Hello, I'd like some advice on my black and red land destruction deck. Any advice would be appreciated, including fun cards to put in, or pointing out cards that don't fit. This is just for friendly casual play, but I might be interested in tournaments if it qualifies. This is the first deck I've built on my own, and I hardly ever win against my friends--and if I do it's usually due to the fact they got a bad shuffle or bad luck. I have only won once in the past several months and I play several times a week, it's getting pretty old.
My idea is to delay my opponent long enough by destroying any lands he or she gets out early, so they can't play anything while I build my field and wait for my high-cost cards, and Westvale Abbey or It that betrays to come out and swing hard. The problem I've run into is that I haven't once been able to work up the mana necessary to get It That Betrays out, and the few times I got Westvale Abbey to transform it was immediately exiled or taken control of against me, and I didn't have any other "big hurrah" ready to win after that.
Sideboard:
Volcanic Offering x2
Helldozer x2
Mind Stone x2
Blight x2
Grip of Desolation x2
Herron Archive x1
Surgical Extraction x4
Other cards I'm looking at:
Void Winnower x1
Imp's Mischief x4
The rats and Nighthawks are there for the deathtouch, to deter possible early attacks, plus the Nighthawks have lifelink. Emrakul's Hatcher are there for the spawns to help get Westvale Abbey transformed and to block. Charmbreaker Devils and Goblin Dark-Dwellers are there to keep recasting those land-destruction sorceries.
I like the Void Winnower because it's cheaper than It That Betrays and has a fun ability. A friend's newly-built mono-black discard deck laid waste to me last night, so I started looking at the Surgical Extraction and Imp's Mischief.
Hello, I'd like some advice on my black and red land destruction deck. Any advice would be appreciated, including fun cards to put in ... This is just for friendly casual play
Just a heads up... Most casual play circles consider "friendly land destruction" an oxymoron. It's the most hated style of deck to play against. Casual players don't like losing their lands and being unable to play spells. So it might cause grief for your friends and make you unpopular. But if your friends don't mind, then brew away!
First, as a new player you already have 4 Sinkhole? How? If you have access to old cards and/or budget isn't an issue, then there are a lot of fun options for you! Here are some old land destruction classics:
Crack the Earth is quite effective if you have 0/1 Scion tokens or Typhoid Rats out early and opponent just has lands.
Since most land destruction only starts at 3 mana and your creatures are big and slow, you want to run cards to help speed up your mana production. Just drawing and playing lands is too slow. That's why you're finding yourself unable to play your big spells. Rakdos Signet or Talisman of Indulgence help. I'd pick one and run 4 copies of it. They'll speed up your whole deck.
You also want to have cheap creature removal so you can kill things that try to attack you early before you have time to get your big monsters out. Lightning Bolt and Terminate are premium removal. These are the kinds of kill spells you should be running. Cards like Corpsehatch are way too slow. You can't afford to wait until you have 5 lands and then spend all 5 mana just to kill something nasty. If you spend less mana killing creatures, you'll have more mana left to cast your own creatures or destroy lands.
If you find big creatures like It That Betrays are too slow to cast (and they do take a lot of mana to get out), you could consider playing other big creatures instead. There are big nasty monsters like Helldozer that fit nicely with the land destruction theme and you will be able to cast them far more often. Even Void Winnower is very slow, though having 1 copy isn't the end of the world.
Thank you for the advice! I love Terminate and I ordered 4 for the side board. Definitely in for some rearrangements. I think I'll take out It That Betrays and Oblivion Sower for the 2 Helldozers for sure.
Sinkhole is not very pricey if you get the Eternal Masters version. it goes for about 5 bucks on TCGPlayer.com.
and yes, I always seek permission from my opponent before playing this deck. land destruction is very powerful and frustrating to play against.
I have a beast of a B/R land death deck, but, unfortunately, I don't have it with me right now to give the full details. suffice to say, it is powerful enough that in two games I had to mulligan down to 5 cards and I still won both of those games...anyway, here are some cards I remember off the top of my head:
Standard // nRG Aggro
Modern // Burn (main) and Living End (secondary) now Jund.
For fun check out my janky combo primer: Turn 3 Grixis Combo
"Can't beat em' Jund em'!"
1 for 1 casual land destruction cards usually work best if you can keep casting costs low in the deck as a whole. A mid-game Avalanche Riders can be your finisher if you've an opponent without lands. Definitely run the Riders, the ability to crack land and start hitting the life total is huge.
Things I would remove:
Most things 6CMC or more. Westvale Abbey - Huge mana investment and it slows down your consistency in access to RR or BB in the early game. Vampire Nighthawk - In this deck, Nighthawk fights too hard with LD for casting cost. Small evasive critters are good, but I would put a priority on hitting the table over life gain. You shouldn't need more than 20 if your opponent can cast anything big. Maybe run Dauthi Horror?
Things worth considering: Pillage is better than Molten Rain. Opponents can run Signets or Borderposts, flexibility to hit those without diminishing the concentration of your LD is more important than a one-shot of 2 damage tacked onto your game plan.
Boom // Bust - If you keep mana costs are low, you can afford to lose a couple lands here and there. If you switch your ETB tapped lands for Evolving Wilds, you can target the Wilds then sac it to find a land. Same trick works on Strip Mine if you get one.
Wild Cantor or Blood Pet over the Typhoid Rats - Either can poke in for a little early damage, Cantor also offers the possibility of second turn LD.
For casual I suggest building a solid deck that's NOT land destruction. There's a good reason why LD cards all cost 4 or 5 cmc these days. As an avid casual player myself, I disassembled all three of my LD decks, mono green, mono black, and mono red - notice none of them were two colors. All of them were dependable turn 2 land destruction, and to be honest it felt too close to cheating when the opponent basically did nothing for the entire game except discard at the end of the turn. Yeah, not fun for me either.
You don't need to build a LD deck if you want to beat your friends. Instead, identify why your decks lose & why your opponents' decks win. I'm not referring to specific cards, what I mean is things like; are you running out of cards in hand too fast, do cards get jammed up in your hand because you dont always have the mana colors you need to play the cards, does your opponent play heavy control and nullify most of the creatures and spells you cast, do your decks run out of gas and lack a strong finisher, etc.?
What's your preferred style of play? Are you an aggro player, control, combo, mid-range? Do you prefer certain colors?
Do your friends netdeck? If so, that would explain why they keep winning against you.
Finally, if you insist on playing a LD deck, my most important suggestion is to make the deck a single color. With LD you absolutely cannot afford to have any cards get jammed up in your hand because you dont have the right mana colors available.
I have a LD destruction deck that isn't like playing solitaire. It doesn't totally shut them down but it makes it so that they can't pay for my Rhystic Study when they cast spells and they don't have the mana to kill my Flailing Soldier.
Everybody, this thread is for discussing how to go about building a land destruction deck. This thread is not for discussing whether land destruction is Casual or not.
another approach you might consider, and something not quite as cheaty as LD imho, is Land Denial.
cards like Solfatara, Turf Wound, and Pardic Miner not only prevent your opponent from putting lands into play, they also draw cards - except for the miner of course. follow that by punishing your opponent for having all those cards in hand with something like Sudden Impact. Odds are pretty good it'll deal 5 damage minimum if the deck plays right. you can also really stress your opponent by playing a Shivan Wumpus or Argothian Wurm as your capstone creature.
for any red or green LD deck, or a LD that uses either of those colors, definitely use Wild Cantor as mentioned in a previous post.
My idea is to delay my opponent long enough by destroying any lands he or she gets out early, so they can't play anything while I build my field and wait for my high-cost cards, and Westvale Abbey or It that betrays to come out and swing hard. The problem I've run into is that I haven't once been able to work up the mana necessary to get It That Betrays out, and the few times I got Westvale Abbey to transform it was immediately exiled or taken control of against me, and I didn't have any other "big hurrah" ready to win after that.
Creature cards: 21
Oblivion Sower x1
It That Betrays x1
Vampire Nighthawk x4
Emrakul's Hatcher x3
Typhoid Rats x4
Charmbreaker Devils x4
Goblin Darkdwellers x4
Sorceries: 12
Sinkhole x4
Molten Rain x2
Stone Rain x4
Corpsehatch x2
Enchantments: 2
Destructive Urge x2
Lands: 25
Dragonskull Summit x4
Bloodfell Caves x2
Mountain x7
Swamp x7
Akoum Refuge x2
Westvale Abbey x3
Total: 60
Sideboard:
Volcanic Offering x2
Helldozer x2
Mind Stone x2
Blight x2
Grip of Desolation x2
Herron Archive x1
Surgical Extraction x4
Other cards I'm looking at:
Void Winnower x1
Imp's Mischief x4
The rats and Nighthawks are there for the deathtouch, to deter possible early attacks, plus the Nighthawks have lifelink. Emrakul's Hatcher are there for the spawns to help get Westvale Abbey transformed and to block. Charmbreaker Devils and Goblin Dark-Dwellers are there to keep recasting those land-destruction sorceries.
I like the Void Winnower because it's cheaper than It That Betrays and has a fun ability. A friend's newly-built mono-black discard deck laid waste to me last night, so I started looking at the Surgical Extraction and Imp's Mischief.
Just a heads up... Most casual play circles consider "friendly land destruction" an oxymoron. It's the most hated style of deck to play against. Casual players don't like losing their lands and being unable to play spells. So it might cause grief for your friends and make you unpopular. But if your friends don't mind, then brew away!
First, as a new player you already have 4 Sinkhole? How? If you have access to old cards and/or budget isn't an issue, then there are a lot of fun options for you! Here are some old land destruction classics:
Crack the Earth is quite effective if you have 0/1 Scion tokens or Typhoid Rats out early and opponent just has lands.
Since most land destruction only starts at 3 mana and your creatures are big and slow, you want to run cards to help speed up your mana production. Just drawing and playing lands is too slow. That's why you're finding yourself unable to play your big spells. Rakdos Signet or Talisman of Indulgence help. I'd pick one and run 4 copies of it. They'll speed up your whole deck.
You also want to have cheap creature removal so you can kill things that try to attack you early before you have time to get your big monsters out. Lightning Bolt and Terminate are premium removal. These are the kinds of kill spells you should be running. Cards like Corpsehatch are way too slow. You can't afford to wait until you have 5 lands and then spend all 5 mana just to kill something nasty. If you spend less mana killing creatures, you'll have more mana left to cast your own creatures or destroy lands.
If you find big creatures like It That Betrays are too slow to cast (and they do take a lot of mana to get out), you could consider playing other big creatures instead. There are big nasty monsters like Helldozer that fit nicely with the land destruction theme and you will be able to cast them far more often. Even Void Winnower is very slow, though having 1 copy isn't the end of the world.
and yes, I always seek permission from my opponent before playing this deck. land destruction is very powerful and frustrating to play against.
I have a beast of a B/R land death deck, but, unfortunately, I don't have it with me right now to give the full details. suffice to say, it is powerful enough that in two games I had to mulligan down to 5 cards and I still won both of those games...anyway, here are some cards I remember off the top of my head:
My land destruction core includes:
sinkhole
icequake
roiling terrain
destroy the evidence
pillage
stone rain
strip mine
creature removal includes
dreadbore
languish
Creatures include:
shivan wumpus
helldozer
visara the dreadful
Direct Damage:
Beacon of Destruction
Modern // Burn (main) and Living End (secondary) now Jund.
For fun check out my janky combo primer: Turn 3 Grixis Combo
"Can't beat em' Jund em'!"
Things I would remove:
Most things 6CMC or more.
Westvale Abbey - Huge mana investment and it slows down your consistency in access to RR or BB in the early game.
Vampire Nighthawk - In this deck, Nighthawk fights too hard with LD for casting cost. Small evasive critters are good, but I would put a priority on hitting the table over life gain. You shouldn't need more than 20 if your opponent can cast anything big. Maybe run Dauthi Horror?
Things worth considering:
Pillage is better than Molten Rain. Opponents can run Signets or Borderposts, flexibility to hit those without diminishing the concentration of your LD is more important than a one-shot of 2 damage tacked onto your game plan.
Boom // Bust - If you keep mana costs are low, you can afford to lose a couple lands here and there. If you switch your ETB tapped lands for Evolving Wilds, you can target the Wilds then sac it to find a land. Same trick works on Strip Mine if you get one.
Wild Cantor or Blood Pet over the Typhoid Rats - Either can poke in for a little early damage, Cantor also offers the possibility of second turn LD.
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You don't need to build a LD deck if you want to beat your friends. Instead, identify why your decks lose & why your opponents' decks win. I'm not referring to specific cards, what I mean is things like; are you running out of cards in hand too fast, do cards get jammed up in your hand because you dont always have the mana colors you need to play the cards, does your opponent play heavy control and nullify most of the creatures and spells you cast, do your decks run out of gas and lack a strong finisher, etc.?
What's your preferred style of play? Are you an aggro player, control, combo, mid-range? Do you prefer certain colors?
Do your friends netdeck? If so, that would explain why they keep winning against you.
Finally, if you insist on playing a LD deck, my most important suggestion is to make the deck a single color. With LD you absolutely cannot afford to have any cards get jammed up in your hand because you dont have the right mana colors available.
Please keep future posts on topic.
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Sales Thread
Personally I think a fun strategy would be running a ton of mana artifacts like Mind Stone, Guardian Idol, Rakdos Signet and then cast Wildfires and Burning of Xinyes. Wipe the board then finish the game with some big creatures like Inferno Titan or maybe some planeswalkers like Chandra, Torch of Defiance
BGGRock
Modern
BRGJund
BBGRock
cards like Solfatara, Turf Wound, and Pardic Miner not only prevent your opponent from putting lands into play, they also draw cards - except for the miner of course. follow that by punishing your opponent for having all those cards in hand with something like Sudden Impact. Odds are pretty good it'll deal 5 damage minimum if the deck plays right. you can also really stress your opponent by playing a Shivan Wumpus or Argothian Wurm as your capstone creature.
for any red or green LD deck, or a LD that uses either of those colors, definitely use Wild Cantor as mentioned in a previous post.
even mono blue can ride the Land Denial train. Hoodwink, Boomerang, and Capsize your opponent's lands then play mana tax cards to punish your opponent. Rishadan Cutpurse, Rishadan Footpad, and Rishadan Brigand are brutal when your opponent is short on mana. Slow Motion will keep the pressure on any creatures that sneak into play.