I like the Polymorph idea, are there any other 1-mana token producers like this ?
(besides Cartouche of Solidarity which require a creature to enchant)
But paying 4 mana first AND need to get an attack through is more than iffy imo.
However, IF you can flip it, it is bonkers.
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Kathal
Bitterblossom tokens fly. plus its an equipment that makes a token a 3/2 so its often worth it even if you dont need the land.
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Decks I have in my bag of tricks- Needless to say, someone who wants to play will probably have a deck UB/x Faeries UR Storm XURWB Affinity G Elves UW control
I think if you cast this against burn you lose the game on the spot since your land-heavy control deck just guaranteed they'll draw gas for the rest of the game. Also it can be countered. Not even instant speed matters because good players will see four lands up and at least assume cryptic and pass into combat before doing anything. They even got an extra card before you could cast it. The advantage of it being one sided also gets blanked because the deck running wrath is already ok with losing their wall of omens or Snapcaster. I just don't see the value of Mass to Exile in control. I do like it in an aggro deck that wants to swing out against another agro deck and not care about the crack back.
Nah, Burn only tends to get out 1-3 creatures at once. Even 3 creatures seems reckless. Having Burn cheat out up to 3 more basics doesn't seem to change things much in terms of how much gas they draw. The latest Burn builds tend to have 4 or fewer basics, anyway, and they probably played one before Settle the Wreckage was cast.
While good players assume that 4 mana means Cryptic Command and are less likely to play Haste guys into it, grabbing Flash value guys with Settle the Wreckage is still pretty nifty.
Legion's Landing Is the best one thus far. It has an ETB trigger so It's legendary clause can be worked around. It's also the easiest to flip. It's flip side is also "good enough".
Nah, it's not the easiest to flip--Search for Azcanta is, and its payoff is also great. I've stuck Search for Azcanta into the most decks so far, and it's consistently delivered.
Do we think Search for Azcanta will be more useful as a 3 or 4 of in control decks as an engine, or more of a 1 or 2 of that grants incidental ramp and card selection?
I've tested Search for Azcanta. Given how bad having multiples is (unless you have Liliana of the Veil/Collective Brutality or you're getting hit by significant amounts of LD), I suspect it'll be a 1-2-of.
...But it's been awesome and well worth the copy.
It's a good enough draw engine in mana-intensive decks (i.e. midrange, control (even Lantern Control), and slower combo such as Taking Turns and Scapeshift) that I'm sticking 1-ofs of it in a LOT of blue-based decks.
It's not bad. At least you can sac artifacts and creatures to it.
At a cost. It's better than mortarpod, sure, and in the right deck it's better than Blasting Station But they all see such little play because if it's not free and unlimited they're just not worth it.
Opt is a strong card but I think only pure control want it. It doesn't help delver flip (read the card). It doesn't setup miracles (RTC). Merfolk want to drop threats. Storm doesn't need the instant-speed. The more popular "delver" these days is cost-reduction and they play Thought Scour.
Your infinite combo costs 11 mana, less than 12 for the Academy Ruins version. I can play your combo in taking-turns with As Foretold. I don't have to recur something that cleanly wins the game, or instants and sorceries. Repeat Exhaustion becomes Stasis. Repeat Silence becomes scepter-chant. I might put it in an elf deck and do it every other turn with Plow Under; elves because they can crew the thing, generate the mana afterwards, and everything's green.
On the other hand Search for Azcanta helps delver, control, even mill. With 25 instants and sorceries there's only about 10-12% chance of missing. Sometimes games go long even when you don't want it to.
Adanto Vanguard looks neat in Zoo as an aggressive white 2-drop that can make itself indestructible at the cost of only life (not mana or cards)! ...4 life. That's a bit steep if it's blocked by yet another Lingering Souls token. On the other hand, your opponents won't Bolt it as long as they value their cards more than they value lowering your life total!
Why can't this Vanguard have a genuine 3 power all the time, though...
In the meantime, River Sneak only pumps itself on the turn that Merfolks ETB, which means that it is not a fan of Aether Vial Flashing things in on opponents' EOTs.
Well Stompy as an archetype is usually defined as an aggressive deck. So the question is: would dinosaur stompy be any better than the other currently existing aggresive archetypes - namely burn, affinity, and bant humans?
There are not a lot of one and two drop dinos so I think you are more looking at a mid-range style strategy. For this you would need to compare to Eldrazi Tron, Jund, and Abzan
Whoa, Ghost Quarter that also gets you a land? Sweet. And neither your nor the opponent's land ETB tapped? I think Hate Bears or whatever that BW Hate deck is called (so many variants and names) got a new toy.
I dont know if Field of Ruin is better than Ghost Quarter or Tectonic Edge.
I suppose it can act as additional copies of Ghost Quarter in a deck like Death and Taxes. It's arguably better than Ghost Quarter with Mindcensor out, but worse with Arbiter.
Sadly it cannot target basic lands itself like GQ so you cannot completely lock the opponent out with say Ranumap Excavator
Still the 3rd best land destruction effect in modern
Is it better than Ghost Quarter though ? I think that it isn't.
Sure you get a land replacement but it costs 2 mana to activate and can only target non-basics.
Compared to Tectonic Edge you don't need them to have 4 lands but they do get a basic.
I find it difficult to evaluate at first glance.
On another note, would Dust Bowl be too good for Standard ?
Opt is a strong card but I think only pure control want it. It doesn't help delver flip (read the card). It doesn't setup miracles (RTC).
The first instant speed cantrip used in the opponent's turn by definition increases the chance to flip miracles. Opt is particularly good at it since you get two shots at finding it. Maybe you need to think about it a little more carefully?
Field of Ruin doesn't seem much better than Tectonic Edge. Putting aside the Rampant Growth for both players for a moment, Field is 2 mana to destroy a nonbasic while Edge is 1 mana to do the same, subject to them having 4 or more lands. If you can wait, Edge costs less to destroy the land. If you can't wait...well, that's what Ghost Quarter is for. GQ can destroy lands on turn 1/2 too if it comes down to that.
It's not the best land for Stone Raining your opponent out of the game, since it gives them basic lands which subsequent Fields can't touch. Admittedly, GQ also gives them basics, but GQ can target those basics, so with Crucible of Worlds and enough time you'll have them at 0 lands. With Tec Edge you can knock them to 3 lands and hope they don't draw another, or, with multiple Edges, utter the magic words "hold priority" and hit them to 2 lands. Field of Ruin-ing an opponent at 4 lands just brings them back to 4 lands again.
Some tier 5 decks may GQ themselves for landfall or Faith's Reward. Field of Ruin unfortunately doesn't help in this regard, because you don't get 2 more lands even if you Field of Ruin yourself, both players always get 1. If you Field of Ruin your opponent you get 2 landfalls, but then again, so does any fetchland, and fetches don't cost mana to activate.
I'm not sure you can set aside the Rampant Growth for both effect.
Field of Ruin is also admittedly expensive color fixing. Its a weird 3 mana fetchland for any basic in your deck that also converts the best non-basic on the other side to a basic of their choice. Obviously its better with other effects that also give them basic lands dependent on how much of the metagame are decks that could plausibly be run out of basics.
There are Tier 1 decks now though running 0-2 non-basics. This plus Path, Ghost Quarter and Spreading Seas seem plausible in the current environment if you have room for 4+ basics in your manabase yourself.
I don't know that it is great, but its worth paying attention to I think.
Field of Ruin is absolutely not in the same category as Encroaching Wastes. The best case scenario is your opponent has no basics left and you get to wasteland them plus rampant growth, for only 2 extra mana than wasteland itself.
Worst case scenario your opponent has a basic land and you do not, in which case its a Ghost Quarter that cost you 2 extra mana to activate.
Most common scenario is when both players get a basic land in which case you trade 1:1 with their land while also ramping both players, so it's a break even investment. This is a better overall investment than what Ghost Quarter usually is.
Yes, Ghost Quarter does have the added utility of being able to hit basic lands and also color fixing yourself in a pinch. This is why GQ will be the #1 best land destroying land in modern, but I believe Field of Ruin might just be #2. The restriction on Tectonic Edge makes it fall short of breaking up 3-land tron, although Edge is better than the other two vs Valakut.
It will remain to be seen just how much play, if any, this new card sees. But I would be very surprised if it saw none.
Field of Ruin is tempo neutral, it fixes your mana, and it doesn't have the 4-land requirement of Tectonic Edge. Ultimately, its activation cost is the same as tec edge because it replaces itself with an untapped land. Imho, it's close to being a strictly better tec edge, but it's difficult to evaluate it against GQ. Being tempo neutral is no insignificant detail, but then, neither is its activation cost and its inability to target basics.
It seems like there are going to be enough "drawback is oppo gets a basic" in this set to enable a new type of archetype that focuses on exhausting your opponents' basic lands then running rampant with overpowered effects. So far we've got:
Ghost Quarter
Path to Exile
Settle the Wreckage
Field of Ruin
Old-Growth Dryad
Add in Crucible of Worlds/Ramunap Excavator and even Aven Mindcensor/Thalia, Heretic Cathar.
Looking at the decks that play GQ/Edge there are 3 big ones, Eldrazi Tron (GQ only), UW Control and D&T. I think it's safe to say Eldrazi Tron won't be playing it given that they play only 2 Wastes and would be putting themselves in danger of running out of basics. Speaking of Eldrazi Tron, I should also point out that the days where Gx Tron was the best Tron deck are over and Eldrazi is where it's at now, making the "Field of Ruin stops Tron" argument less appealing than it sounds (they have Eldrazi Temple and cards in the 3-5 mana range).
UW and D&T are the opposite, they play more basics than almost every other deck out there. UW has something like 5 Island 2 Plains, and D&T has 11 Plains. They also have Path to Exile (and Snapcaster Mage in UW) so it's realistic to have the opponent with 0 basics at some point.
Ultimately I don't think it'll make the cut in D&T. As its name suggests, D&T is a deck that taxes its opponent, and would rather both players be at X lands than X+1 lands. That makes Field of Ruin weaker than Tec Edge in that deck, even with Leonin Arbiter on the field.
There's more of a case for Field of Ruin in UW because it's a control deck that wants CA, and Field is CA-neutral unlike GQ. However, the best CA-neutral LD in that deck is still Spreading Seas. Field is actually worse than Seas in 4* ways - the main advantage it has is that you can tap it for mana if you don't feel like blowing up a land immediately. It's most likely not going to unseat Seas, but it might be played over/in addition to GQ/Edge. The land-based LD slots in UW are pretty flexible; you can play anywhere from 0-4, in any combination of GQs and Edges.
Suppose you have 2 lands in play, 1 land in hand, and a Schrodinger's Card which is either Seas or Field. Compare what happens:
If it's Seas:
play land
Seas any land
draw card
Result: you killed an opponent's land, gave them an Island (tapped if you Seas-ed a tapped land), and have 1 random card in hand (from the draw off Seas). You have 3 lands in play and no land drops remaining for the turn.
If it's Field:
play Field
kill nonbasic land
give them basic of their choice
get basic of your choice
Result: you killed an opponent's nonbasic land, gave them a basic of their choice, and have a land in hand. You have 3 lands in play and no land drops remaining for the turn.
Field < Seas because:
1) can't hit basics
2) no advantage for hitting tapped lands
3) gives opponent a choice of which land they want instead of forcing Island
4) gives you an extra land in hand instead of a random draw (it's better if you're mana screwed, but most of the time a random draw is better than getting a land)
Adanto Vanguard looks neat in Zoo as an aggressive white 2-drop that can make itself indestructible at the cost of only life (not mana or cards)! ...4 life. That's a bit steep if it's blocked by yet another Lingering Souls token. On the other hand, your opponents won't Bolt it as long as they value their cards more than they value lowering your life total!
Why can't this Vanguard have a genuine 3 power all the time, though...
In the meantime, River Sneak only pumps itself on the turn that Merfolks ETB, which means that it is not a fan of Aether Vial Flashing things in on opponents' EOTs.
Thought about this as well. I dont think it will find its foothold, but its good in terms of design space. The truth is Zoo kinda wants dumb beef, it wants to be big for little to no cost. The 1 toughness is a little annoying, because you cant outrace the hyper aggro decks, so you are on block duty, and this cant do that. I've joked about how I will take a 2 mana 3/3 with a built in protect clause, over a tarmogoyf any day. But its a serious thing. I would trade my set of goyfs in zoo for a 3/3 hexproof any day.
a 3/1 indestructible pay 4 life on attack, 1/X pay 4 life to block isnt exactly that. A 3/4 tarmogoyf (before push) was closer to it... and even then I was always complaining about how in zoo it wasnt a turn two 3 power at least.
I think if we got to the point where I could get this with a 3/3 natural body (or easy to turn on body) where I could pay some life to ensure it doesnt die? Yeah, Id love that. But theoretically I can get "more" aggression in with 2 mana when I go balls to the walls aggro normally. I need more of a stompy effect, ala, a big creature that can stick.
I still don't know what the best deck is for Field of Ruin, but I'm fairly certain there is one. In exchange for a Tectonic Edge-like activation cost, you get a quasi-Ghost Quarter effect and the ability to cheat in a basic land of your choice. Given several of my decks' weakness to Blood Moon, I think additional viable ways of tutoring for basics are welcome.
Sadly, the best home is not D&T because Leonin Arbiter cooperates so much better with Ghost Quarter (free activation cost, the infamous Turn 3 GQ into Arbiter hold priority crack GQ).
Maybe I'll try it in Eldrazi Tron and some midrange/control decks. Eldrazi Tron is somewhat weak to Blood Moon, has just enough basics to reliably cheat in one per game, and can easily Expedition Map for this. My midrange/control decks tend to be Moon-weak, and they can use the simultaneous LD and colour fixing.
Shame I can't just blow this up early against an opposing fetchland because they'll crack it in response and deny me my basic.
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(besides Cartouche of Solidarity which require a creature to enchant)
Bitterblossom tokens fly. plus its an equipment that makes a token a 3/2 so its often worth it even if you dont need the land.
UB/x Faeries
UR Storm
XURWB Affinity
G Elves
UW control
Nah, Burn only tends to get out 1-3 creatures at once. Even 3 creatures seems reckless. Having Burn cheat out up to 3 more basics doesn't seem to change things much in terms of how much gas they draw. The latest Burn builds tend to have 4 or fewer basics, anyway, and they probably played one before Settle the Wreckage was cast.
While good players assume that 4 mana means Cryptic Command and are less likely to play Haste guys into it, grabbing Flash value guys with Settle the Wreckage is still pretty nifty.
Nah, it's not the easiest to flip--Search for Azcanta is, and its payoff is also great. I've stuck Search for Azcanta into the most decks so far, and it's consistently delivered.
I've tested Search for Azcanta. Given how bad having multiples is (unless you have Liliana of the Veil/Collective Brutality or you're getting hit by significant amounts of LD), I suspect it'll be a 1-2-of.
...But it's been awesome and well worth the copy.
It's a good enough draw engine in mana-intensive decks (i.e. midrange, control (even Lantern Control), and slower combo such as Taking Turns and Scapeshift) that I'm sticking 1-ofs of it in a LOT of blue-based decks.
It's not bad. At least you can sac artifacts and creatures to it.
At a cost. It's better than mortarpod, sure, and in the right deck it's better than Blasting Station But they all see such little play because if it's not free and unlimited they're just not worth it.
Opt is a strong card but I think only pure control want it. It doesn't help delver flip (read the card). It doesn't setup miracles (RTC). Merfolk want to drop threats. Storm doesn't need the instant-speed. The more popular "delver" these days is cost-reduction and they play Thought Scour.
Your infinite combo costs 11 mana, less than 12 for the Academy Ruins version. I can play your combo in taking-turns with As Foretold. I don't have to recur something that cleanly wins the game, or instants and sorceries. Repeat Exhaustion becomes Stasis. Repeat Silence becomes scepter-chant. I might put it in an elf deck and do it every other turn with Plow Under; elves because they can crew the thing, generate the mana afterwards, and everything's green.
On the other hand Search for Azcanta helps delver, control, even mill. With 25 instants and sorceries there's only about 10-12% chance of missing. Sometimes games go long even when you don't want it to.
Why can't this Vanguard have a genuine 3 power all the time, though...
In the meantime, River Sneak only pumps itself on the turn that Merfolks ETB, which means that it is not a fan of Aether Vial Flashing things in on opponents' EOTs.
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Well Stompy as an archetype is usually defined as an aggressive deck. So the question is: would dinosaur stompy be any better than the other currently existing aggresive archetypes - namely burn, affinity, and bant humans?
There are not a lot of one and two drop dinos so I think you are more looking at a mid-range style strategy. For this you would need to compare to Eldrazi Tron, Jund, and Abzan
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I suppose it can act as additional copies of Ghost Quarter in a deck like Death and Taxes. It's arguably better than Ghost Quarter with Mindcensor out, but worse with Arbiter.
Sadly it cannot target basic lands itself like GQ so you cannot completely lock the opponent out with say Ranumap Excavator
Still the 3rd best land destruction effect in modern
Is this a strictly better Ghost Quarter? oh my.... need to get 2 playests of these!!
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EDIT: Read it again and realized it can only hit nonbasic land. Well, still getting a playset.
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Sure you get a land replacement but it costs 2 mana to activate and can only target non-basics.
Compared to Tectonic Edge you don't need them to have 4 lands but they do get a basic.
I find it difficult to evaluate at first glance.
On another note, would Dust Bowl be too good for Standard ?
The first instant speed cantrip used in the opponent's turn by definition increases the chance to flip miracles. Opt is particularly good at it since you get two shots at finding it. Maybe you need to think about it a little more carefully?
It's not the best land for Stone Raining your opponent out of the game, since it gives them basic lands which subsequent Fields can't touch. Admittedly, GQ also gives them basics, but GQ can target those basics, so with Crucible of Worlds and enough time you'll have them at 0 lands. With Tec Edge you can knock them to 3 lands and hope they don't draw another, or, with multiple Edges, utter the magic words "hold priority" and hit them to 2 lands. Field of Ruin-ing an opponent at 4 lands just brings them back to 4 lands again.
Some tier 5 decks may GQ themselves for landfall or Faith's Reward. Field of Ruin unfortunately doesn't help in this regard, because you don't get 2 more lands even if you Field of Ruin yourself, both players always get 1. If you Field of Ruin your opponent you get 2 landfalls, but then again, so does any fetchland, and fetches don't cost mana to activate.
I'd put this one in the Encroaching Wastes pile.
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Big Johnny.
Field of Ruin is also admittedly expensive color fixing. Its a weird 3 mana fetchland for any basic in your deck that also converts the best non-basic on the other side to a basic of their choice. Obviously its better with other effects that also give them basic lands dependent on how much of the metagame are decks that could plausibly be run out of basics.
There are Tier 1 decks now though running 0-2 non-basics. This plus Path, Ghost Quarter and Spreading Seas seem plausible in the current environment if you have room for 4+ basics in your manabase yourself.
I don't know that it is great, but its worth paying attention to I think.
Worst case scenario your opponent has a basic land and you do not, in which case its a Ghost Quarter that cost you 2 extra mana to activate.
Most common scenario is when both players get a basic land in which case you trade 1:1 with their land while also ramping both players, so it's a break even investment. This is a better overall investment than what Ghost Quarter usually is.
Yes, Ghost Quarter does have the added utility of being able to hit basic lands and also color fixing yourself in a pinch. This is why GQ will be the #1 best land destroying land in modern, but I believe Field of Ruin might just be #2. The restriction on Tectonic Edge makes it fall short of breaking up 3-land tron, although Edge is better than the other two vs Valakut.
It will remain to be seen just how much play, if any, this new card sees. But I would be very surprised if it saw none.
CG
Ghost Quarter
Path to Exile
Settle the Wreckage
Field of Ruin
Old-Growth Dryad
Add in Crucible of Worlds/Ramunap Excavator and even Aven Mindcensor/Thalia, Heretic Cathar.
UW and D&T are the opposite, they play more basics than almost every other deck out there. UW has something like 5 Island 2 Plains, and D&T has 11 Plains. They also have Path to Exile (and Snapcaster Mage in UW) so it's realistic to have the opponent with 0 basics at some point.
Ultimately I don't think it'll make the cut in D&T. As its name suggests, D&T is a deck that taxes its opponent, and would rather both players be at X lands than X+1 lands. That makes Field of Ruin weaker than Tec Edge in that deck, even with Leonin Arbiter on the field.
There's more of a case for Field of Ruin in UW because it's a control deck that wants CA, and Field is CA-neutral unlike GQ. However, the best CA-neutral LD in that deck is still Spreading Seas. Field is actually worse than Seas in 4* ways - the main advantage it has is that you can tap it for mana if you don't feel like blowing up a land immediately. It's most likely not going to unseat Seas, but it might be played over/in addition to GQ/Edge. The land-based LD slots in UW are pretty flexible; you can play anywhere from 0-4, in any combination of GQs and Edges.
If it's Seas:
play land
Seas any land
draw card
Result: you killed an opponent's land, gave them an Island (tapped if you Seas-ed a tapped land), and have 1 random card in hand (from the draw off Seas). You have 3 lands in play and no land drops remaining for the turn.
If it's Field:
play Field
kill nonbasic land
give them basic of their choice
get basic of your choice
Result: you killed an opponent's nonbasic land, gave them a basic of their choice, and have a land in hand. You have 3 lands in play and no land drops remaining for the turn.
Field < Seas because:
1) can't hit basics
2) no advantage for hitting tapped lands
3) gives opponent a choice of which land they want instead of forcing Island
4) gives you an extra land in hand instead of a random draw (it's better if you're mana screwed, but most of the time a random draw is better than getting a land)
| Ad Nauseam
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Big Johnny.
Thought about this as well. I dont think it will find its foothold, but its good in terms of design space. The truth is Zoo kinda wants dumb beef, it wants to be big for little to no cost. The 1 toughness is a little annoying, because you cant outrace the hyper aggro decks, so you are on block duty, and this cant do that. I've joked about how I will take a 2 mana 3/3 with a built in protect clause, over a tarmogoyf any day. But its a serious thing. I would trade my set of goyfs in zoo for a 3/3 hexproof any day.
a 3/1 indestructible pay 4 life on attack, 1/X pay 4 life to block isnt exactly that. A 3/4 tarmogoyf (before push) was closer to it... and even then I was always complaining about how in zoo it wasnt a turn two 3 power at least.
I think if we got to the point where I could get this with a 3/3 natural body (or easy to turn on body) where I could pay some life to ensure it doesnt die? Yeah, Id love that. But theoretically I can get "more" aggression in with 2 mana when I go balls to the walls aggro normally. I need more of a stompy effect, ala, a big creature that can stick.
Sadly, the best home is not D&T because Leonin Arbiter cooperates so much better with Ghost Quarter (free activation cost, the infamous Turn 3 GQ into Arbiter hold priority crack GQ).
Maybe I'll try it in Eldrazi Tron and some midrange/control decks. Eldrazi Tron is somewhat weak to Blood Moon, has just enough basics to reliably cheat in one per game, and can easily Expedition Map for this. My midrange/control decks tend to be Moon-weak, and they can use the simultaneous LD and colour fixing.
Shame I can't just blow this up early against an opposing fetchland because they'll crack it in response and deny me my basic.