Aether Tradewinds lets you bounce an opponent's permanent, including land. Say you're on the play, turn 3 you have a 2 drop and 3 land to your opponent's two drop and two land. Is it a good idea to spend your tradewind on bouncing their land? It puts you behind a creature, but them behind a land. They'll spend their turn 3 playing their second land and possibly another two drop. You'll next have a turn 4 with 4 lands and can play something that they won't be able to attack into, and for a while at least, you'll stay two lands ahead.
Is that generally a good play? Or is temporary resource limitation like that not typically effective?
Oh and a related question: is an energy counter a permanent? Could you bounce an energy counter and their land instead of a creature and their land?
Energy counter is not a permanent, let's get that out of the way immediately.
You're asking if it's generally a good play: Absolutely not. You're not getting rid of one of their cards. There are a lot of ways to create situations where you can trade your Aether Tradewinds for 1-2 of their cards (getting them to pump a creature, double blocking, etc).
Edit: It can be SITUATIONALLY okay if you know they've skipped land drops and they probably need land#3 to drop something in their hand and you've been beating them down for a few turns. It's so rare - you can keep this in your head, but you really don't want to be doing this in general.
Bouncing a land can be a good tempo play, but since its costing you two turns to do with Aether Tradewinds, I'd avoid it most of the time. If you played a puzzleknot as your 2 drop, and your opponent went "land, go" on his turn 2, and you have a Creeping Mold on his land to follow up? perhaps. But certainly not bouncing my own bear to clear the way for his bear, when he could just have a second two drop in hand to punish you harder than you're punishing yourself.
For this to look attractive you really want your opponent to be missing land drops and/or not playing anything, and even then it's probably not worth the cost unless you're applying pressure and/or getting value from the thing you bounced.
For example, say it's your turn 4 on the play, you've got a 2-drop and a 3-drop in play and your opponent still hasn't played a creature (better still if they're stuck on 2 lands). At that point it's worth thinking about bouncing one of your own lands along with one of theirs to prolong the portion of the game where they're doing nothing while you hit them in the face. I'm not saying you necessarily should do that (if you've got more creatures to play you're likely better off just playing them, and using Tradewinds to bounce whatever blocker they eventually play), but it's an option.
In the scenario from the OP, though, you're not really doing anything with the tempo you've cost your opponent, and it's not clear that you're hurting them more than yourself, let alone netting a 3-mana card's worth of value from the exchange.
It's just that I have this gut feeling that if I don't miss land drops, and my opponent misses their third land drop, I have a very good chance of winning the game, regardless of other circumstances. That's how it's felt in the past anyway. I agree that bouncing something with ETB value like a puzzleknot is probably the best case scenario for using a turn 3 Aether Tradewinds on their land, to force a simulated "missed land drop".
Could be because I play sealed the vast majority of the time, or occasionally swiss draft queues, and in my experience, those formats are slower and having no play for the first three turns is not uncommon, and using tradewinds in this way could be a way to be way ahead on mana for the majority of the game.
In my experience, 8-4 queues are populated with players who go for the "efficient low cost creatures and combat tricks" strategy rather than the "power cards" strategy, and in that environment, the technique is vastly less likely to be effective.
Seems terrible in the scenario you set up. You are effectively spending 5 total mana and a full card to bounce a land. You'd have to have the perfect cards in hand to justify that, and even then one good opposing removal spell and your work is probably all wasted. Leaving them with a 2-drop in play means that while you are ahead on the mana curve for a few turns they can likely double block to help offset your advantage.
A more interesting scenario would be if you were on the play and they didn't play a 2-drop. In that case there is a much better argument for this line of play for a couple of reasons:
1. By bouncing their land you can actually force them to discard to hand size if they don't have anything to cast for 2 or less. They already passed on 2 once without casting anything, and you are bouncing the creature that they would otherwise try and use removal on. This is the biggie for me, as now you aren't down a card in the exchange, just lots of mana.
2. Now you aren't looking at a double block anytime soon.
Now is that better than just casting a 3-drop? IDK, probably depends on the creatures and how they matchup. But it is worth considering.
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Is that generally a good play? Or is temporary resource limitation like that not typically effective?
Oh and a related question: is an energy counter a permanent? Could you bounce an energy counter and their land instead of a creature and their land?
You're asking if it's generally a good play: Absolutely not. You're not getting rid of one of their cards. There are a lot of ways to create situations where you can trade your Aether Tradewinds for 1-2 of their cards (getting them to pump a creature, double blocking, etc).
Edit: It can be SITUATIONALLY okay if you know they've skipped land drops and they probably need land#3 to drop something in their hand and you've been beating them down for a few turns. It's so rare - you can keep this in your head, but you really don't want to be doing this in general.
JAMMIT DIM! I'm a DOCTOR not a DECKBUILDER!
For example, say it's your turn 4 on the play, you've got a 2-drop and a 3-drop in play and your opponent still hasn't played a creature (better still if they're stuck on 2 lands). At that point it's worth thinking about bouncing one of your own lands along with one of theirs to prolong the portion of the game where they're doing nothing while you hit them in the face. I'm not saying you necessarily should do that (if you've got more creatures to play you're likely better off just playing them, and using Tradewinds to bounce whatever blocker they eventually play), but it's an option.
In the scenario from the OP, though, you're not really doing anything with the tempo you've cost your opponent, and it's not clear that you're hurting them more than yourself, let alone netting a 3-mana card's worth of value from the exchange.
Could be because I play sealed the vast majority of the time, or occasionally swiss draft queues, and in my experience, those formats are slower and having no play for the first three turns is not uncommon, and using tradewinds in this way could be a way to be way ahead on mana for the majority of the game.
In my experience, 8-4 queues are populated with players who go for the "efficient low cost creatures and combat tricks" strategy rather than the "power cards" strategy, and in that environment, the technique is vastly less likely to be effective.
A more interesting scenario would be if you were on the play and they didn't play a 2-drop. In that case there is a much better argument for this line of play for a couple of reasons:
1. By bouncing their land you can actually force them to discard to hand size if they don't have anything to cast for 2 or less. They already passed on 2 once without casting anything, and you are bouncing the creature that they would otherwise try and use removal on. This is the biggie for me, as now you aren't down a card in the exchange, just lots of mana.
2. Now you aren't looking at a double block anytime soon.
Now is that better than just casting a 3-drop? IDK, probably depends on the creatures and how they matchup. But it is worth considering.