How Do You Beat a Land Destruction Deck?

Michel A. Jolicoeur

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Dec 12, 1994, 8:13:18 AM12/12/94

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I was at a local Magic Tournament on Sunday and the two finalists both
had land destruction decks. Their decks consisted of:

4 sinkholes
4 stone rains
4 demonic hordes
4 stripmines
4 nightmares
4 shivran dragons
4 sengir vampires

and the rest was mainly swamps and mountains

I was impressed at how these decks could cripple the opposition fast.
The winner of the final said he played with 50% land in his 60 card deck
and that the winner between two land destruction decks was whoever could
get out the first sinkhole.

How do you beat these type of decks?

Jens Hoppe

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Dec 12, 1994, 9:23:24 AM12/12/94

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Michel A. Jolicoeur (bj...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA) wrote:
: I was at a local Magic Tournament on Sunday and the two finalists both

The usual anti-land-destruction deck involves only very low-cost
spells. The average weenie-type speed deck will see your land-destroying
opponent killed by a double-unstable-mutationed-flying man-not-to-
mention-a-couple-of-lightning-bolts-and-of-course-the-obligatory-turn-one-
black-vise, before he'll ever get his first biggie monster in play! Since
you're playing blue, why not throw in some counterspells, so he won't
destroy your land after all?

Of course, it's not quite as simple. Land destruction can be a real
pain-in-the-ass, but my point is: There's a way around it (as with
everything else in Magic). The weakness with land destruction decks is
that with all those land destroying cards in the deck, there's relatively
less of everything else. It only takes a slightly-less-than-optimal
initial draw for a land destruction deck to really fail. If you only
get a few land destroyers in the first 10 turns or so, it might easily
be too late to catch up on your opponent. Of course, decks with only
high cost spells are ideal targets for land destruction, but good fast
decks are most often too fast for land destruction decks to follow.

Also, the good OOPs; the moxen and the lotus are ideal for anti-
land destruction. With a few of these in play, land destruction decks
are almost impotent. That's the reason (of course) why most good
land destroyers include anti-artifact stuff as well.

The nastiest land destruction deck I have seen involved
Black Vise/Howling Mine, artifact creatures (esp. Juggernauts), and
four Abyss. This illustrates the main problem of most land destruction
decks: It's often very bad at dealing with the stuff that the opponent
-does- manage to get out, and Abyss is one of the best ways of
systematically killing off the opposing creatures. Another option (which
this deck included as well) is to use Tabernacles of Pendrell Vale:
Players have to pay upkeep for their creatures. The opponent of the
land destroyer obviously hasn't got too much mana, so he can't keep
that many creatures in play :)

Another anti-land destruction card is Land Tax. Turn 1: Play plains, tap,
play Land Tax. Unless your opponent disenchants the card (and the
red/black deck you described won't), you're assured of at least one
new land each turn for as long as you've got land in your library.

My favorite land destruction idea involves Armageddon: Try to get a
superiority in creatures in play (eg. two 4/4's versus one 3/3). Play
Armageddon, and watch your opponent die before he can recover :-)

Just my $.02

jf...@imm.dtu.dk Jens "Hopsie" Hoppe

Peter M. White

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Dec 12, 1994, 1:43:23 PM12/12/94

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jf...@snake1.imsor.dth.dk (Jens Hoppe) writes:

>Another anti-land destruction card is Land Tax. Turn 1: Play plains, tap,
>play Land Tax. Unless your opponent disenchants the card (and the
>red/black deck you described won't), you're assured of at least one
>new land each turn for as long as you've got land in your library.

The most fun and gruesome variant of this deck I have seen is with Land's
Edge (discard up to three cards; do 2 points damage to opponent for each
land discarded). Unfortunately, it only usually works once. Normal,
nonweenie decks often just die when this hits them. Land destruction
decks can often save thems by destroying their *own* land.

--Peter
p-w...@uiuc.edu

Matt Hewn

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Dec 12, 1994, 3:11:19 PM12/12/94

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-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

From: Matt Hewn <matt...@uiuc.edu>

pmwg...@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Peter M. White) writes:

>The most fun and gruesome variant of this deck I have seen is with Land's
>Edge (discard up to three cards; do 2 points damage to opponent for each
>land discarded). Unfortunately, it only usually works once. Normal,
>nonweenie decks often just die when this hits them. Land destruction
>decks can often save thems by destroying their *own* land.

Lands Edge: "Any player may discard a card from hand at any time. If
that player discards a land, Land's Edge does 2 damage to
target player of the discarding player's choice."

Where do you get the 3-card limit?
How would destroying your own land help?

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--
Matt Hewn <matt...@uiuc.edu>
--
Information is not knowledge; knowledge is not wisdom; wisdom is not truth.
Truth is absolute.

Ben Pocock

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Dec 12, 1994, 4:52:21 PM12/12/94

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>4 sinkholes
>4 stone rains
>4 demonic hordes
>4 stripmines
>4 nightmares
>4 shivran dragons
>4 sengir vampires

It shouldn't have won. What you want in that deck are cost efficient
creatures, not Shivan's, Nightmares and Vampires.

How about:
4 x Stone Rain
4 x Armageddon
4 x Ice Storm
4 x Kudzu
2 x Strip Mine (can you put 4 out?)
4 x Consecrate Land (this isn't restricted is it?)
2 x Land's Edge
2 x Sword's to Plowshares
4 x Birds of Paradise
2 x Dingus Egg
2 x Black Vise
2 x Anhk of Mishra
2 x Juggernaught
2 x Nev's Disk
8 x Forest
8 x Plains
8 x Mountains

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ben Pocock (bpo...@hookup.net)

Jens Hoppe

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Dec 13, 1994, 4:20:51 AM12/13/94

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Peter M. White (pmwg...@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu) wrote:
: jf...@snake1.imsor.dth.dk (Jens Hoppe) writes:

I used to play with a deck like this - mostly for fun, as it wasn't quite
competetive. But, once in a while I'd run into a kill-or-control-creatures
type deck, and I would have an easy time, with virtually no creatures
in my deck.

What I did have was 4 Land's Edge, 4 Land Tax (for the "6 damage per turn"
combo), 4 Wrath of God + some Earthquakes (for creature defense), some
Boomerangs, a few Stone Rains & Strip Mines (to use on my own land, to enable
the Land's Edge - Land Tax combo), and lots of get-more-cards cards:
Ancestral Recall, Timetwister, Wheel of Fortune, Winds of Change,
Library of Alexandria, Sindbad (finally a good use for him: "I tap him to
draw a card. Hmm... a land. I guess that's 2 damage coming your way!"),
Braingeyser. Also a few CoP:Red to protect myself against the Earthquakes
and the Land's Edge (if my opponent decides to play unfairly and starts to
discard land himself!). Finally, almost 50% land!

If the deck gets a good start, it can be incredibly effective. Its overall
average performance is not too good, however... But it's great fun!
Just seing the expression on the opponent's face when he realizes what
he's up against...

jf...@imm.dtu.dk Jens "Hopsie" Hoppe

SluT

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Dec 13, 1994, 2:16:26 PM12/13/94

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Speed Speed Speed. Personally this deck doesnt look all that fast. Looks to
me like a decent weenie hoarde deck would waste it. All the possible blockers
are like 5 mana or more, and by the fith round, a good weenie horde deck will
have done 15 points of damage and have about 6 or seven creatures out.
To me, weenie hoarde decks are my Peoria, if a deck cant withstand a good
weenie onslaught, it just aint fast enough.
The is no reason for having 16 5+ mana creatures, The only deck that I have
any numver of them in, (more than maybe 4) is one with 11, but in that
deck the remainder of the deck has huge mana, quickly capabilities, its
all mana birds, punk elves, instill energies, dark rituals, elves of
deep shadow.... and my big monsters come out frequently on the fourth round
or often sooner, this deck however cant get any of them out before round
6, by which time a creature deck has already one. if you want to beat one
of these decks...

4 punk elves, 4 scrybe sprites, 4 grizzly bear, 4 giant growths, 4 Lbolts,
4 kird apes, 4 fireballs, 4 Dgrates, 4 shanolin dryads, 4 wild growths
10 forest 10 mountain (or 11F/9M)
In reality you can make it better with a few Uncs and Rares, but this deck
as stands would probably give a land dest deck a good run, even with
the RX spells, and the growths being disabled by land destruction.

(to make it better replace the dryads and growths with like dragon whelps,
and goblin ballons. and have a sidebar of Tranqs, Shatterstorms, WinterOrbs,
REBs, to use vs respectively White/Enchantment decks, heavy artifact, mana
intesive (like this one... winter orbs would screw him), and blue.
And in this case the Wild growths come out for Winter Orbs, wild growths
being kind of useless vs landD.

I always amaze people with this deck, played correctly it will at least come
close to winning against even the best tourney decks, and often, against
very good decks, it _will_ hose them.
This deck is also the reason that I dont play for ante, because a deck like
this will fare very well, for no danger of loss.

If anyone can build a better all common deck... I want to see it.

--
____ __ ______ "What is Best in Life?
/ __/ / /_ _/_ __/ To Crush your Enemies, to see them driven before
\_ \ / / /_/ // / you, and to have really great beer, like Keystone
/___//_/\____//_/ and Keystone light." EMAIL: sl...@midway.uchicago.edu

Jason Bant

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Dec 15, 1994, 8:52:18 AM12/15/94

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In article <3cqda5$h...@bcarh8ab.bnr.ca>, ide...@bnr.ca (Jason) wrote:

> In article <D0p8q...@freenet.carleton.ca>,

> They were very very lucky. Where was the tournament? Place D'Orleans???
> I'll really have to pay more attention to tournaments around here, Place
> D'Orleans has better prizes and less compitition [apparently] than the
> Gambit tournaments. [I won a box of boosters there the time I went.]
>
> Anyways, how to beat those decks... Oh, funny thought, I have a pretty good
> idea where they might have gotten the sinkholes for the deck :)
>
> Where was I. Oh yeah. Typically you should never have a spell that costs
> more than 4 to cast in your deck, unless you have a deck designed differently.
> As well, you need some creature destroyers like StP and balance in the deck
> just on principle, and the balance typically does nasty things to a land
> destruction deck to start with. As well, you should have either cheap spells
> like kird apes, black vices, racks, lightning, or some way to get things out,
> like dark rituals. The personal favourite is a first turn hypnotic spectre.
> They tend to blow up quite messily, but its still fun to do, even if it is
> a 2:1 card trade.
>
> --
> (E-MAIL AU...@FREENET.CARLETON.CA || gru...@gaul.csd.uwo.ca) && I != BNR
> MSCL, and B5, mankinds last, best hope for decent T.V. shows.
Land destruction is the best kind of deck (no I'm not biased I just play
land destruction myself). A good one will almost always will win unless it
gets mana-screwed or the other guy draw mana vault 4 and 4 vice on his
first turn. Basically there is a strategy that will sometimes work. This
strategy is lotus moxen dark rituals, fellwar stones fastbonds , sol ring
and so on. In this deck you have denial stuff especially stuff you can
cast early such as force spikes. You also want to get them with no cards
in their hands and 2-3 in yours. You have to watch out because if they
catch you with no land acouple of black vises ahnks, and some juggernauts
don't say I didn't warn you. By the way, the guys above suck--for a decent
land destruction deck it must look something like this (I've done lots of
reasearch and have experience) which is my deck:
4 Strip mines
2 Shivans
2 Sengirs
2 Jaggernuts
2 Lawnmower elves
4 Sinkholes
4 Stone rains
2 Forks
4 Icestorms
2 fellwar stones
2 howling mines
1 ahnk
1 egg
4 black vises
4 taigas
4 badlands
4 bayous
2 of each of the FE sacrifice lands
1 regrowth
1 pestilence
1 feldons cane
1 tutor
1 solring
1 tranquility
Ok hope this helps. Try this deck if you want to clean up at tournaments.
Thanx, JB

--
Jason Bant
jb...@superdec.uni.uiuc.edu
Uni High
Urbana, IL
61801