MTG Salvation

I'm thinking about giving this a try over Ghitu Encampment. It seems like it should be a more consistent threat that's harder to interact with, and is more versatile. Anyone tried this?

In my experience, it went hellbent a lot less often than Encampment was activated and relevant.

To continue on what eidolon and wtwlf said, even if you do some amount of damage to something with your last card-in-hand, you have to basically still have 1RR open to do 1 extra damage to it.

Even using it to "top off" a burn spell is cumbersome and expensive. Ghitu Encampment will almost always be better and I feel like Barbarian Ring will usually be better.

I like Barbarian Ring a lot more. By the time you're hellbent, threshold is already there (or not far off, usually) and I'd rather not have the land come into play tapped, and it can kill X/2 creatures and works awesomely with Life From the Loam and Crucible of Worlds.

Thanks for the quick feedback, everyone. I can see how hellbent makes it hard to use for the controlling decks that could use this effect more than Ghitu Encampment.


wtwlf123, are you saying you like Barbarian Ring better than Megaliths or Encampment, or just Megaliths?

I can't speak for wtwlf, but I like Encampment significantly more in control (first striking blocker is solid, and sometimes that 2/1 will be able to close out games for you), and I feel like it's a toss up between Encampment and Ring in aggro. Having Encampment come into play tapped can hurt an aggro deck's curve a lot (but sometimes playing a second one drop on turn 2 or a second two drop on turn 3 is acceptable), but taking 3 or 4 damage from a Barbarian Ring in an aggro mirror can cost you some games. Granted, being able to Shock things is valuable to aggro decks, allowing their one-and-two drops to trade up.

Ring is pretty much an aggro-only land (unless you have Crucible/Loam.dec) although it can be used in counterburn. Encampment is good in any deck with red. That said, at 500 cards I don't run a land for red because none of the options is appealing. Megaliths is below the other two for sure--by quite a bit.

Cheers,
rant

wtwlf123, are you saying you like Barbarian Ring better than Megaliths or Encampment, or just Megaliths?

I like it more than Megaliths, and about the same as Encampment. Red doesn't have any good color-aligned lands, IMO.

That effect at sorcery speed on a land that comes into play tapped definitely seems worse to me than all the other red lands mentioned in this thread. Teetering Peaks fits quite nicely in my Ruric Thar, the Unbowed EDH deck though!

I had mixed feelings about Teetering Peaks in my Pauper cube. I think I like it more than Keldon Megaliths, but I don't think I would play it in a normal cube featuring rares and uncommons.

I guess that illustrates how much I don't like Megaliths now that I think about it.

Hellion Crucible!

Red is stacked with mediocre lands.