MTG Salvation

Clearly, it's open to lots of abuse, and I'll reiterate this (or anything like it) isn't something that the RC is thinking about.

There seem to be some people on social media that are upset that I would even pose such a question. Thought exercises are thought exercises. Why get angry about thinking outside the box?

Quote from Sheldon »

Clearly, it's open to lots of abuse, and I'll reiterate this (or anything like it) isn't something that the RC is thinking about.

There seem to be some people on social media that are upset that I would even pose such a question. Thought exercises are thought exercises. Why get angry about thinking outside the box?

People on the internet are angry? I have a hard time believing that. Are they at least trying to figure out which CAG member to complain about that brought up this idea?

Putting my Spike hat on, if I were playing hyper-competitively I would abuse the heck out of this by running as few as 8 basic lands and maybe 14 lands total and using the ability to basically hit all my land drops until I get to the point where I have no need for land anymore and I just want to draw pure gas.

If you want specific cards that might be more effective, Goblin Charbelcher gets a lot better by not needing something to filter out your lands like Mana Severance; it would be like running 2-land Belcher in Vintage. You could also run all-in Storm combo, where your Mind's Desire and Draw7's hit nothing but gas. I think combo would just gain too much advantage from this.

Of course, this assumes that you are playing against a bunch of other players who are playing decks with normal land ratios. Worst case scenario is that everyone built their deck with the assumption that someone was going to play lands normally, and everyone sits down and passes turn after turn because nobody has any lands and anybody who draws them doesn't want to play them.... God forbid cards like Aven Mindcensor, Leonin Arbiter, Mindlock Orb, or Stranglehold becomes a thing. I think that at that point, people would just stop trying to abuse it and play normally, but who knows.

On a funny note, I would expect Rainbow Vale to spike in price....

While I applaud the out-of-the-box thinking and the willingness to reach out to players to see what kinds of things may be able to be done, I think that this kind of answer to the problem would have to be more along the lines that the player has to be two or maybe even three lands behind in order to achieve the intent and to prevent abuse.

there are other ways to break other decks that are going the 10 basics in deck only:

MLD + aven mindcensor?
You could also build decks that taxed life-paying, with things like exquisite blood and wound reflection.

Potential alternatives:
1. It could be a thing to have a during-mulligan rule, where you can "set aside up to 1 basic, then draw 6, then draw 5, and so on" during mulligans
2. "During your draw step, if another player has 2 or more lands than you, you may set aside $3 worth of canned foods or clothes and donate them to charity. If you do, you may search your library for a basic land and put it into your hand instead of drawing a card for the turn" 2 life isn't enough of a payment possibly. Maybe donating to charity would be better. It'd make people who really wanna bend the rules pay for it.
3. "Each player starts the game with an emblem that says: 'Exile this emblem from the game, and pay X life, where X is 5 minus the number of players with more lands than you: Search your library for a basic land card and put it into your hand. This effect has split second.'" one-off effect
4. "during each player's draw step, if that player has 2 or less lands than an opponent, that player may exile cards from the top of his or her library until he or she reveals a basic land card, then puts that card into his or her hand instead of drawing for that turn." maybe exiling a chunk of that 10-land library is a decent enough cost.

I doubt any of them are actually usable (we actually use a variant of rule 2 in our games,but with draw a card at sorcery speed instead). But hey, it was fun trying to think of rules along those lines.

Quote from Forgotten One »

If you want specific cards that might be more effective, Goblin Charbelcher gets a lot better by not needing something to filter out your lands like Mana Severance; it would be like running 2-land Belcher in Vintage. You could also run all-in Storm combo, where your Mind's Desire and Draw7's hit nothing but gas. I think combo would just gain too much advantage from this.

Damn, you beat me to the punch with charbelcher. could also draw all your lands then use abundance to stack your deck. Stuff like that. And of course the aforementioned lighter tricks where people would be running 25 land decks to have increased threat density, have 5c perfect fixing while playing only basics, etc.

I think you would need to attach some kind of "make sure people aren't building degenerate decks" type of rule, or feature to it. Like many have said. This rule seems to incentivize building low land decks, and then benefit from drawing nothing but gas.

Possible tweaks (that are also just rough wording):

Instead of drawing your first card during your draw step, if another player controls more land than you, you may pay 2 life and search your library for 30 (or some other number) land cards, reveal them, then select 1 basic land from those revealed and put it in your hand, shuffle the rest and your library afterwards. If you were unable to reveal the 30 land cards, then instead (some horrible consequence, like lose half your life, and still draw, just to make sure they are not using it as a way to avoid drawing from an empty library, and you get an emblem that forbids you from taking this action in the future)

That's pretty wordy, but the “30” is just a quick “see, it’s not degenerate” check. You wouldn’t even need to pull them, just start fanning it and counting up to 30, then picking a basic to put in your hand. The rule could also be something simpler like:

Instead of drawing your first card during your draw step, if another player controls more land than you, you may pay 2 life and shuffle your library and then reveal the top 10 cards. You may select 1 basic land from the revealed cards and place it in your hand. Exile the revealed cards. If you did not place a basic land in your hand, then draw.

That way, there's an actual cost from it, and if you are running land lite to abuse the system, you probably won't be successful. And also, the “then draw” is just to make sure you are not using this rule to avoid mill losses.

I don't know, just thinking out loud here. Like you said. Thought experiments are fun.

Because on the first draw you would ask for lands, youd flip your whole deck finding nothing and then rearrange the deck in whatever order is convinient for you.