
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