So I guess this is pretty straight forward, what are your guy's opinion on mass land destruction, or MLD?
One one hand, I can see the argument that it can get annoying because it slows the game down, especially if not done as a sort of win con.
On the other though, MLD has a purpose. It is meant to reign in things like mass ramp. It is meant to punish over extending on land ramp, like how a wrath punishes overextending on creatures and board presence. Like,nothing is more annoying than that Azusa deck that will have 8-9 lands on turn 3-4 and dropping Titans when most people are still trying to get their board state situated, not having any way to stop them because the table banned MLD. I have seen many decks that abuse the general rule of no MLD to have an untouchable field advantage that becomes neigh impossible to stop.
So what do you guys think? Is MLD a cardinal sin or is it a necessary tool?
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I don't mind MLD if you win the game that turn (or at least very shortly after the MLD effect goes off). MLD as Silence is one thing, but MLD just to slow things down is completely different.
But how about MLD is a wrath? Again, I point to my Azusa example (Mina also works, but I have seen Azusa as the most egregious of all the commanders), Azusa quickly builds up her board faster than everyone and just lays threat after threat. Normally, the beat way to beat her is to combo off before she starts dropping Titans or to blow up her lands to slow her back down. And I have seen this happen time and again with Azusa, Mina and Den, and omnath (the angry one). And the tables that do tend to have the No MLD rule also tend to frown on combo... which kinda kills both of the main ways to deal with these decks.
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You can always just ramp harder. Interactive, no, but people also play craps and cat's cradle.
And this, I feel like, is a major problem, when the game becomes "who can ramp harder" because then it is either Play G or spend bookoo money on artifact ramp.
And oddly, I rarely see get upset about creature tutors beside tooth and nail... but that is a whole different issue.
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On the other though, MLD has a purpose. It is meant to reign in things like mass ramp. It is meant to punish over extending on land ramp, like how a wrath punishes overextending on creatures and board presence. Like,nothing is more annoying than that Azusa deck that will have 8-9 lands on turn 3-4 and dropping Titans when most people are still trying to get their board state situated, not having any way to stop them because the table banned MLD. I have seen many decks that abuse the general rule of no MLD to have an untouchable field advantage that becomes neigh impossible to stop.
I think this actually isnt true. Decks that ramp like that are the best setup to recover from MLD. And if you are casting it that early you either have a LOT and don't really care when its cast, or you got lucky.
So what do you guys think? Is MLD a cardinal sin or is it a necessary tool?
Cardinal sin if you don't win very soon. Its not a tool like a Wrath because it stops the vast majority of resources, not creatures. Everyone in draw-go isnt the same as no one has creatures.
If people are sick of reading about stuff just stop taking part. You have 100% control over what you read. Simic Ascendancy isn't going to get banned just because you didn't tell someone to shut up on the internet.
Not particularly because they will also be lacking lands in their deck. If they over extend to hard, they can easily hurt real bad (I have seen this alot with my Nahiri Equip deck as I DO run MLD in that deck to lock people out as I kill them with suped up tokens.)
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SnowBunny, I can understand the desire to want to reign in decks that abuse ramp to get way ahead of the rest of the table, but MLD doesn't do what you think it does against green turbo ramp decks. It's not like you just destroy all the lands they stall out. The problem is that these green decks are loadoing their decks with ramp so once they get lucky and top deck 2 or 3 lands, they can quickly recover with ramp spells they still have in hand or topdeck. When you MLD to reset a green deck, you're probably just making them win anyway, unless soembody has a huge field advanatge over them, because they will recover quicker.
The best way to reign in a deck like Asuza is to play a heavy blue control deck with many counterspells. You can just counter their t3 Azusa with a 2 mana counter to slow them down. It's also possible to just let all their ramp spells resolve and then counter every relevant card they play.
Resource Denial is part of the game. Look at white and red, they don't ramp and they draw like crap - their thing is removing other player's resources. In addition to 40 life, the taboo on resource denial is one of the reason these colours are so bottom tier.
Just like other resource denial such as discard I don't play or endorse MLD in a casual setting, or in every game. But in a competitive meta (with or without combo, you can have no-combo competitive!) lands are not sacred and MLD is fair game. When I play MLD, I usually do so to try and set up a lock or a win - run a ton of artifact mana or have some big beaters on the table etc. But I'm ok with MLD as a slowing effect on the game - hell, thats what wraths do and the answer isn't to ban wraths but to play around them.
One of the worst things I've seen is somebody complain about MLD and then slam a Cyclonic Rift or some other nonsense in a game. At least that makes the "who do I attack first" decision easy for the next game...
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I don't mind MLD if you win the game that turn (or at least very shortly after the MLD effect goes off). MLD as Silence is one thing, but MLD just to slow things down is completely different.
On the other though, MLD has a purpose. It is meant to reign in things like mass ramp. It is meant to punish over extending on land ramp, like how a wrath punishes overextending on creatures and board presence. Like,nothing is more annoying than that Azusa deck that will have 8-9 lands on turn 3-4 and dropping Titans when most people are still trying to get their board state situated, not having any way to stop them because the table banned MLD. I have seen many decks that abuse the general rule of no MLD to have an untouchable field advantage that becomes neigh impossible to stop.
I think this actually isnt true. Decks that ramp like that are the best setup to recover from MLD. And if you are casting it that early you either have a LOT and don't really care when its cast, or you got lucky.
i hate to do this, but in my experience, that sounds like the exact kinda thing that people who've never tried/experienced it in real life would say. Think about MLD against ramp like this:
ramp deck sinks mana and tempo into ramping out lands, emptying their hand and thinning their deck of lands. MLD hits. their GY is filled with a lot of their lands and ramp spells, and their deck is significantly thinner. how is that NOT an effective way of reigning in ramp? a lot of people who seem (at least to me) to like theorycrafting how it'd work in reality seem to think that their hand will be filled with kodama's reach, cultivate and whatever other ramp spells - but that is almost never the case; the ramp player's ramp spells are usually all in the GY, since their strategic advantage is to play the mid-late game when everyone else is still in the early game.
The myth that MLD doesn't stop ramp is something that a lot of players seem to just take as fact and never put it to the test. If ramp is a problem in your meta, sprinkle some MLD in your decks and watch the game swing vastly in your favour.
The biggest problem with MLD is when players who use it don't use it strategically enough. its a somewhat skilltesting card type, in that you need to know when to blow it all up, and when to hold it. if your opponent has a veteran explorer on the board, you might wanna consider not blowing it all up. you want to sandbag a couple of lands in your hand before you blow it all up. heck, you might even want to make sure that your average CMC is low enough that you don't need more than 5-6 lands realistically in play at any one time.
another thing is that at least in my group, i used to be the guy who was the MLD guy, as in i'd have a deck that was just MLD. that isn't fun for anyone. the best thing is to employ MLD as a support pillar for your main strategy in your deck. in my kaalia build, i want to get kaalia out as fast as i can, then blow up all the lands, then hopefully i can race their life totals before the other players can deal with the situation. my strategy ISNT to blow up the lands and hope that my deck will kill the table.
the other myth i think is that if you blow a MLD, you should end the game soon after. if you build your deck with a CMC of 6+ just because you think you can lean that heavily on your ramp to get you there, the problem is in your deck construction, not the MLD. if you think you can lean on one pillar of your strategy so heavily and expect it not to get disrupted, and not have a plan B, you can't honestly fault anyone else but yourself for that. do people here remember the ol' kitchen table magic? remember one of those ultra important theory of sandbagging lands in your hand? of making sure that you dont overextend? dont show off all your cards and bank everything on one out? its like EDH players think that none of that applies anymore, because 100 cards somehow offsets it from the 40 or 60 card deck.
its not a cardinal sin by any means, even if you dont plan to win immediately afterwards. the cardinal sin is that players skew their decks to only play in the late game by ramping there, and expect all other players to let them do that. if that's the case, why not call wraths a cardinal sin, as they delay creature decks from employing their strategy, or counterspells as a cardinal sin cuz they stop spells from happening on the stack?
if a simple and well-timed armageddon, blood moon or pox can wreck your entire game every time, its time to rethink your deck a bit.
i hate to do this, but in my experience, that sounds like the exact kinda thing that people who've never tried/experienced it in real life would say. Think about MLD against ramp like this:
ramp deck sinks mana and tempo into ramping out lands, emptying their hand and thinning their deck of lands. MLD hits. their GY is filled with a lot of their lands and ramp spells, and their deck is significantly thinner. how is that NOT an effective way of reigning in ramp? a lot of people who seem (at least to me) to like theorycrafting how it'd work in reality seem to think that their hand will be filled with kodama's reach, cultivate and whatever other ramp spells - but that is almost never the case; the ramp player's ramp spells are usually all in the GY, since their strategic advantage is to play the mid-late game when everyone else is still in the early game.
The myth that MLD doesn't stop ramp is something that a lot of players seem to just take as fact and never put it to the test. If ramp is a problem in your meta, sprinkle some MLD in your decks and watch the game swing vastly in your favour.
The biggest problem with MLD is when players who use it don't use it strategically enough. its a somewhat skilltesting card type, in that you need to know when to blow it all up, and when to hold it. if your opponent has a veteran explorer on the board, you might wanna consider not blowing it all up. you want to sandbag a couple of lands in your hand before you blow it all up. heck, you might even want to make sure that your average CMC is low enough that you don't need more than 5-6 lands realistically in play at any one time.
another thing is that at least in my group, i used to be the guy who was the MLD guy, as in i'd have a deck that was just MLD. that isn't fun for anyone. the best thing is to employ MLD as a support pillar for your main strategy in your deck. in my kaalia build, i want to get kaalia out as fast as i can, then blow up all the lands, then hopefully i can race their life totals before the other players can deal with the situation. my strategy ISNT to blow up the lands and hope that my deck will kill the table.
the other myth i think is that if you blow a MLD, you should end the game soon after. if you build your deck with a CMC of 6+ just because you think you can lean that heavily on your ramp to get you there, the problem is in your deck construction, not the MLD. if you think you can lean on one pillar of your strategy so heavily and expect it not to get disrupted, and not have a plan B, you can't honestly fault anyone else but yourself for that. do people here remember the ol' kitchen table magic? remember one of those ultra important theory of sandbagging lands in your hand? of making sure that you dont overextend? dont show off all your cards and bank everything on one out? its like EDH players think that none of that applies anymore, because 100 cards somehow offsets it from the 40 or 60 card deck.
its not a cardinal sin by any means, even if you dont plan to win immediately afterwards. the cardinal sin is that players skew their decks to only play in the late game by ramping there, and expect all other players to let them do that. if that's the case, why not call wraths a cardinal sin, as they delay creature decks from employing their strategy, or counterspells as a cardinal sin cuz they stop spells from happening on the stack?
if a simple and well-timed armageddon, blood moon or pox can wreck your entire game every time, its time to rethink your deck a bit.
Play all the land destruction you want with me. This is going to be dependent on your play group, but really some people get too butt hurt about land destruction. Makes me sometime want to play more land destruction out of spite hehe.
I personally have no issues with it. I have a few decks that like to play some creatures and then go to combat. If your wrath effect isn't seen as abusive to ruining my fun, I don't get why MLD (or for that matter any kind of board wipe) is seen as off limits.
In my Zurgo Helmsmasher deck Zurgo is the only creature, so I have to stay alive long enough to get my board state where I want it. Sometimes that means using MLD before it would give me the win, but you have to do what you have to do to survive. I have 21 board wipes of varying flavors in the deck and at least 6 do MLD.
As for the answer "play blue", here is another for the people on the other end of MLD: play white and use Faith's Reward or Boros and have a Boros Charm in your hand. I for one will never be that guy running blue control. That ruins everyone's fun every game. That is the guy that needs to be removed from the game first every time.
i hate to do this, but in my experience, that sounds like the exact kinda thing that people who've never tried/experienced it in real life would say. Think about MLD against ramp like this:
ramp deck sinks mana and tempo into ramping out lands, emptying their hand and thinning their deck of lands. MLD hits. their GY is filled with a lot of their lands and ramp spells, and their deck is significantly thinner. how is that NOT an effective way of reigning in ramp? a lot of people who seem (at least to me) to like theorycrafting how it'd work in reality seem to think that their hand will be filled with kodama's reach, cultivate and whatever other ramp spells - but that is almost never the case; the ramp player's ramp spells are usually all in the GY, since their strategic advantage is to play the mid-late game when everyone else is still in the early game.
The myth that MLD doesn't stop ramp is something that a lot of players seem to just take as fact and never put it to the test. If ramp is a problem in your meta, sprinkle some MLD in your decks and watch the game swing vastly in your favour.
The biggest problem with MLD is when players who use it don't use it strategically enough. its a somewhat skilltesting card type, in that you need to know when to blow it all up, and when to hold it. if your opponent has a veteran explorer on the board, you might wanna consider not blowing it all up. you want to sandbag a couple of lands in your hand before you blow it all up. heck, you might even want to make sure that your average CMC is low enough that you don't need more than 5-6 lands realistically in play at any one time.
another thing is that at least in my group, i used to be the guy who was the MLD guy, as in i'd have a deck that was just MLD. that isn't fun for anyone. the best thing is to employ MLD as a support pillar for your main strategy in your deck. in my kaalia build, i want to get kaalia out as fast as i can, then blow up all the lands, then hopefully i can race their life totals before the other players can deal with the situation. my strategy ISNT to blow up the lands and hope that my deck will kill the table.
the other myth i think is that if you blow a MLD, you should end the game soon after. if you build your deck with a CMC of 6+ just because you think you can lean that heavily on your ramp to get you there, the problem is in your deck construction, not the MLD. if you think you can lean on one pillar of your strategy so heavily and expect it not to get disrupted, and not have a plan B, you can't honestly fault anyone else but yourself for that. do people here remember the ol' kitchen table magic? remember one of those ultra important theory of sandbagging lands in your hand? of making sure that you dont overextend? dont show off all your cards and bank everything on one out? its like EDH players think that none of that applies anymore, because 100 cards somehow offsets it from the 40 or 60 card deck.
its not a cardinal sin by any means, even if you dont plan to win immediately afterwards. the cardinal sin is that players skew their decks to only play in the late game by ramping there, and expect all other players to let them do that. if that's the case, why not call wraths a cardinal sin, as they delay creature decks from employing their strategy, or counterspells as a cardinal sin cuz they stop spells from happening on the stack?
if a simple and well-timed armageddon, blood moon or pox can wreck your entire game every time, its time to rethink your deck a bit.
yes, it stops ramp decks if its a surprise, but it slows the ramp decks down enough that everyone is still essentially in the same 'period' of the game (early game/early-mid game) instead of the ramp player playing late game threats while the rest of the table are still deploying early game things. To me, that means that the MLD has done part of its job already. the problem with ramp isn't that they are mana-flooded all the time; its that they are mana flooded too early in the game.
sure stax and tax effects help tone ramp decks down, but it usually requires a deck to be pretty much all-in on it for it to work effectively. MLD isn't the primary focus of most decks that play MLD, its merely one facet that helps support the rest of the deck. i think we're in agreement though that MLD isn't a bad thing in magic; its mostly gotten a bad rap from being badly employed/badly timed/not fitting with a deck's strategy, so on.
This debate comes up every now and then. And it always ends in a polarization of playing philosophies. First off, LD exists in magic and de facto in EDH. That's a fact and part of the game. It's like having rooks and bishops, or snakes and ladders.
Second, it's been part of the game since the beginning and is as defining as life gain, extra card draw, counter spell, wrath and ramp. It also happens to be one of the defining denial strategies in W and R, as opposed to ramp in G and counter in U. If you decide to ban LD, you effectively neuter two of the 5 colors which already suffer from not having the better strategies (draw for example). I endorse LD and MLD as a legitimate strategy. If you are going to ban it, then it would be logical to ban ramp and counters to level the playing field.
Third, MLD is not the best way of fighting ramp. In my experience it would be Winter Orb and some way to protect it. Torpor Orb and Humility also work wonders against those decks. Sure you vomited 9 lands to play some huge creature with a ETB effect, but all you get is a 1/1 with nothing....
If you don't wipe the board before MLD'ing against a green hyperramp deck, odds are you're gonna have a bad time.
See, there's a difference between using it strategically and what a lot of people are doing. I've seen people drop down an Armageddon when they had a near empty board and the Green player already had a few fatties out. That's not gonna do much. What we really need, IMO, is some more kinds of spells that constrain everyone's lands without entirely nuking them, such as the afformentioned Keldon Firebombers. This would allow people who get hit as a result of "being in the near vicinity of the threat" still able to play and perhaps throw out a Wrath to keep a game going which would otherwise be done quickly. Various cards that would leave everyone with 3, 4 or even 5 land would see plenty of play, methinks, without anyone calling them particularly overpowered.
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MLD as a way to keep your opponents from preventing what you are doing seems fair. Doing it to just stall a game while you durdle around for something to do is a waste of everyone's time. You don't need to win that turn, but if it swings the game in your favor, by all means go ahead.
i hate to do this, but in my experience, that sounds like the exact kinda thing that people who've never tried/experienced it in real life would say. Think about MLD against ramp like this:
ramp deck sinks mana and tempo into ramping out lands, emptying their hand and thinning their deck of lands. MLD hits. their GY is filled with a lot of their lands and ramp spells, and their deck is significantly thinner. how is that NOT an effective way of reigning in ramp? a lot of people who seem (at least to me) to like theorycrafting how it'd work in reality seem to think that their hand will be filled with kodama's reach, cultivate and whatever other ramp spells - but that is almost never the case; the ramp player's ramp spells are usually all in the GY, since their strategic advantage is to play the mid-late game when everyone else is still in the early game.
The myth that MLD doesn't stop ramp is something that a lot of players seem to just take as fact and never put it to the test. If ramp is a problem in your meta, sprinkle some MLD in your decks and watch the game swing vastly in your favour.
The biggest problem with MLD is when players who use it don't use it strategically enough. its a somewhat skilltesting card type, in that you need to know when to blow it all up, and when to hold it. if your opponent has a veteran explorer on the board, you might wanna consider not blowing it all up. you want to sandbag a couple of lands in your hand before you blow it all up. heck, you might even want to make sure that your average CMC is low enough that you don't need more than 5-6 lands realistically in play at any one time.
another thing is that at least in my group, i used to be the guy who was the MLD guy, as in i'd have a deck that was just MLD. that isn't fun for anyone. the best thing is to employ MLD as a support pillar for your main strategy in your deck. in my kaalia build, i want to get kaalia out as fast as i can, then blow up all the lands, then hopefully i can race their life totals before the other players can deal with the situation. my strategy ISNT to blow up the lands and hope that my deck will kill the table.
the other myth i think is that if you blow a MLD, you should end the game soon after. if you build your deck with a CMC of 6+ just because you think you can lean that heavily on your ramp to get you there, the problem is in your deck construction, not the MLD. if you think you can lean on one pillar of your strategy so heavily and expect it not to get disrupted, and not have a plan B, you can't honestly fault anyone else but yourself for that. do people here remember the ol' kitchen table magic? remember one of those ultra important theory of sandbagging lands in your hand? of making sure that you dont overextend? dont show off all your cards and bank everything on one out? its like EDH players think that none of that applies anymore, because 100 cards somehow offsets it from the 40 or 60 card deck.
its not a cardinal sin by any means, even if you dont plan to win immediately afterwards. the cardinal sin is that players skew their decks to only play in the late game by ramping there, and expect all other players to let them do that. if that's the case, why not call wraths a cardinal sin, as they delay creature decks from employing their strategy, or counterspells as a cardinal sin cuz they stop spells from happening on the stack?
if a simple and well-timed armageddon, blood moon or pox can wreck your entire game every time, its time to rethink your deck a bit.
Notice the decks I gave examples to... NOT Gitrog because his deck intentionally kills lands. But Azusa, Mina and Den, and Omnath. Decks who's very purpose is fast ramp to play Eldrazi or mass tokens (for omnath).
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Most of the time I find MLD to be futile, and almost all of the time, ends up affecting the wrong player in the worst possible way.
I don't agree with looking at a ramp player, casting 'Geddon, and saying "Well, he doesn't have as many lands in his deck to recover with". That's pretty silly. Most of my G/X Decks are 40-45 lands, killing ~10 does nothing but delay the inevitable. I'll recover faster, and then send all of the hate your way.
What's also puzzling is how you intend to "punish" those Gruul players. Almost every GRx deck I've built relies on ramping and then destroying lands with a symmetry break in mind. Destructive Force for instance.
I guess if your going to play MLD, play the ones that are "catch all". The aforementioned Johkullups, Decree of Annihilation and the like. Otherwise, you aren't doing anything but playing right into the ramp players game plan.
But, the best way to punish ramp is to tax the heck out of them. I mean, my best "ramp punisher" moment came when I was playing my Boros Lifegain Tajic, Blade of the Legion deck against some Gx players, I cast Armegeddon, floated 3 mana, cast Boros Signet and slapped down Ahnk of Mishara. Good times indeed.
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One one hand, I can see the argument that it can get annoying because it slows the game down, especially if not done as a sort of win con.
On the other though, MLD has a purpose. It is meant to reign in things like mass ramp. It is meant to punish over extending on land ramp, like how a wrath punishes overextending on creatures and board presence. Like,nothing is more annoying than that Azusa deck that will have 8-9 lands on turn 3-4 and dropping Titans when most people are still trying to get their board state situated, not having any way to stop them because the table banned MLD. I have seen many decks that abuse the general rule of no MLD to have an untouchable field advantage that becomes neigh impossible to stop.
So what do you guys think? Is MLD a cardinal sin or is it a necessary tool?
This aint your girlfriends meta! This is a man's meta! TURBO META.
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This aint your girlfriends meta! This is a man's meta! TURBO META.
And this, I feel like, is a major problem, when the game becomes "who can ramp harder" because then it is either Play G or spend bookoo money on artifact ramp.
And oddly, I rarely see get upset about creature tutors beside tooth and nail... but that is a whole different issue.
This aint your girlfriends meta! This is a man's meta! TURBO META.
Carry on. I don't even have people to play with.
There is always Cockatrice xD.I play a lot on cockatrice to test new deck ideas before putting down the money.
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Cardinal sin if you don't win very soon. Its not a tool like a Wrath because it stops the vast majority of resources, not creatures. Everyone in draw-go isnt the same as no one has creatures.
This aint your girlfriends meta! This is a man's meta! TURBO META.
The best way to reign in a deck like Asuza is to play a heavy blue control deck with many counterspells. You can just counter their t3 Azusa with a 2 mana counter to slow them down. It's also possible to just let all their ramp spells resolve and then counter every relevant card they play.
WWIW, I think it's always bad form to play MLD.
Resource Denial is part of the game. Look at white and red, they don't ramp and they draw like crap - their thing is removing other player's resources. In addition to 40 life, the taboo on resource denial is one of the reason these colours are so bottom tier.
Just like other resource denial such as discard I don't play or endorse MLD in a casual setting, or in every game. But in a competitive meta (with or without combo, you can have no-combo competitive!) lands are not sacred and MLD is fair game. When I play MLD, I usually do so to try and set up a lock or a win - run a ton of artifact mana or have some big beaters on the table etc. But I'm ok with MLD as a slowing effect on the game - hell, thats what wraths do and the answer isn't to ban wraths but to play around them.
One of the worst things I've seen is somebody complain about MLD and then slam a Cyclonic Rift or some other nonsense in a game. At least that makes the "who do I attack first" decision easy for the next game...
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This. MLD out of spite would also be trolling.
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---------------------Will & Rowan Kenrith
i hate to do this, but in my experience, that sounds like the exact kinda thing that people who've never tried/experienced it in real life would say. Think about MLD against ramp like this:
ramp deck sinks mana and tempo into ramping out lands, emptying their hand and thinning their deck of lands. MLD hits. their GY is filled with a lot of their lands and ramp spells, and their deck is significantly thinner. how is that NOT an effective way of reigning in ramp? a lot of people who seem (at least to me) to like theorycrafting how it'd work in reality seem to think that their hand will be filled with kodama's reach, cultivate and whatever other ramp spells - but that is almost never the case; the ramp player's ramp spells are usually all in the GY, since their strategic advantage is to play the mid-late game when everyone else is still in the early game.
The myth that MLD doesn't stop ramp is something that a lot of players seem to just take as fact and never put it to the test. If ramp is a problem in your meta, sprinkle some MLD in your decks and watch the game swing vastly in your favour.
The biggest problem with MLD is when players who use it don't use it strategically enough. its a somewhat skilltesting card type, in that you need to know when to blow it all up, and when to hold it. if your opponent has a veteran explorer on the board, you might wanna consider not blowing it all up. you want to sandbag a couple of lands in your hand before you blow it all up. heck, you might even want to make sure that your average CMC is low enough that you don't need more than 5-6 lands realistically in play at any one time.
another thing is that at least in my group, i used to be the guy who was the MLD guy, as in i'd have a deck that was just MLD. that isn't fun for anyone. the best thing is to employ MLD as a support pillar for your main strategy in your deck. in my kaalia build, i want to get kaalia out as fast as i can, then blow up all the lands, then hopefully i can race their life totals before the other players can deal with the situation. my strategy ISNT to blow up the lands and hope that my deck will kill the table.
the other myth i think is that if you blow a MLD, you should end the game soon after. if you build your deck with a CMC of 6+ just because you think you can lean that heavily on your ramp to get you there, the problem is in your deck construction, not the MLD. if you think you can lean on one pillar of your strategy so heavily and expect it not to get disrupted, and not have a plan B, you can't honestly fault anyone else but yourself for that. do people here remember the ol' kitchen table magic? remember one of those ultra important theory of sandbagging lands in your hand? of making sure that you dont overextend? dont show off all your cards and bank everything on one out? its like EDH players think that none of that applies anymore, because 100 cards somehow offsets it from the 40 or 60 card deck.
its not a cardinal sin by any means, even if you dont plan to win immediately afterwards. the cardinal sin is that players skew their decks to only play in the late game by ramping there, and expect all other players to let them do that. if that's the case, why not call wraths a cardinal sin, as they delay creature decks from employing their strategy, or counterspells as a cardinal sin cuz they stop spells from happening on the stack?
if a simple and well-timed armageddon, blood moon or pox can wreck your entire game every time, its time to rethink your deck a bit.
Legacy - Solidarity - mono U aggro - burn - Imperial Painter - Strawberry Shortcake - Bluuzards - bom
MLD only stops ramp like that when it's a surprise. Smart players will hold back some of their excess land and a ramp spell if they expect it. What you are describing is playing MLD against bad players with battlecruiser decks. You know what deck I have that abuses Death Cloud the most? The Gitrog Monster ramp deck. My Maelstrom Wanderer deck runs Decree of Annihilation, Jokulhaups, and Devastation. My Wort, the Raidmother deck has Tectonic Break and Devastating Dreams. Ramping up and then keeping other players off lands is very powerful.
The way you counter ramp is by nullifying the effects of their ramp spells while dropping threats of your own. Winter Orb, Static Orb, Stasis, and Storm Cauldron make that Explosive Vegetation an unappealing prospect. Stranglehold, Aven Mindsensor, and Mindlock Orb also help. Additionally, most ramp decks want some form of card advantage engines. Combat those with Notion Thief, Spirit of the Labyrinth, Leovold, Emissary of Trest.
I loathe creatures! Praise Prison and Land Destruction!
My Peasant Cube (looking for feedback)
In my Zurgo Helmsmasher deck Zurgo is the only creature, so I have to stay alive long enough to get my board state where I want it. Sometimes that means using MLD before it would give me the win, but you have to do what you have to do to survive. I have 21 board wipes of varying flavors in the deck and at least 6 do MLD.
As for the answer "play blue", here is another for the people on the other end of MLD: play white and use Faith's Reward or Boros and have a Boros Charm in your hand. I for one will never be that guy running blue control. That ruins everyone's fun every game. That is the guy that needs to be removed from the game first every time.
yes, it stops ramp decks if its a surprise, but it slows the ramp decks down enough that everyone is still essentially in the same 'period' of the game (early game/early-mid game) instead of the ramp player playing late game threats while the rest of the table are still deploying early game things. To me, that means that the MLD has done part of its job already. the problem with ramp isn't that they are mana-flooded all the time; its that they are mana flooded too early in the game.
sure stax and tax effects help tone ramp decks down, but it usually requires a deck to be pretty much all-in on it for it to work effectively. MLD isn't the primary focus of most decks that play MLD, its merely one facet that helps support the rest of the deck. i think we're in agreement though that MLD isn't a bad thing in magic; its mostly gotten a bad rap from being badly employed/badly timed/not fitting with a deck's strategy, so on.
Legacy - Solidarity - mono U aggro - burn - Imperial Painter - Strawberry Shortcake - Bluuzards - bom
Second, it's been part of the game since the beginning and is as defining as life gain, extra card draw, counter spell, wrath and ramp. It also happens to be one of the defining denial strategies in W and R, as opposed to ramp in G and counter in U. If you decide to ban LD, you effectively neuter two of the 5 colors which already suffer from not having the better strategies (draw for example). I endorse LD and MLD as a legitimate strategy. If you are going to ban it, then it would be logical to ban ramp and counters to level the playing field.
Third, MLD is not the best way of fighting ramp. In my experience it would be Winter Orb and some way to protect it. Torpor Orb and Humility also work wonders against those decks. Sure you vomited 9 lands to play some huge creature with a ETB effect, but all you get is a 1/1 with nothing....
See, there's a difference between using it strategically and what a lot of people are doing. I've seen people drop down an Armageddon when they had a near empty board and the Green player already had a few fatties out. That's not gonna do much. What we really need, IMO, is some more kinds of spells that constrain everyone's lands without entirely nuking them, such as the afformentioned Keldon Firebombers. This would allow people who get hit as a result of "being in the near vicinity of the threat" still able to play and perhaps throw out a Wrath to keep a game going which would otherwise be done quickly. Various cards that would leave everyone with 3, 4 or even 5 land would see plenty of play, methinks, without anyone calling them particularly overpowered.
Chandra, Torch of Defiance - Oops! All Chandras.
Prime Speaker Zegana - Draw for Power.
Pir & Toothy - Counterpalooza.
Arcades, the Strategist - Another Brick in the Wall.
Zacama, Primal Calamity - Calamity of Double Mana.
Edgar Markov - Vampires Don't Die.
Child of Alara - Dreamcrusher.
Notice the decks I gave examples to... NOT Gitrog because his deck intentionally kills lands. But Azusa, Mina and Den, and Omnath. Decks who's very purpose is fast ramp to play Eldrazi or mass tokens (for omnath).
This aint your girlfriends meta! This is a man's meta! TURBO META.
I don't agree with looking at a ramp player, casting 'Geddon, and saying "Well, he doesn't have as many lands in his deck to recover with". That's pretty silly. Most of my G/X Decks are 40-45 lands, killing ~10 does nothing but delay the inevitable. I'll recover faster, and then send all of the hate your way.
What's also puzzling is how you intend to "punish" those Gruul players. Almost every GRx deck I've built relies on ramping and then destroying lands with a symmetry break in mind. Destructive Force for instance.
I guess if your going to play MLD, play the ones that are "catch all". The aforementioned Johkullups, Decree of Annihilation and the like. Otherwise, you aren't doing anything but playing right into the ramp players game plan.
But, the best way to punish ramp is to tax the heck out of them. I mean, my best "ramp punisher" moment came when I was playing my Boros Lifegain Tajic, Blade of the Legion deck against some Gx players, I cast Armegeddon, floated 3 mana, cast Boros Signet and slapped down Ahnk of Mishara. Good times indeed.