As an avid green player/mana dork enjoyer, I was about to disagree with you about having a bird bolted feeling worse than having it discarded, but then I realized I actually agree that it feels worse being discarded in a lot of cases, but not for the reason(s) you mentioned. The thing about having a specific card discarded from your hand vs killed from the battlefield is that the hand is generally considered to be a safe place, whereas when you place it on the battlefield you intuitively understand you're putting the card in danger. Whenever I play a bird, I can brace for the bolt to happen, but if i say play a llanowar elf instead of the bird in order to potentially bait a bolt, but they go for thoughtseize instead, well you feel punished when you felt you were making the more disciplined or smart play.
I dont have an issue with land destruction but there are other ways to stop ramp. There are a series of effect that make mana of spells cost more, there are untap limiters, cards that when a second land is played a land is bounced back to hand, you can counter the ramp, rocks and creatures that produce mana are easy to remove. creatures have the most removal options and artifacts are second most removal options.
But if land destruction was still a part of design space, then Arcum's Astrolabe wouldn't have needed to be banned. The modern meta focused so much on nonbasic hate that Astrolabe ran rampant while doing the job that nonbasics were doing. So everyone needed to either start playing Ponza or main deck a ton of artifact hate. If Ponza style options were more available, then people would've had better ways to deal with that mana advantage n wouldn't have felt like the villain in every game they play that isn't against an Astrolabe deck.
@@FAILG0AT Cost increasers and untap limiters can be removed, allow your opponent to break the lockdown effects. Mass Land Destruction is very hard to come back from and very few are prepared to deal with it. I love it.
@@retropeoplegaming2740 this is true but stax pieces are generally enchantments which are hard to remove or artifacts which are easy to recur. While an Armageddon effects are one offs or can be countered. I would counter an Armageddon almost every time but i may not counter a stax piece at the same rate. Also there are mass land reanimation spells or mass land protection effects. I dont know any mass land exile effects that would get around that protection.
I really like land destruction when it only targets nonbasic lands and it allows you to replace the destroyed land with a basic land or have a very cheap land destruction that destroys a non basic but puts two basics into play because I want "greedy" players who completely or almost completely omit basics to be able to be punished.
I think that the "feels bad" of any of these interactions is more than just the feeling of powerlessness. The importance of unsatisfied expectations is equally important. If you've made a choice and committed resources to playing something then you're probably already thinking about what the game state is going to be like from here on out. The next turn or series of turns where you've progressed your gameplan and increased your possibility space as a result of the fact that this card has resolved is becoming a reality for you. When someone says NOPE then you're now having to grieve the loss of not just the card but the game as it was supposed to be.
One way to make messing with lands feel fair is to pause lands. Maybe give them a stun counter. Counter can be removed so it feels interactive and they disappear on their own.
This was my thought as well, but apparently when they tried something like this back in Eldritch Moon with Stensia Innkeeper, it wasn't very well received, according to MaRo on Blogatog. It's really unfortunate and I hope they try it again one day.
@@richardalan5064 maybe it can also be flavorful if done in a new Snow set. Like call the mechanic “freeze”. Like freeze a land by placing an ice counter. At the beginning of their end step they may remove an ice counter from each of their permanents. Maybe a whole deck can be designed this way to freeze even creatures and enchantments/artifacts. The rule can say the card looses all types and abilities? Maybe this won’t be a rules issue. I haven’t checked that yet.
I think what happens with land destruction is, if you have no room to make choices, a game isn't much of a game at all. Land destruction directly takes away choices before you make them, whereas removal takes away choices after you make them. It's technically true you don't always have a choice - bolting the bird for instance is probably the follow-up to you casting the only spell you could cast in some formats. But getting to untap, look at the cards in your hand, and pick one means you've executed a plan to at least some degree. Compare that to, I don't know, Hymn to Tourach - suddenly you can lose half the cards in your hand you were thinking about ways to play and you might just be forced to cast the one spell you can find every turn. I think this is the big difference with discard - on one hand, you're losing cards you didn't invest mana in getting, on the other hand, you're losing the ability to make choices and feel in control of your plays that game. Land destruction is similar in that it reduces the choices available to you. Even at the very beginning of an MTG game you make the choice to mulligan or not. When you don't mulligan a hand full of expensive cards you often doom yourself to dying without casting much because you gambled wrong. Land destruction can put you into a similar frustrating state of not having any actual choices to make, without your actions being the reason why you're powerless to play the game. If you compare it to discard, land destruction usually limits your choices far more than discard does - you can still use mana to activate abilities on the battlefield or in the graveyard if you're hellbent in the lategame, and you have a guaranteed card draw every turn. But you don't have a guaranteed mana draw every turn, so you're put into a situation of being dependent on luck to even get access to making choices again. Personally, I think land destruction existing isn't bad, but when it's too cheap it creates non-games. And I think that MTG is a game that is always playing a delicate balancing act with non-games. Having played a lot of YGO, this isn't an exclusive element of MTG's mana system - in YGO you can get fully comboed without opening removal and you pretty much don't get to make choices those games either. Or you can simply not open any of your "starters" that let your deck start really playing the game, and YGO is a game without mulligans, so "bricking" as they call it can be a super miserable experience. In every game they've got to make a decision about how exactly to toe the line of letting people interact without letting people play solitaire, and there's no single answer, I think. Incidentally, in YGO the equivalent BS thing everyone hates is actually discard - there is no land equivalent except cards in hand and the limited number of activations/normal summons per turn, so decks that can Thoughtseize their opponent turn 1 going first are really hated because they can just take your cards you need to start playing the game on your turn. Whenever a targeted discard card gets reasonably good in YGO they usually ban it. (A single untargeted discard once per turn is annoying but considered mostly tolerable as a competitive effect on the other hand) Also, on possibility space: MTG does a good job of having formats with very limited sets of cards you will commonly see. You can memorize every instant speed trick in a Limited set, for instance, and be aware of all the good cheap interactions in a Standard format. You can be aware of everything you're going to lose to when making a play. As the format gets bigger you can still generally kind of predict what's going to happen based on knowing your opponent's decks, but it's tougher. But I think it's a good element of MTG. I love playing Chaos Draft, but one serious weakness of Chaos Draft is that the number of options available to your opponent is literally almost every card in the game. You could get Force of Whatevered even. It's fun if not taken too seriously, but can get really miserable in individual games.
I'm with the thinking of removal and counterspells flip. Counterspells forces your opponent making a choice, you can bait them or whatever. Removal, you just play your cards and EoT your opponent just gets to pick the best thing to kill with maximum information. People get hung up on the 1 out of 100 games where someone countered all their stuff and killed them with a delver or whatever and not the 40 other games where their opponent point and clicked killed all their best threats l.
i think land destruction feels really bad because the mana system already feels bad… like whenever you play magic there’s a significant chance you won’t get to play at all because the land distribution in your deck won’t allow you. land destruction targets players who already thought they were over the initial mana hump and were playing “the real game”.
That's why I really love the approach WotC have taken lately with cards that destroy non-basics but let the affected player search their library for a basic land. You still want to be able to interact with strong non-basics without messing up the resource foundation of the actual game. But a lot of "fair" non-basic hate is on lands for some reason. Give me green creatures that that shut down non-basics. Red spells that destroy and replace etc. For example I really wouldn't mind a red card for two mana that basically said "destroy target non-basic land. It's controller searches their library for a basic land card and puts it into played (tapped). Draw a card." For green, why not have something like a 4 mana 4/4 with "For each player, destroy up to one target non-basic land they control. For each land destroyed this way, it's controller may search their library for a basic land card and put it into play tapped." Bam, easy.
@@Liliana_the_ghost_cat I've still had people concede to a turn two cleansing wildfire, some people cannot handle having their lands interacted with at all, even if you're literally giving them the option to replace it
@@QuietlyHere666 some people are so greedy that they don't play basic lands at all in soms formats. Which is part of the reason why this happens so much too
@@QuietlyHere666that's because they are bad players, and/or bad deck builders. For example, if someone is playing a meta deck that was built around not having to worry about land destruction, then there is a good chance that there are few basics in that deck. So you've effectively wrecked their deck. However, if a player understands how their deck works, even if they didn't build it, and pays attention to their local meta, then changes can be made to the deck to survive a Wildfire or Field of Ruin. I've got a 5C Modern deck that relies heavily on Shocks and Fetches, while.also using ramp spells. Thanks to spells like Path, Field of Ruin, and other similar cards, I needed to make sure that I had one of each basic to be able to combat that. It's amazing what you can do when you actually play the game and don't just copy/paste and go through the motions like so many people.
I've found that Resource Denial exposes the deck building of a player and new players really don't like "checks". Very often new players skimp on vital parts of a deck like lands, card draw, removal, ect. in favor of more threats. So when a newer player runs into a situation they are for all intents unequipped to handle, it can feel really bad. Milling a combo piece or their 1 removal card - feels bad Destroying 6 of their lands when they only have 30 in their 99 card commander deck - feels bad Making them discard their last 2 cards when they don't have ways to accrue more than 1 card a turn - feels bad
I think new players need to be babied into the hobby. When you think of what it takes to get into MTG, I don't think they should be exposed to discard strategies and Land Destruction to start, and that's independent of the Meta or design. New players should play casually, at their level, and as appropriate be exposed to different strategies.
Denying a player's agency is not merely a deck check though, it's breaking the social contract of what you sat down to do together. MtG has too many deck order problems to healthily support mechanics like land destruction.
@@shelby142 Let's say I have a Thought Scour and target my opponent; they mill their 2 best cards and have no recursion in their deck, that's a check and I just denied them resources. Social agreements don't prevent these situations.
@@PensFan96 Milling is generally fine. I meant things like land destruction and discard that can prevent you from meaningfully playing the game entirely.
@@shelby142 this is why the social contract is bad for the game lmfao. New players and drama queens complain that resource denial/stax is bad, WOTC listens, and now we have tons of resource generating powerhouses and little counterplay. All because people think the social contract of their pod is what everyone should follow
I think part of it is because in SC, if your mining is disrupted, you still have choices and options including taking a risk to be greedy and catch back up. Plus, creating units to harass, and the apm to spend on them, is a cost and investment. Tapping two lands is a temporary cost you'll recover next turn and be potentially +1 or +2 resource ahead Most TCGs, especially magic, limit your ability to acquire resources either hard (limited land play per turn, even with ramp) or by draw power. Digimon kind of avoids this because you can draw so many cards that you have hand options and the way memory works, you're never mitigated out of actually playin (the tamer mem setters/gainers helped prevent this problem from continuing). TCGs, if they want to implement resource disruption, need a mechanic or method to play around the disruption or perform a risk to catch up
flavour conveying intuitive info without infodumping is probably one of the most genius and valuable things in a game, be it video, board, tabletop or any type of game. absolutely a hallmark of good games and their design.
The RTS comparison is great, I wish resource destruction was allowed to be a bigger part of card game strategy. Specially in the ones where even control decks are forced to play into the board anyway, like many of the modern ones. I kinda want to try it with Magic cards, and then reworking how land drops and card draw work to make it more granular (something like destroying a land for every 3 creatures that deal combat damage, but having the choice between drawing land or non-land each turn).
As someone who has largely played Mill for the better part of a few decades now. I have gotten a front row seat for these types of interaction. I think Land Destruction, Mill, Discard all have one thing in common. They attack on axes that generally aren't accounted for. Making your deck resilient to these requires you to commit a fair bit of resources and probably makes your deck worse against the way 95% of decks attack you on. To use your example of Bolting the Bird, generally, you are prepared as a player for your bird to get bolted. You likely aren't prepared to see it milled.
Excellent point. I feel like this might be part of why I find decks that use them way less annoying when I am playing best of three because I can sideboard cards for those specific matchups whereas in formats like commander I had no way to know before the game started.
My feeling is that all interaction is needed in the design space and playing the mental games, timing your plays, etc to play around it is what keeps the game interesting and fresh. I love waiting and baiting out a minor threat just to eat a kill or counterspell so I can play the actual threat unmolested. Where it becomes an actual PROBLEM is when that's the entire deck identity. If your opponent's deck is only 36 land destruction or 36 counterspells or 36 wraths, they've basically decided without your input that they were the only ones to get to play magic today. Of course if you knew what was in their deck ahead of time you'd play something different, but it's too late once the game starts. So you just sit there while your opponent says "no, no, no" to every card you draw until their Mirrex makes enough tokens to kill you. The feels bad isn't that you destroyed a land, killed a creature, countered a spell... It's that that's ALL you do, your entire wincon is to just annoy the opponent out of the game.
Personally, I will defend land destruction and say that just because a mechanic *feels bad* doesn't mean it has no place in the game. If we are going to say the designer of the game is trying to tell you a story, then it seems silly to me for us to say that you can only tell stories that make you feel good or powerful. Then again, I liked playing during Mirrodin Besieged and Zendikar, so I'm well aware that I'm a freak. I thought the infect mechanic and phyrexian mana were both fantastic things to play with. That standard and limited enviroment made life feel precious and temporary. I also liked Annihilator on the Eldrazi, as I think few things communicate the vast and nonchalant (cosmicly horrifying) power of those creatures more than them just (in flavor) incidentally crushing a few things in their path on their way to kill you. I also think an underappreciated aspect of these mechanics is the way that it can actually make Magic stronger as a community. You see the same thing in real life in studies of collective memory. Sharing difficult memories often makes people bond more than nostalgia does. We, as a community, remember certain eras of the game, even if we personally were absent, because of us hearing others talk about how bad it was. You see the same thing in Yugioh. For as much as Maxx C and Mystic Mine are hated, coming to hate them is something of a rite of passage. Even if you lack much experience, other players will say that you are officially a yugioh player the first time you complain about Maxx C. To a lesser extent, cards like Ariseheart created the same feeling (which is in flavor, considering how powerful and oppresive the character is in lore). All that said, I think people should learn to embrace that a game will sometimes make you feel bad. All that being said, I wonder if one of the reasons why negates have come to be particularly despised in Yugioh is because, in a way, it chokes out our own resource system, and may feel more like land destruction than like a regular counter. Basically, over the years, there accumulated such a critical mass of cards that cheated the normal summon (which was our equivalent of a land-drop back in the day) that the main way of putting speed limit on the game became the "hard-once-per-turn", which essentially means that you, the player, are forbidden from using the effect again no matter how many copies you can get out (in contrast to the "soft-once-per-turn", which is where the *card* is forbidden from doing it again, even if control of the card switches). But one of the consequences of this is that negating a card that has a hard once per turn, if done at the right time, can effectively end the turn. Even if you had the cards available to summon or tutor another copy of the card, that's it, the resource (the activation) is gone. (There are exceptions where you can activate the card again, but those are infrequent enough that many players misplay into them and use their negations at inopportune times, such as Ash Blossoming a Danger! monster.)
The difference between something like bolt and thoughtsieze is you can play around bolt. You’ve taken the risk of playing the bird when you had the option of playing around it. Whereas thoughtsieze you can’t not have cards in hand on turn one with basically any strategy.
The reason Thoughtseize feels so bad is that the opponent gets to make the decision with perfect information. When an opponent bolts your Bird, many times you didn't really need that bird. It was nice to have but your opponent will often use a removal spell that perhaps they didn't need to use because you have something better to follow it up--or at the least, something just as good. When you get Thoughtseize'd, the opponent gets to take the card that would cause him the most trouble and it often puts a big dent in your gameplan because of that, at least when Thoughtseize works at its best. After a mulligan, it feels REAL bad because a 5 card hand without its best card doesn't beat much. But often when your creatures are removed, the opponent has guessed wrong and used the removal spell too early. Thoughtseize doesn't have that issue--the best time to use it is always immediately.
Theres cards that tax resources and attack cards in hand in a lot of games. I think the issue with these resource denial decks is that people aren't properly utilizing these effects. Like they wind up denying resources just to denying resources and it slows the game down. As opposed to denying your opponents resources to create an opportunity to win the game. Like what's the Difference between an instant speed Armageddon and an instant speed dosan if the person playing them wins almost immediately afterwards because of the protection those cards grant them? Besides dosan being significantly better because it costs 3 and is a creature.
Nobody ever expects the Dingus Egg. I did a land destruction deck built around nuking the board with Armegeddons and Dingus egg to do damage, and the CoP artifacts from antiquities to keep me alive. It was awesome back in 94 or 95, at least for me. Now I want to make a Land-ocrats commander deck around destroying lands for fun and profit.
I've been playing a Phyrexian Obliterator deck with Fight cards, and anytime it hits something big enough that it forces the opponent to destroy their lands, it feels like I've kicked the ladder from under them. A player can lose the rest of the board and it's still a game because they can rebuild pretty easily. When they lose their lands they either are just outpaced for the rest of the game or they just can't play the game anymore.
I think land destruction is a very necessary part of the game and its just another counter to big land ramp that is very prevelent especially to EDH. Everyone is scared to admit that its a vital part in the game. Green players mainly ramp out and then value snowball way harder than any other color and that brings inherent strength to the color. Green players then also gatekeep the only counter to their bullshit strategy by claiming its immoral to run land destruction. It should be normalized to destroy lands, and also WOTC should print more cards that punish land ramping and snowball strategies.
Interesting some of this seems linked to something I saw a some one else looking at recently, which is the issue of 1-drops in MTG and games with a similar resource system. Which comes when your base is one, then a two drop is twice a expensive, but odds are not twice as good, a three-drop is 3 times as expensive and so on. Here that same logic comes in as losing a single land is a big hit unless its really late in the game. MTG can with standard get around just how good 1-drops are from a resources use perspective by keeping them rare and treating 2-drops as the base line meaning each step up is only 50% more expensive than 100% more expensive. But there's no easy answer on how to apply that to MTG's lands. Notably they also mentioned a few Japanese card games have you start with two resource cards (along with a 'all cards can be resources') so you play a resource on your first turn and now 3-drops are your baseline, reining in the issue more. But you can't really slap that on Magic without a lot of reworking of the game.
The worse feeling in magic is a lack of decision trees. If i have the ability to make decisions that could help my chances of winning then at least i can do something. Once im in topdeck mode, woth no creatures in play and only topdeck land after land, that feels horrible.
The big difference of Land Destruction V. Bolting the Bird is player agency and actions. There’s two players who came to play a game. While yes both actions remove a mana source. The Bird was played and then reacted to whereas there is no easy counter play to land destruction or hand disruption.
Another difference between land destruction and say hand destruction is whether or not you can make it up. You could hypothetically topdeck a big draw spell and get back ahead of their discard effects or get a giant creature that they can't deal with since they've been putting their mana to hand control instead of board state. But with land destruction you can only play that 1 land every round, same as the opponent, you're perpetually behind. You can't even topdeck a big game winning comeback card cause you can't afford to play it...That said, I think land destruction (or the threat of) is necessary as new nonbasic lands are crazy if unchecked and I think there is value in making players not 100% sure of their mana availability on any given round.
I feel like the land destruction whining is a self perpetuating meme. If we were ever allowed to actually destroy lands regularly, we'd get used to it. Like counterspells.
@@distractionmakers Price it at 3-4 mana and let there be enough for a standard deck to have about 12 copies of the effect. It'll be *fine*. Soft removing land destruction has removed red-black's old alt-identity as a control deck it feels to me.
To me, land destruction feels bad because it amplifies variance. If I have a flexible hand due to good draws, land hate is likely to not affect me in a meaningful way outside of specific strategies that rely on particularly busted lands. However, because variance is an essential part of magic, every deck has games where you are falling behind solely because your mana isn’t cooperative. Land destruction is most impactful when used to bully decks just for having an unlucky game with regard to mana and that is why I don’t like it.
I think a good example of a format with land destruction, where it can create really unfun games is pauper, with the ponza deck, because players aren’t casting land destruction on turn three, they play a mana accelerant, and cast it earlier than what expectations were set to. And the format doesn’t have enough efficient creatures for you to get back in the game.
Only 7 mins in so maybe you mention this but the only way the most popular form of land destruction in legacy feels fair is bc the opportunity cost of it is so high. It requires very specific deck construction restrictions (3 color decks cannot play it if they have double pipped cards, other color intensive decks have trouble with it) You are losing your own resource generator in an even 1:1 trade You cannot get mana from it the same turn you are blowing up an opps land. This seems to be the “on rate” drawbacks that are required for “free” instant speed resource destruction.
Land destruction that lets you get a basic instead is fine. That is countering some cheaty land or other thing anyways. But land destruction to just take away the mana base? That's an "only I may play the game" kind of strategy and thus an immediate scoop from me.
Would be interested to hear your thoughts on self-sabotaging as a cost. For example, I think it's much more well received to discard your cards or sacrifice your land for big payoffs. Maybe it has to do with cost/damage mitigation? You would only sacrifice a land if it's worth it, while you remember when the opponent hits you at the worst time.
i watched a youtube video about a card game where everybody started with 3 resources instead. In addition to making resource removal feel less bad, it also makes the whole cost structure different. In mtg, you can turn 1 a 1 mana spell, then turn 2 a 2 mana spell or 2 1 mana spells. Then turn 3 you can do 3 one mana spells, a 2 and a 1 or one 3 mana spell. This is why low cost cards are so much better. In that other card game, on turn you play a three drop. One turn 2, you can only play a three drop or a 4 drop. You can't double spell. Same on turn 3. The earliest you can double spell is turn 4, which is an interesting design decision to try to make different mana value cards all matter.
My weekly pod is all "high power". I remember the first time I got Marit Lage'd, it wasn't my last, but it doesn't happen too often. It adds some spice and extra strategy to the game. It can also be used on yourself!
A point that is often missed when discussing land destruction is how it shapes the context of deck construction within an environment. When land destruction is a t1-t2 strategy, it applies a deck building pressure and forces players to incorporate a higher land count in response. Premodern js a great example of this. So the number of "non games" in formats with land destruction tends to be lower than formats like legacy. If you are running 20 lands and relying on cantrips to function as land slots, you will inevitably encounter more non games to a t2 sinkhole or what have you. Land destruction does play into the realm of virtual card economy, though. Players who accelerate more expensive spells tend to do so at card disadvantage. Though the upside of mitigating your opponents ability to deploy spells can create sufficient virtual advantage as to warrant the heavy investment. Virtual card advantage is something wizards has conceptually done away with.
Land Ramp (Green) is nearly untouchable in part because of how poorly MLD is viewed. I have six EDH decks - one of them uses Jokulhaups as a win-con. I would argue having spot land removal is a must.
The bolt the bird scenario your talking about, it doesn't feel as bad because the bird player "asked a question" being do you have an answer for this? And by playing the bolt in response it was answered yes.
I think a big part of what makes interaction feel bad is when there’s a critical mass of it. Having one spell countered feels bad, sure, but it’s just one moment. But what really sucks is when your spells get countered over and over again, and you feel like you basically just can’t even play the game. And I think the hierarchy of what types of interaction feel worst has a lot to do with how many such effects it takes to reach that critical mass and make you feel like you’re not even getting to play. Land destruction is the most frustrating because, in tandem with the risk of mana screw, sometimes it only takes one land destruction spell to get you to that point. Discard is next up, because getting a single card discarded *usually* won’t ruin your gameplan so badly that it creates this feeling, but it might if you’ve had to take a couple mulligans, and getting two or three cards discarded can cause this feeling pretty easily. Next up is counter spells, which it usually takes several of to really lock you out of the game, unless they hit a really pivotal spell to your plan. Lastly, it takes a LOT of on-board removal to lock someone out of the game entirely, so while it can still feel bad, it’s generally the least bad-feeling form of interaction.
I really feel like removal should get inherently more expensive each time you use it. This means winning the game involves carefully removing parts of your opponent's board while making yours better, instead of just playing a deck full of "no" with one win condition.
The first deck I build myself was a red Land destruction deck! The Idea of stoping my oponent from playing was always apealing to me. Sadly It didnt worked well. So the next deck Idea that caught my atention was a Black discard deck. It worked because I had creatures to do damage, but my oponent could still play the game until i menaged to empty his hand, so I wasnt satisfief. Them my third deck was a blue counterspell deck hehe PS: Hearthstone had Counterspell from the begging. A Mage secret that counters the next spell your oponent plays. But It being a secret that automatically triggers ler the oponent play around. Since then Mage got a minion counter secret, and Hunter a spell bounce that is sort of a counter.
Back in uni we always played casual. I used to have a deck with Acidic Slime + Deadeye Navigator. The deck wasn't nearly consistent at all but, it was fun. Always looked at it as a sort of pseudo combo.
The purpose of Sink Hole was originally to overcome some of the problems of playing on-the-draw. Going second back then was much worse because you couldn't develop nearly fast enough. The Play/Draw split was like 60% favoring going first. If they didn't have Fetchlands then land bases wouldn't be so greedy. They need to punish non-basics way more and more ways to punish ramping. If the message is that certain types of interplay are off limits then quite honestly this isn't serious game design.
One of the problems with land destruction is that its effect changes drastically depending on who goes first. Going first is already a big advantage and LD makes it more so. Playing a 2-mana spell and then blowing up a land on the next turn makes it so your opponent can't even cast a 3-mana spell while you will untap to cast a 4-mana spell which will presumably be more powerful than your opponent's 3-mana one. Creature removal doesn't have this same effect, especially now that creatures tend to do something when they enter the battlefield, so a removal spell doesn't negate as much advantage.
I think the best way to interact with opponents lands should be something like enchantments that stop you from tapping it or maybe exile it. Speaking of exile, maybe have a card that suspends a target land for x, so that you can get rid of your opponents resources but only for a limited time
I've got a friend who builds his decks to reach a point where I'm no longer actively playing against him. I'm just waiting for him to finish some massive combo that turns my blood into gasoline and my bones into grenades or whatever. Every now & then, I like to remind him that it's not fun playing a game where you have no agency or input. That's when I pull out my Land Destruction or Sliver Deck. I have a blast, he gets pissy.
That's where you need to learn when to concede. There is literally no reason to keep playing an already lost game. When they have won it's okay to concede.
@@akorthouwer I always hope he'll read my expression of "seriously, dude?" and realize I've stopped having fun, but maybe you're right. I just miss when MTG wasn't so meta.
@@VivaLaDnDLogs reading your expression is not a rule nor is a card, so your friend is not obligated to it. He is having fun, so he is ok. Is YOUR duty to concede, fix your deck with the sidedeck to neutralize your friend. Is your reaponsibilitynto learn about the experience and improve Your deck and your strategy.
Two observations for someone who's been running Budget Boros Land Destruction in Modern for like a year now. 1 - Land destruction generally wins through ephemeral card advantage. Trading one for one for a land accomplishes nothing most of the time, I only gain (and win) when I two-for-one or three-for-one by stranding cards in hand, and those cards are not guaranteed to remain stranded so that ephemeral card advantage can disappear with little warning. 2 - This can lead to incredibly tense and incredibly satisfying games with really good players, and absolute garbage-no-good-very-sad games with players who can't see (or don't play to) their outs. (Also: I've learned to apologize in advance to Tron players because oof.)
The best part about a non-game is that you get to shuffle up and draw 7 new cards. Yes, land destruction can create non-games but also plenty of the time it does nothing and that player loses
In my custom draft set, i decided that I wanted pretty powerful nonbasic lands, and so to facilitate that, i needed answers to those lands. Now i could do what most magic sets do and add a wasteland type colorless land… or i could give each color a way to deal with lands… which was a fun color pie exercise. Red, obviously could destroy any land. Black i decided should be the worst at dealing with non basics, so i made a curse that punished a player for tapping a non basic. Blue can turn a land into an island (which facilitates islandwalk if i wanted that) Green can destroy a nonbasic and refund a basic. White, tho can steal any land… which i think is flavorful
I think a relevant difference between RTS resources and Mana is scaling vs accumulation. I get new resources per turn in magic but "saving up" is a separate mechanism with a weak representation in Magic, If Ive had resources in an RTS for any length of time then theres a real possibility I retain access to some stored resources when they are destroyed, and even if not a single resource point can, in time pay for another or for anything 2 could have paid for. In Magic if you blow up lands you void the card they represent, the land drop or ramp card that played them and remove not just resources but progress. If you blow up land #3 I cannot play 3+ drop cards until I replace it, ive been set back on multiple axes. Depending on the phase of strategy there may not be cost effective or reliable recovery that can save you from good land destruction well cast and what is avaiable is inconsistent and disruptive to most other strategies. Plus what strategy has room to try to eat a lost land or two and expect to get back to an advvantageous position again, especially in colors that can neither counter the destruction nor rapidly draw replacements. I think it has a tendency to be either irrelevant or the only relevant thing because of how magic distributes basic resources.
I'm glad u corrected him on the Drone vs Zergling thing :P I was about to hop in the comments to do it myself 😹😹😹 I'm constantly having to remind myself about how my playgroup feels about the interactions in game cuz I don't get salty over play styles, I might taste a li'l salt of player choices but usually I understand those choices n don't take it personally even if it does feel bad for a moment. But I recognize that I'm the outlier n that most people don't like ctrl for those very reasons. But playing against Ponza n UB Ctrl made me into a better player n it kinda sux that people take it so personally. The only thing I think makes sense to feel salty about is when a deck seemingly does nothing in a multiplayer game n then has a combo turn that wins on the spot with li'l to no interaction, but as I said, that's in multiplayer cuz it is the fact they use the politics to trick people, it isn't their deck that won, it was their poker face. Had a "friend" who pretty much only played those kinds of decks (Eldrazi Ramp, Kamigawa Handsize Matters, etc) n it got to the point where at our tables there were always three 1v1 fights going on. 1 of my brothers would target that "friend" cuz he hated those do nothing til u win decks, meanwhile another brother would always target me cuz he knew my decks get exponentially stronger as the game goes, n another brother would always try to convince the table to target a friend of ours cuz he recognized him as the best deck builder n usually the biggest threat at the table (I had strong decks but also played some real jank). N eventually those games started feeling a bit boring.
In lorcana discard is also a big part of the game, and sure you can both not interact with the other player, but that is true I guess of many games, because lorcana definatly has removal, treat of removal in challenger cards, discard, etc.
I think the biggest difference between counterspells and kill spells is that counterspells work on everything (assuming the counter doesn't have some stipulation such as "noncreature spell") while removal spells are usually more limited and can only affect something after it's hit the board. The key here is *after it hits the board*. When a card's built-in protection, or protection granted from another permanent, kicks in. If i play a creature with indestructible or hexproof, that creature simply cannot be killed by anything less than an exile or board wipe, respectively. Exile spells are much less common and tend to be more expensive than destroy spells and board wipes hurt everyone, including my opponent. Counterspells simply ignore these valuable and powerful keywords, and stop me from putting a creature under the protection of my Avacyn, Angel of Hope or Privileged Position. As mentioned in the video, counterspells also remove any value you'd get from ETB effects, which kill spells cannot do. Counterspells are also almost exclusively blue and the only way to defend against a counterspell is by cards that say they can't be countered (which are few in number) or playing a counterspell of your own. While it's possible to play cards that say "Your spells can't be countered" or some similar effect, these spells themselves can be countered and therefore are not very helpful against a player using counterspells. This means that counterspells are cheap, versatile, and can only be interacted with by counterspells, forcing you to play blue if you want to defend against them. Needing to play a something to beat that something screams bad game design to me. I think counterspells would be much more fair and balanced if the general ones that have no stipulations were either more expensive, less common, or both and the majority of counterspells could only hit specific card types. But this is a mechanic that's been unhindered for decades and at this point there are too many general counterspells to reasonably change course.
Counterspells however suffer from a timing restriction. You have to hold it and wait until the spell is cast. You may say or think that it isn't relevant, but it is. Counters can't rip the card out of your hand before you have a chance to cast it like discard or mill does. Unlike removal, drawing the counter after the fact is also a dead card scenario, whereas a Doom Blade off the top of the deck may still save you from a threat. Counters in modern magic are in a generally healthy state (it is WotCs fault that original Counterspell is back in modern, they originally wanted Cancel to be the baseline, they power crept their format to the point that og Counterspell needs to be a part of that format now) as many are limited application or conditional, such as Negate, Spell Pierce, or Stubborn Denial.
The meanest and most unfair land destruction effect I've ever seen MTG print is Modern Horizon's "Break the Ice". Destroy a snow land for BB, or overload it for BB and 4 generic to blow up all snow lands. This is targeted hate if I've ever seen it.
I dunno... I think there needs to be an answer for land mana ramp. Currently land destruction manages to do that. I've let go of my hatred for land destruction because of my hatred for land ramp is stronger when I'm of playing against someone with tons land ramp and I'm effectively locked out from doing anything effective by turn 3.
i would absolutely play a card game that focuses on 'antigame' strategies like land destruction, counterspells, removal etc. make every board progression card be a huge impact hitter to balance it out and bigger resource pools to not be too punishing to play. make it devs
Star Realms uses resource destruction well. You can see what the opponent's going for as you're both building your decks and have a chance to react to it, rather than spending hours building your deck out of game only to be no-sold by that one card.
Urzas sylex is a great card though, i do like the potential to go down a rule setting route in white for maximum amounts of lands which would be excellent against some of the rampy strategies.
The problem isn’t Land Destruction. The problem is Land Destruction In Commander. A 1vs1 game might take 10 minutes. If you get Land destructed you can just concede after afew turns. Shuffle up for the next game, maybe swap decks. No problem. But when 1 game takes 90 minutes, being Land Destructed out of the game Really Hurts.
the problem with land destruction is that you can usually only play one land per turn. it'd be easy enough to play around it if you could play as many lands as you had in your hand, but that would be problematic for other reasons.
What I missed in this debate is that most of the time a player wins is if they spent the most mana (or cheated the most mana). If you stop printing interaction of that mana source should land ramp be a option in the game then? I think that MLD for being ahead of mana (maybe if a opponent controls 2 or more additional lands then you something happens. And don't just put them equal put them back 1 land. Having that much mana did some damage at that point. maybe a clause like the new Jace (cant cast it turn 1 and 2).
Former semi-pro SC:II player here and I feel the analogy went off the rails. You don't need to destroy all the workers or even close to it to achieve decisive results. Being at 14 workers when your opponent is at 18 can mean it is gg. Day9 had a great thing on that about how much value 100 minerals is and how utterly massive that is, particularly early game. The compounding effect is hard to overstate and being a few workers behind early will cement your defeat unless you find a way to even things out quickly and/or massively outplay them in the mid to late game. The reason why it doesn't feel so bad is because of something that MTG just doesn't really have: the attention economy. You have to invest a lot of effort in good early game harass and micro. For a lot of players, and I mean pretty much everyone that was under masters, that would often mean idle time, getting supply capped, or not following through on the next phase of your plan like getting your expansion down or moving up the tech tree. Someone who pulls off good harass and gets two workers while not having those issues is someone who is reeeeally good. You might be able to come back from getting behind but good players punish those gaps. Even so, it's a loss that feels earned because ultimately they outplayed you in micro and macro. They made fewer mistakes than you did and there were things you could have done better to counteract their strategy. Land destruction on the other hand...where is that skill expression? It just deletes resources because you drew the right card.
At the competitive level legacy mtg the things you’re saying exist. I agree that you notice land destruction more in mtg. But playing around wasteland is pretty similar to what you’re describing as skill expression in SC2 it’s just less obvious.
@@distractionmakers Thanks for the reply! I don't mean to imply MTG lacks skill of course, but as with the nature of cards sometimes you lack the ability to meaningfully counter things (like the turn 2 destruction mentioned in the video). Tools exist but there's no guarantee you have them present in your hand. You always have the tools to counter harass and if you do it well it can put you ahead. It's annoying as all heck but feels fair because you always could have stopped it. Scout better, be less greedy, micro better, punish better, etc. Plus harass is only good if they're teching/macroing while doing it which plays into that all important attention economy, something MTG doesn't really have (imagine a version of MTG where APM matters!). That's not a fault of the game of course, just different strokes. As someone fascinated with game design and has dabbled a bit on indie stuff, it is interesting how similar effects (resource generation rate destruction) can be viewed wildly differently between games and genres. It really is an art as much as a science in getting the "feel" right and even how a culture and norms around things can develop. I always joke with friends in the design world that something can be balanced and miserable. The power being appropriate is important but isn't the only thing even in competitive games. A pleasant surprise to get a response and keep up the good work! Cheers!
IMO the phasing out (and social "ban" in commander) of land destruction has hurt magic more than it helped .. same with blood moon type effects ... a lot of coulour soup decks run extremely greedy mana-bases and in commander green is the most dominant colour because it can landramp. I can't realy articulate why ^^ but no LD for basics and at most effects that replace non-basics with basics just empowers any kind of ramp deck a bit too much .. and while it's a bit "feels bad" when your lands get destroyed there are so many lower to the ground strategies that would benefit from more LD and it normalised, that land are sacred .. I can understand it from a design perspective, there's a lot you can design for 5+cmc, so stone rain, that could potentialy limit a game to 2-4 lands restricts that.. however with todays spells the game is already limited to 3-6 turns in all non-commander formats so it might be interesting to open up the possibility of interacting with lands again .. maybe be able to put stun counters on lands or send them back to hand .. I just don't like this whole don't touch lands mentality in magic design
Doubling lifetotals from 20 to 40 and adding 2 opponents turns ramp from a strategy that gets you killed on turn 3 to one that gives you inevitability. Green is an overpowered combo enabler when it has the time to set up, because of the official rules of commander they usually have that, the unofficial rules and modern card design also protect this strategy. I agree, nerfing land destruction has made green a commander powerhouse color.
Yeah, I'd also like to see aggro decks get some kind of mana-denial, to fight back against the control deck's turn 4 wrath in an interesting way. I think land stun might do the trick, without feeling so bad
I think that only really applies to Armageddon effects. Single target land destruction is really bad against ramp decks, it's like single target removal against token decks.
@@Red_Mag3 Definitely agree with that. Friend of mine plays Keldon Firebombers in his Raksos deck, it's a cool card. I could see a white "Each player sacrifices half their lands" sort of card working.
Regarding your discussion on the bolting the bird vs thoughtsiezing the bird, I think a big part of the feels bad is also related to the information I have told my opponent. When I play the bird and it gets lightning bolted, that's totally reasonable. My opponent knows 100% that I have the bird, and I know he knows because I'm the one who told him. When my opponent casts thoughtsieze turn one and grabs the bird, he didn't know I had that bird in hand. He might have guessed that I'd keep a hand with the bird, but it is still a guess. There's a real chance I decided to keep a hand because it just had four lands, I know I need to play a lot of them, and the other cards all aren't great thoughtsieze targets. So if my opponent turn 1 thoughtsiezes and gets something good, it feels like he just got lucky, or worse, I'm being punished because I got lucky drawing something good. Meanwhile hitting something with removal doesn't feel like it was luck, it's all down to my opponent's good or bad judgement to use the card when he did.
I think you're close here, but my explanation is that when you are discarding a card to thoughtseize it is usually the best card in your hand whereas bolt might not be usable against the other cards. This means the circumstances where the birds of paradise are the target of thoughsieze are when they are key to you hand (low mana hands, you need colored mana to cast another card, only creature to hold a sword, etc). Ironically it's bolting the bird in those scenarios that is luck, as you have no way of knowing that killing BoP will derail your opponents strategy.
@@Nomad6763 Losing the best card in your hand is a really good point that I hadn't considered, but you're right, absolutely does play into it. Regarding the luck, despite my claim, I think both of them are ultimately an expression of luck. Having bolt or thoughtseize in the first place is a matter of luck. It throwing you off course is also a matter of luck (even in the case of thoughtseize, you might just draw another bird or other solution off the top). The difference, and why I think thoughtseize FEELS more like it's luck on your opponent's part, is that level of knowledge you've given them. You don't know that bolting the bird will derail my strategy, but everything I have done suggests it might. In the case of thoughtseize (early in the game, obviously mid-game this changes), the information my opponent uses to know if they'll throw off my plan is all information they've gained from their card.
Also the level of agency involved. If I play a creature that comes with the expectation that if they have removal it will hit it and if I suspect they have said removal I can wait until they are tapped out or play something to bate the removal or take the risk. On the other hand there is basically no decision I could make which would save my card from a T1 thoughtsieze.
The interesting about the BoP situation is that getting it Thoughtseized from you is better for you than having it bolted. You've saved the mana, you're up 2 more life than your opponent. But it does feel much worse in practice.
This made me realize that there's some potentially great design space that wotc hasn't been using that can mitigate the feelsbads of land destruction. The main difference between Cry or Contrition and Thoughtseize is that, because of "who makes the choice", they have different effects in practice: Cry will always discard your opponent's worst card, while Thoughtseize gets their best one. Why don't they do that with land destruction? It would feel a lot less bad if I was forced to sac a land vs have one get destroyed, because then I get to pick the least bad land to lose based on my cards still in hand. If it was 2 mana (since wotc seems to value "sacrifice" as 1 mana cheaper than an equivalent "destroy"), it could make for some interesting metagame choices. Imagine being on the draw, and choosing to play a worse land on t1 because your opponent might blast it on their t2. And this can be combined with the other parameters already in other land destruction. Imagine spells like "Sac a non basic land", "Sac a land and take some damage", etc.
@@Ninjamanhammer Yeah, but letting players choose gives them some agency. The feelsbad is already irrational. Giving them some control over the process lets them come to terms with it.
@@shorewall Except it doesn't. You're still down a land, and getting to choose the color doesn't change that. It runs into the even bigger problem of only working when you're all in on land destruction, since it can't be used to snipe utility lands, which is the healthiest application of land destruction.
Destroy target creature is useful in basically every matchup whether you use it to take out a small creature with utility or a bigger threat whereas destroy all enchantments is pretty irrelevant in most games but almost guarantees a win against specific decks. Magic is at its best when all players are asking questions of each other "do you have an answer for this and if so what" and it gets unfun when the answer is always the same (either no or yes I counter it) or one player cant ask (because they have no cards in hand or no mana)
The one kind of land destruction I regard fondly is Armageddon, as someone who played cheap white creature decks back in the day. It's a way to lock the board state down & keep things smaller-scale.
@@solbradguy7628 It's generally the opposite. Armageddon wins the game if it goes through. Stone Rain is death by a thousand cuts. It's worse to lose over 40 minutes of watching your opponent playing solitaire than for your opponent to outplay you and you lose within a minute or two.
@@solbradguy7628 Armageddon locks all the exits while the current board state slugs it out. Degenerate? Certainly, what part of "cheap white creature deck" was unclear? 😁
When you have your thing killed/countered doesn't just feels worse than having it discarded, it is objectively worse, because you spent resources to get it played; like mana, land drop and so on and so forth.
Land destruction in different formats feel different, and one-for-one vs mass land destruction is allso a discussion on itself. A green commander deck can ramp super fast, so it turns unhealthy when nobody have good counter plays
what if you had land delay instead of destruction? "can't untap target land for x turns" or "return target land to their hand" would more of those cards also carry the same cons as land destruction entirely or would it be more positive since it only breaks tempo?
The ability to bounce lands was removed from bounce spells for the same reason land destruction is printed less. Keeping a land from untapping was tried during SOI, I don't recall their reasoning for discontinuing it.
Do we feel like cards like tarbernacle but for lands 2 cmc artifact if a land enters the battlefield at the beggining of next upkeep its owner pays 1 or it taps. Or 3 cmc artifact X1, tap: the next time opponent taps x target lands for mana that land gains "pay 1 to untap this land"?
People who complain about land destruction are typically new players who don't quite understand why its important. Sure it allows for some non games but it also prevents lands from just being an overpowered card type. Fighting ancient tombs and dark depths without wastelands feels awful
I think land destruction works best when it’s fighting against 2 specific things: 1. A specific problem land as you mentioned above. 2. A ramp player accelerating beyond their opponents. The problem with the old school land destruction spells is that they didn’t just punish those two things, they punished you for playing lands in general. I think more recent land destruction designs have really honed in on the “good” use cases a lot better: 1. Single target land destruction generally replaces the destroyed land with a basic. 2. Mass land destruction sets everyone to ~5 lands instead of 0 lands.
I wouldn't say new players just more casual players in general. I see commander players all the time that just don't like land destruction. "Period. End of discussion."
@@TheNewRidore I think that's a skill issue, those people purposely stay bad at the game because they improvement as taking it too serious. Those are the worst players
Land destruction is a great mechanic IMO. I understand why newer players get frustrated by it, but as you play longer you get to understand the game at a much more intricate level which is where this mechanic is great. Strip Mine and Armageddon are the only two cards that are too pushed in that sphere, in my opinion.
that's actually a pretty interesting idea. it may screw you in the first few rounds, but you can also outgrow it in a turn or two with little issue. at least in the case of a deck with only one or two colors. the more colors you use the more this could screw you. it'd really stress a deck's ability to mana fix, but there are things you could use to work around it still.
Blood Moon is a card that turns your nonbasic lands into Mountains and I will confirm that it feels miserable to play against. Very nearly as bad as land destruction.
I have a near 45% land ratio for a lot of my decks, so I actually feel more upset about discard than I do about land destruction (though I do get surprised when it comes up)
Also counterspells are very relevant to that feels bad emotion, where they feel worse than removal yet the reactive player has to sacrifice even more to leave that window of opportunity open to counter, verse removal leaving it up to the caster to remove whenever they want
A good question is at what mana cost does land destruction feel okay? Is 4 mana to destroy a land okay? What about 3 mana to destroy a non basic land (lower cost, more narrow application) or turn a basic land into a waste? Edit: a side note, giving red the ability to destroy lands is fairly thematic. Red as a color tends to have an advantage early game. Land destruction serves as a way to extend the “early game”.
Good points. I think the big issue is that land destruction feeling ok is entirely contextual. If it’s your first land it’s going to feel much worse than your tenth.
@@distractionmakers Indeed, hence why the cost of such spells is important. If the spell costs 3 or 4 mana, then the odds of destroying your opponent first land is highly unlikely. If that is the case, then they were probably going to have a rough game either way.
To me, you can either have a game with super powerful non-basic lands and also land destruction, or you can have a game with mostly basics and weak non-basics and no land destruction. But you really can't (or at least you shouldn't) have a game with powerful lands and no land destruction. If you are gonna push powerful lands you have to give players an avenue to attack them
I think possibly the only feeling worse than land destruction in Magic is fatesealing. It's an play pattern that cuts off not only one option but future options as well, much like land destruction but taken even a step further because your opponent has the first pick of even letting you draw the card. One thing I think I've noticed is that discard seems to be a little bit more aggressively costed these days, but I also see less discard at random. Attacking cards in hand, my first thought is deep-cavern bat, and that does, but only in a temporary way. If the player must discard to something like Liliana, they can still retain agency in choice of card to discard, which can let them get the most out of an unfavorable interaction.
Both Fatesealing and Land Destruction target something that you normally only do once a turn. You normally only draw one card a turn, and you normally only play one land a turn. So messing with that hurts more than messing with a creature or spell, that you could still do something else if you have enough mana.
I think land destruction creatures like Obsidian Charmaw are fine. It advances the end of the game without completely locking out your opponent since it only hits non basics. I played acidic slime in standard and that one was more of a problem child since I could clone it each turn and stop my opponent from actually playing the game.
Would wonder how much of the feel bad is due to the potential repeated nature of the interaction. Land destruction as a once-off is not nearly as bad as a ponza deck where they have many land destruction spells. The same is true of discard, counters, and creature removal. Its not about the 1-for-1, its about the feeling that you'll never play a land that doesn't get destroyed / creature that doesn't get killed instantly / you'll never resolve another spell. The answer here is to have pressure relief valves in the form of weaker creatures that resistant to specific removal, un-counterable spells, and indestructible lands. Allow players to make deck building decisions to defeat single-axis interaction strategies.
Bolt the bird? It's the year of our lord 2024. We are done bolting birds. Foundations is upon us. It is the dawning of a new age. Let the stabbing of the Llanowar Elves begin!
It probably also helps that in legacy you have "alternate land" options with the moxes and lotus. But yeah, if you have no way of generating mana for 0 cost, then land destruction just locks people out of a game. I may as well just pick up my cards and leave because there's literally no options open to me. As to the interaction question (because it's very important to our game) - I believe the real question is "what can the opponent do?" Creatures "feel" like a good interaction, because I will probably be playing creatures too and then i can use my creatures to defend against your creatures. Land destruction? Ok, what am I supposed to do about that? Pretty much the only interaction options I have are counterspells or some kind of "land protection" spells (which are very few). But basically it's not something I probably have in my deck. Basically can a player do something about the interaction without foreknowing the opponent is going to use that strategy? If it requires very specific, very narrow counter-plays that you would almost never bother including otherwise in your deck, that's a interaction. (If games have a "Queen" problem, what should we call this? the "spy" problem?)
Great points. I agree this needs a name spy problem might be it. Making sure there are multiple vectors of interaction is very important. It seems like nearly all negative play patterns exist in this space and the tension of wanting to win vs having a good time is always present. Magic technically could exist as a game that is all creatures and that would ensure there is always a means of interaction.
@@distractionmakers Yeah, it's a big thing of consideration in our game - if we give a strategy the ability to do ___ how do other strategies handle it? Is there a general way to do it in the rules, or do you have to stock exact counter cards? It's a challenge I freely admit for designers. Energy is another example. You can build a magic deck around energy, and there's nothing your opponents can really do about it save interact with the pieces utilizing energy.
@@distractionmakers This also explains the lightning bolt riddle too IMHO. Bolting the bird conceptually feels the same as thoughtsiezing it - but I am more likely to have other things in my deck that could save the bird from a lightning bolt (flickering, hexproofing, pumping toughness) than I am to save it from a thoughtsieze. Hence why one feels worse than the other. "If only I had my..." gives you some measure of hope against it vs "well there was nothing I could do about it."
Everything feels bad when you're losing or you're behind. If someone is doing busted amounts of card draw or busted amounts of ramp or using some kind of land combo, then discard and land destruction feel justified and fair. Green, Green/Blue, Green/Red, and Red all have aggro/ramp decks that need to be cut down to size sooner or later. The game needs to be more than Red/Green mirrors even if the other strategies "feel bad" sometimes.
Land destruction feels bad in Commander but it's just a part of the game in Legacy. But in general you have a whole different mindset and level of focus when playing legacy as opposed to commander.
The only acceptable land destruction in MTG are ones that allow the player to replace the destroyed land with basics. This allows players to deal with problematic lands like Nykthos, World Tree, or Thesbian Stage while allow the player who lost the land to still retain some access to mana. Dragon Ball Super used to have interactions for destroying energy (cards in DBS can be turned into "lands" to pay for costs, solves the problem of mana consistency). This destruction was generally on the condition that your opponent had to either be ahead on energy or if your opponent used an effect to place energy. Bandai over time decided to ban out these cards as they also banned the generic ramp cards so that they can have more breathing room for card design. An example of this is the Blue Boujack Brigade archetype which uses the energy as a means of playing their characters for reduced costs and the leader and cards have various effects to replace the energy that leaves so that the Boujack player can stay on curve.
Thoughtseize is actually mana disadvantage as you pay one and they pay none! In practise though you can get mana advantage in addition to strategic advantage, by discarding their only play from some turn if they end up doing nothing with their mana, thus wasting it. Thoughtseize is very powerful, though only as long as they have cards worth taking in their hand!
As an avid green player/mana dork enjoyer, I was about to disagree with you about having a bird bolted feeling worse than having it discarded, but then I realized I actually agree that it feels worse being discarded in a lot of cases, but not for the reason(s) you mentioned. The thing about having a specific card discarded from your hand vs killed from the battlefield is that the hand is generally considered to be a safe place, whereas when you place it on the battlefield you intuitively understand you're putting the card in danger. Whenever I play a bird, I can brace for the bolt to happen, but if i say play a llanowar elf instead of the bird in order to potentially bait a bolt, but they go for thoughtseize instead, well you feel punished when you felt you were making the more disciplined or smart play.
All forms of game play need a counter for the sake of balancing. If resource ramping is available, resource denial needs to be available as well.
I dont have an issue with land destruction but there are other ways to stop ramp. There are a series of effect that make mana of spells cost more, there are untap limiters, cards that when a second land is played a land is bounced back to hand, you can counter the ramp, rocks and creatures that produce mana are easy to remove. creatures have the most removal options and artifacts are second most removal options.
But if land destruction was still a part of design space, then Arcum's Astrolabe wouldn't have needed to be banned. The modern meta focused so much on nonbasic hate that Astrolabe ran rampant while doing the job that nonbasics were doing. So everyone needed to either start playing Ponza or main deck a ton of artifact hate. If Ponza style options were more available, then people would've had better ways to deal with that mana advantage n wouldn't have felt like the villain in every game they play that isn't against an Astrolabe deck.
Only if land ramp and destruction isn't color limited.
@@FAILG0AT Cost increasers and untap limiters can be removed, allow your opponent to break the lockdown effects. Mass Land Destruction is very hard to come back from and very few are prepared to deal with it. I love it.
@@retropeoplegaming2740 this is true but stax pieces are generally enchantments which are hard to remove or artifacts which are easy to recur. While an Armageddon effects are one offs or can be countered. I would counter an Armageddon almost every time but i may not counter a stax piece at the same rate. Also there are mass land reanimation spells or mass land protection effects. I dont know any mass land exile effects that would get around that protection.
I really like land destruction when it only targets nonbasic lands and it allows you to replace the destroyed land with a basic land or have a very cheap land destruction that destroys a non basic but puts two basics into play because I want "greedy" players who completely or almost completely omit basics to be able to be punished.
It is a very important strategy to keep greedy mana bases in check.
When I was new at this game I used to wonder why Blue was even a thing.
And then I learned to play around an opponent with 2 blue mana available.
I think that the "feels bad" of any of these interactions is more than just the feeling of powerlessness. The importance of unsatisfied expectations is equally important. If you've made a choice and committed resources to playing something then you're probably already thinking about what the game state is going to be like from here on out. The next turn or series of turns where you've progressed your gameplan and increased your possibility space as a result of the fact that this card has resolved is becoming a reality for you. When someone says NOPE then you're now having to grieve the loss of not just the card but the game as it was supposed to be.
One way to make messing with lands feel fair is to pause lands. Maybe give them a stun counter. Counter can be removed so it feels interactive and they disappear on their own.
I like this idea.
This was my thought as well, but apparently when they tried something like this back in Eldritch Moon with Stensia Innkeeper, it wasn't very well received, according to MaRo on Blogatog. It's really unfortunate and I hope they try it again one day.
Interesting, it depends on how the card is worded because it sounds like it could almost act like a time walk.
@@distractionmakers its a variation of Rishadan port.
@@richardalan5064 maybe it can also be flavorful if done in a new Snow set. Like call the mechanic “freeze”. Like freeze a land by placing an ice counter. At the beginning of their end step they may remove an ice counter from each of their permanents. Maybe a whole deck can be designed this way to freeze even creatures and enchantments/artifacts. The rule can say the card looses all types and abilities? Maybe this won’t be a rules issue. I haven’t checked that yet.
I think what happens with land destruction is, if you have no room to make choices, a game isn't much of a game at all. Land destruction directly takes away choices before you make them, whereas removal takes away choices after you make them. It's technically true you don't always have a choice - bolting the bird for instance is probably the follow-up to you casting the only spell you could cast in some formats. But getting to untap, look at the cards in your hand, and pick one means you've executed a plan to at least some degree. Compare that to, I don't know, Hymn to Tourach - suddenly you can lose half the cards in your hand you were thinking about ways to play and you might just be forced to cast the one spell you can find every turn. I think this is the big difference with discard - on one hand, you're losing cards you didn't invest mana in getting, on the other hand, you're losing the ability to make choices and feel in control of your plays that game.
Land destruction is similar in that it reduces the choices available to you. Even at the very beginning of an MTG game you make the choice to mulligan or not. When you don't mulligan a hand full of expensive cards you often doom yourself to dying without casting much because you gambled wrong. Land destruction can put you into a similar frustrating state of not having any actual choices to make, without your actions being the reason why you're powerless to play the game. If you compare it to discard, land destruction usually limits your choices far more than discard does - you can still use mana to activate abilities on the battlefield or in the graveyard if you're hellbent in the lategame, and you have a guaranteed card draw every turn. But you don't have a guaranteed mana draw every turn, so you're put into a situation of being dependent on luck to even get access to making choices again.
Personally, I think land destruction existing isn't bad, but when it's too cheap it creates non-games. And I think that MTG is a game that is always playing a delicate balancing act with non-games. Having played a lot of YGO, this isn't an exclusive element of MTG's mana system - in YGO you can get fully comboed without opening removal and you pretty much don't get to make choices those games either. Or you can simply not open any of your "starters" that let your deck start really playing the game, and YGO is a game without mulligans, so "bricking" as they call it can be a super miserable experience. In every game they've got to make a decision about how exactly to toe the line of letting people interact without letting people play solitaire, and there's no single answer, I think. Incidentally, in YGO the equivalent BS thing everyone hates is actually discard - there is no land equivalent except cards in hand and the limited number of activations/normal summons per turn, so decks that can Thoughtseize their opponent turn 1 going first are really hated because they can just take your cards you need to start playing the game on your turn. Whenever a targeted discard card gets reasonably good in YGO they usually ban it. (A single untargeted discard once per turn is annoying but considered mostly tolerable as a competitive effect on the other hand)
Also, on possibility space: MTG does a good job of having formats with very limited sets of cards you will commonly see. You can memorize every instant speed trick in a Limited set, for instance, and be aware of all the good cheap interactions in a Standard format. You can be aware of everything you're going to lose to when making a play. As the format gets bigger you can still generally kind of predict what's going to happen based on knowing your opponent's decks, but it's tougher. But I think it's a good element of MTG. I love playing Chaos Draft, but one serious weakness of Chaos Draft is that the number of options available to your opponent is literally almost every card in the game. You could get Force of Whatevered even. It's fun if not taken too seriously, but can get really miserable in individual games.
Lands are the most powerful cards on the battlefield. The idea that they shouldn't be targeted is absurd.
I'm with the thinking of removal and counterspells flip. Counterspells forces your opponent making a choice, you can bait them or whatever. Removal, you just play your cards and EoT your opponent just gets to pick the best thing to kill with maximum information. People get hung up on the 1 out of 100 games where someone countered all their stuff and killed them with a delver or whatever and not the 40 other games where their opponent point and clicked killed all their best threats l.
i think land destruction feels really bad because the mana system already feels bad… like whenever you play magic there’s a significant chance you won’t get to play at all because the land distribution in your deck won’t allow you. land destruction targets players who already thought they were over the initial mana hump and were playing “the real game”.
That's why I really love the approach WotC have taken lately with cards that destroy non-basics but let the affected player search their library for a basic land. You still want to be able to interact with strong non-basics without messing up the resource foundation of the actual game. But a lot of "fair" non-basic hate is on lands for some reason. Give me green creatures that that shut down non-basics. Red spells that destroy and replace etc.
For example I really wouldn't mind a red card for two mana that basically said "destroy target non-basic land. It's controller searches their library for a basic land card and puts it into played (tapped). Draw a card."
For green, why not have something like a 4 mana 4/4 with "For each player, destroy up to one target non-basic land they control. For each land destroyed this way, it's controller may search their library for a basic land card and put it into play tapped." Bam, easy.
@@PaulSzkibikthere's actually already a 2 mana red card that does that. Was that intentional on your part?
@@Liliana_the_ghost_cat I've still had people concede to a turn two cleansing wildfire, some people cannot handle having their lands interacted with at all, even if you're literally giving them the option to replace it
@@QuietlyHere666 some people are so greedy that they don't play basic lands at all in soms formats. Which is part of the reason why this happens so much too
@@QuietlyHere666that's because they are bad players, and/or bad deck builders. For example, if someone is playing a meta deck that was built around not having to worry about land destruction, then there is a good chance that there are few basics in that deck. So you've effectively wrecked their deck.
However, if a player understands how their deck works, even if they didn't build it, and pays attention to their local meta, then changes can be made to the deck to survive a Wildfire or Field of Ruin. I've got a 5C Modern deck that relies heavily on Shocks and Fetches, while.also using ramp spells. Thanks to spells like Path, Field of Ruin, and other similar cards, I needed to make sure that I had one of each basic to be able to combat that. It's amazing what you can do when you actually play the game and don't just copy/paste and go through the motions like so many people.
I've found that Resource Denial exposes the deck building of a player and new players really don't like "checks".
Very often new players skimp on vital parts of a deck like lands, card draw, removal, ect. in favor of more threats.
So when a newer player runs into a situation they are for all intents unequipped to handle, it can feel really bad.
Milling a combo piece or their 1 removal card - feels bad
Destroying 6 of their lands when they only have 30 in their 99 card commander deck - feels bad
Making them discard their last 2 cards when they don't have ways to accrue more than 1 card a turn - feels bad
I think new players need to be babied into the hobby. When you think of what it takes to get into MTG, I don't think they should be exposed to discard strategies and Land Destruction to start, and that's independent of the Meta or design.
New players should play casually, at their level, and as appropriate be exposed to different strategies.
Denying a player's agency is not merely a deck check though, it's breaking the social contract of what you sat down to do together. MtG has too many deck order problems to healthily support mechanics like land destruction.
@@shelby142 Let's say I have a Thought Scour and target my opponent; they mill their 2 best cards and have no recursion in their deck, that's a check and I just denied them resources.
Social agreements don't prevent these situations.
@@PensFan96 Milling is generally fine. I meant things like land destruction and discard that can prevent you from meaningfully playing the game entirely.
@@shelby142 this is why the social contract is bad for the game lmfao. New players and drama queens complain that resource denial/stax is bad, WOTC listens, and now we have tons of resource generating powerhouses and little counterplay. All because people think the social contract of their pod is what everyone should follow
I think part of it is because in SC, if your mining is disrupted, you still have choices and options including taking a risk to be greedy and catch back up. Plus, creating units to harass, and the apm to spend on them, is a cost and investment. Tapping two lands is a temporary cost you'll recover next turn and be potentially +1 or +2 resource ahead
Most TCGs, especially magic, limit your ability to acquire resources either hard (limited land play per turn, even with ramp) or by draw power. Digimon kind of avoids this because you can draw so many cards that you have hand options and the way memory works, you're never mitigated out of actually playin (the tamer mem setters/gainers helped prevent this problem from continuing).
TCGs, if they want to implement resource disruption, need a mechanic or method to play around the disruption or perform a risk to catch up
flavour conveying intuitive info without infodumping is probably one of the most genius and valuable things in a game, be it video, board, tabletop or any type of game.
absolutely a hallmark of good games and their design.
The RTS comparison is great, I wish resource destruction was allowed to be a bigger part of card game strategy. Specially in the ones where even control decks are forced to play into the board anyway, like many of the modern ones. I kinda want to try it with Magic cards, and then reworking how land drops and card draw work to make it more granular (something like destroying a land for every 3 creatures that deal combat damage, but having the choice between drawing land or non-land each turn).
As someone who has largely played Mill for the better part of a few decades now. I have gotten a front row seat for these types of interaction. I think Land Destruction, Mill, Discard all have one thing in common. They attack on axes that generally aren't accounted for. Making your deck resilient to these requires you to commit a fair bit of resources and probably makes your deck worse against the way 95% of decks attack you on.
To use your example of Bolting the Bird, generally, you are prepared as a player for your bird to get bolted. You likely aren't prepared to see it milled.
Excellent point. I feel like this might be part of why I find decks that use them way less annoying when I am playing best of three because I can sideboard cards for those specific matchups whereas in formats like commander I had no way to know before the game started.
My feeling is that all interaction is needed in the design space and playing the mental games, timing your plays, etc to play around it is what keeps the game interesting and fresh. I love waiting and baiting out a minor threat just to eat a kill or counterspell so I can play the actual threat unmolested.
Where it becomes an actual PROBLEM is when that's the entire deck identity. If your opponent's deck is only 36 land destruction or 36 counterspells or 36 wraths, they've basically decided without your input that they were the only ones to get to play magic today. Of course if you knew what was in their deck ahead of time you'd play something different, but it's too late once the game starts. So you just sit there while your opponent says "no, no, no" to every card you draw until their Mirrex makes enough tokens to kill you. The feels bad isn't that you destroyed a land, killed a creature, countered a spell... It's that that's ALL you do, your entire wincon is to just annoy the opponent out of the game.
My deck did the thing= Feels Good
I wasn't able to do the thing= MY OPPONENT IS LITERALLY EVIL
Personally, I will defend land destruction and say that just because a mechanic *feels bad* doesn't mean it has no place in the game. If we are going to say the designer of the game is trying to tell you a story, then it seems silly to me for us to say that you can only tell stories that make you feel good or powerful.
Then again, I liked playing during Mirrodin Besieged and Zendikar, so I'm well aware that I'm a freak. I thought the infect mechanic and phyrexian mana were both fantastic things to play with. That standard and limited enviroment made life feel precious and temporary. I also liked Annihilator on the Eldrazi, as I think few things communicate the vast and nonchalant (cosmicly horrifying) power of those creatures more than them just (in flavor) incidentally crushing a few things in their path on their way to kill you.
I also think an underappreciated aspect of these mechanics is the way that it can actually make Magic stronger as a community. You see the same thing in real life in studies of collective memory. Sharing difficult memories often makes people bond more than nostalgia does. We, as a community, remember certain eras of the game, even if we personally were absent, because of us hearing others talk about how bad it was.
You see the same thing in Yugioh. For as much as Maxx C and Mystic Mine are hated, coming to hate them is something of a rite of passage. Even if you lack much experience, other players will say that you are officially a yugioh player the first time you complain about Maxx C. To a lesser extent, cards like Ariseheart created the same feeling (which is in flavor, considering how powerful and oppresive the character is in lore).
All that said, I think people should learn to embrace that a game will sometimes make you feel bad.
All that being said, I wonder if one of the reasons why negates have come to be particularly despised in Yugioh is because, in a way, it chokes out our own resource system, and may feel more like land destruction than like a regular counter.
Basically, over the years, there accumulated such a critical mass of cards that cheated the normal summon (which was our equivalent of a land-drop back in the day) that the main way of putting speed limit on the game became the "hard-once-per-turn", which essentially means that you, the player, are forbidden from using the effect again no matter how many copies you can get out (in contrast to the "soft-once-per-turn", which is where the *card* is forbidden from doing it again, even if control of the card switches).
But one of the consequences of this is that negating a card that has a hard once per turn, if done at the right time, can effectively end the turn. Even if you had the cards available to summon or tutor another copy of the card, that's it, the resource (the activation) is gone. (There are exceptions where you can activate the card again, but those are infrequent enough that many players misplay into them and use their negations at inopportune times, such as Ash Blossoming a Danger! monster.)
The difference between something like bolt and thoughtsieze is you can play around bolt. You’ve taken the risk of playing the bird when you had the option of playing around it. Whereas thoughtsieze you can’t not have cards in hand on turn one with basically any strategy.
The reason Thoughtseize feels so bad is that the opponent gets to make the decision with perfect information. When an opponent bolts your Bird, many times you didn't really need that bird. It was nice to have but your opponent will often use a removal spell that perhaps they didn't need to use because you have something better to follow it up--or at the least, something just as good. When you get Thoughtseize'd, the opponent gets to take the card that would cause him the most trouble and it often puts a big dent in your gameplan because of that, at least when Thoughtseize works at its best. After a mulligan, it feels REAL bad because a 5 card hand without its best card doesn't beat much. But often when your creatures are removed, the opponent has guessed wrong and used the removal spell too early. Thoughtseize doesn't have that issue--the best time to use it is always immediately.
Theres cards that tax resources and attack cards in hand in a lot of games. I think the issue with these resource denial decks is that people aren't properly utilizing these effects. Like they wind up denying resources just to denying resources and it slows the game down. As opposed to denying your opponents resources to create an opportunity to win the game. Like what's the Difference between an instant speed Armageddon and an instant speed dosan if the person playing them wins almost immediately afterwards because of the protection those cards grant them? Besides dosan being significantly better because it costs 3 and is a creature.
Nobody ever expects the Dingus Egg. I did a land destruction deck built around nuking the board with Armegeddons and Dingus egg to do damage, and the CoP artifacts from antiquities to keep me alive. It was awesome back in 94 or 95, at least for me. Now I want to make a Land-ocrats commander deck around destroying lands for fun and profit.
So, the Gitrog Monster and friends lol?
I've been playing a Phyrexian Obliterator deck with Fight cards, and anytime it hits something big enough that it forces the opponent to destroy their lands, it feels like I've kicked the ladder from under them.
A player can lose the rest of the board and it's still a game because they can rebuild pretty easily. When they lose their lands they either are just outpaced for the rest of the game or they just can't play the game anymore.
I think land destruction is a very necessary part of the game and its just another counter to big land ramp that is very prevelent especially to EDH. Everyone is scared to admit that its a vital part in the game. Green players mainly ramp out and then value snowball way harder than any other color and that brings inherent strength to the color. Green players then also gatekeep the only counter to their bullshit strategy by claiming its immoral to run land destruction. It should be normalized to destroy lands, and also WOTC should print more cards that punish land ramping and snowball strategies.
Interesting some of this seems linked to something I saw a some one else looking at recently, which is the issue of 1-drops in MTG and games with a similar resource system. Which comes when your base is one, then a two drop is twice a expensive, but odds are not twice as good, a three-drop is 3 times as expensive and so on. Here that same logic comes in as losing a single land is a big hit unless its really late in the game. MTG can with standard get around just how good 1-drops are from a resources use perspective by keeping them rare and treating 2-drops as the base line meaning each step up is only 50% more expensive than 100% more expensive. But there's no easy answer on how to apply that to MTG's lands.
Notably they also mentioned a few Japanese card games have you start with two resource cards (along with a 'all cards can be resources') so you play a resource on your first turn and now 3-drops are your baseline, reining in the issue more. But you can't really slap that on Magic without a lot of reworking of the game.
The worse feeling in magic is a lack of decision trees. If i have the ability to make decisions that could help my chances of winning then at least i can do something. Once im in topdeck mode, woth no creatures in play and only topdeck land after land, that feels horrible.
Oddly, my favourite bit was the little part at the end were you talk about flavour and how magic teaches you to expect play patterns.
Next thing you're gonna tell me is that people hate playing mill too. Or any sort of counter ability. People seem to hate fun things
The big difference of Land Destruction V. Bolting the Bird is player agency and actions.
There’s two players who came to play a game. While yes both actions remove a mana source.
The Bird was played and then reacted to whereas there is no easy counter play to land destruction or hand disruption.
Another difference between land destruction and say hand destruction is whether or not you can make it up. You could hypothetically topdeck a big draw spell and get back ahead of their discard effects or get a giant creature that they can't deal with since they've been putting their mana to hand control instead of board state. But with land destruction you can only play that 1 land every round, same as the opponent, you're perpetually behind. You can't even topdeck a big game winning comeback card cause you can't afford to play it...That said, I think land destruction (or the threat of) is necessary as new nonbasic lands are crazy if unchecked and I think there is value in making players not 100% sure of their mana availability on any given round.
I feel like the land destruction whining is a self perpetuating meme. If we were ever allowed to actually destroy lands regularly, we'd get used to it.
Like counterspells.
Honestly, probably a good take.
@@distractionmakers Price it at 3-4 mana and let there be enough for a standard deck to have about 12 copies of the effect. It'll be *fine*.
Soft removing land destruction has removed red-black's old alt-identity as a control deck it feels to me.
To me, land destruction feels bad because it amplifies variance. If I have a flexible hand due to good draws, land hate is likely to not affect me in a meaningful way outside of specific strategies that rely on particularly busted lands. However, because variance is an essential part of magic, every deck has games where you are falling behind solely because your mana isn’t cooperative. Land destruction is most impactful when used to bully decks just for having an unlucky game with regard to mana and that is why I don’t like it.
I think a good example of a format with land destruction, where it can create really unfun games is pauper, with the ponza deck, because players aren’t casting land destruction on turn three, they play a mana accelerant, and cast it earlier than what expectations were set to. And the format doesn’t have enough efficient creatures for you to get back in the game.
Only 7 mins in so maybe you mention this but the only way the most popular form of land destruction in legacy feels fair is bc the opportunity cost of it is so high.
It requires very specific deck construction restrictions (3 color decks cannot play it if they have double pipped cards, other color intensive decks have trouble with it)
You are losing your own resource generator in an even 1:1 trade
You cannot get mana from it the same turn you are blowing up an opps land.
This seems to be the “on rate” drawbacks that are required for “free” instant speed resource destruction.
Land destruction that lets you get a basic instead is fine. That is countering some cheaty land or other thing anyways. But land destruction to just take away the mana base? That's an "only I may play the game" kind of strategy and thus an immediate scoop from me.
Would be interested to hear your thoughts on self-sabotaging as a cost.
For example, I think it's much more well received to discard your cards or sacrifice your land for big payoffs.
Maybe it has to do with cost/damage mitigation?
You would only sacrifice a land if it's worth it, while you remember when the opponent hits you at the worst time.
i watched a youtube video about a card game where everybody started with 3 resources instead. In addition to making resource removal feel less bad, it also makes the whole cost structure different. In mtg, you can turn 1 a 1 mana spell, then turn 2 a 2 mana spell or 2 1 mana spells. Then turn 3 you can do 3 one mana spells, a 2 and a 1 or one 3 mana spell. This is why low cost cards are so much better.
In that other card game, on turn you play a three drop. One turn 2, you can only play a three drop or a 4 drop. You can't double spell. Same on turn 3. The earliest you can double spell is turn 4, which is an interesting design decision to try to make different mana value cards all matter.
My weekly pod is all "high power". I remember the first time I got Marit Lage'd, it wasn't my last, but it doesn't happen too often. It adds some spice and extra strategy to the game. It can also be used on yourself!
A point that is often missed when discussing land destruction is how it shapes the context of deck construction within an environment.
When land destruction is a t1-t2 strategy, it applies a deck building pressure and forces players to incorporate a higher land count in response. Premodern js a great example of this. So the number of "non games" in formats with land destruction tends to be lower than formats like legacy.
If you are running 20 lands and relying on cantrips to function as land slots, you will inevitably encounter more non games to a t2 sinkhole or what have you.
Land destruction does play into the realm of virtual card economy, though. Players who accelerate more expensive spells tend to do so at card disadvantage. Though the upside of mitigating your opponents ability to deploy spells can create sufficient virtual advantage as to warrant the heavy investment.
Virtual card advantage is something wizards has conceptually done away with.
Land Ramp (Green) is nearly untouchable in part because of how poorly MLD is viewed. I have six EDH decks - one of them uses Jokulhaups as a win-con. I would argue having spot land removal is a must.
The bolt the bird scenario your talking about, it doesn't feel as bad because the bird player "asked a question" being do you have an answer for this? And by playing the bolt in response it was answered yes.
I think a big part of what makes interaction feel bad is when there’s a critical mass of it. Having one spell countered feels bad, sure, but it’s just one moment. But what really sucks is when your spells get countered over and over again, and you feel like you basically just can’t even play the game. And I think the hierarchy of what types of interaction feel worst has a lot to do with how many such effects it takes to reach that critical mass and make you feel like you’re not even getting to play. Land destruction is the most frustrating because, in tandem with the risk of mana screw, sometimes it only takes one land destruction spell to get you to that point. Discard is next up, because getting a single card discarded *usually* won’t ruin your gameplan so badly that it creates this feeling, but it might if you’ve had to take a couple mulligans, and getting two or three cards discarded can cause this feeling pretty easily. Next up is counter spells, which it usually takes several of to really lock you out of the game, unless they hit a really pivotal spell to your plan. Lastly, it takes a LOT of on-board removal to lock someone out of the game entirely, so while it can still feel bad, it’s generally the least bad-feeling form of interaction.
I really feel like removal should get inherently more expensive each time you use it. This means winning the game involves carefully removing parts of your opponent's board while making yours better, instead of just playing a deck full of "no" with one win condition.
The first deck I build myself was a red Land destruction deck! The Idea of stoping my oponent from playing was always apealing to me.
Sadly It didnt worked well. So the next deck Idea that caught my atention was a Black discard deck. It worked because I had creatures to do damage, but my oponent could still play the game until i menaged to empty his hand, so I wasnt satisfief.
Them my third deck was a blue counterspell deck hehe
PS: Hearthstone had Counterspell from the begging. A Mage secret that counters the next spell your oponent plays. But It being a secret that automatically triggers ler the oponent play around. Since then Mage got a minion counter secret, and Hunter a spell bounce that is sort of a counter.
Back in uni we always played casual. I used to have a deck with Acidic Slime + Deadeye Navigator. The deck wasn't nearly consistent at all but, it was fun. Always looked at it as a sort of pseudo combo.
The purpose of Sink Hole was originally to overcome some of the problems of playing on-the-draw. Going second back then was much worse because you couldn't develop nearly fast enough. The Play/Draw split was like 60% favoring going first.
If they didn't have Fetchlands then land bases wouldn't be so greedy. They need to punish non-basics way more and more ways to punish ramping. If the message is that certain types of interplay are off limits then quite honestly this isn't serious game design.
One of the problems with land destruction is that its effect changes drastically depending on who goes first. Going first is already a big advantage and LD makes it more so. Playing a 2-mana spell and then blowing up a land on the next turn makes it so your opponent can't even cast a 3-mana spell while you will untap to cast a 4-mana spell which will presumably be more powerful than your opponent's 3-mana one. Creature removal doesn't have this same effect, especially now that creatures tend to do something when they enter the battlefield, so a removal spell doesn't negate as much advantage.
I think the best way to interact with opponents lands should be something like enchantments that stop you from tapping it or maybe exile it. Speaking of exile, maybe have a card that suspends a target land for x, so that you can get rid of your opponents resources but only for a limited time
I've got a friend who builds his decks to reach a point where I'm no longer actively playing against him. I'm just waiting for him to finish some massive combo that turns my blood into gasoline and my bones into grenades or whatever.
Every now & then, I like to remind him that it's not fun playing a game where you have no agency or input. That's when I pull out my Land Destruction or Sliver Deck. I have a blast, he gets pissy.
That's where you need to learn when to concede. There is literally no reason to keep playing an already lost game. When they have won it's okay to concede.
@@akorthouwer I always hope he'll read my expression of "seriously, dude?" and realize I've stopped having fun, but maybe you're right.
I just miss when MTG wasn't so meta.
@@VivaLaDnDLogs reading your expression is not a rule nor is a card, so your friend is not obligated to it. He is having fun, so he is ok.
Is YOUR duty to concede, fix your deck with the sidedeck to neutralize your friend. Is your reaponsibilitynto learn about the experience and improve Your deck and your strategy.
Just say "Ok ok i get it bro, i have nothing i can do, it's the end for me, gg, let's do another one"
@@errrzarrr...or is your responsibility to not play with af riend you hate playing with. Or find better friends.
Two observations for someone who's been running Budget Boros Land Destruction in Modern for like a year now. 1 - Land destruction generally wins through ephemeral card advantage. Trading one for one for a land accomplishes nothing most of the time, I only gain (and win) when I two-for-one or three-for-one by stranding cards in hand, and those cards are not guaranteed to remain stranded so that ephemeral card advantage can disappear with little warning. 2 - This can lead to incredibly tense and incredibly satisfying games with really good players, and absolute garbage-no-good-very-sad games with players who can't see (or don't play to) their outs.
(Also: I've learned to apologize in advance to Tron players because oof.)
The best part about a non-game is that you get to shuffle up and draw 7 new cards. Yes, land destruction can create non-games but also plenty of the time it does nothing and that player loses
Also a big reason why it's generally frowned upon in commander, as non games take a lot longer in multiplayer.
In my custom draft set, i decided that I wanted pretty powerful nonbasic lands, and so to facilitate that, i needed answers to those lands.
Now i could do what most magic sets do and add a wasteland type colorless land… or i could give each color a way to deal with lands… which was a fun color pie exercise.
Red, obviously could destroy any land.
Black i decided should be the worst at dealing with non basics, so i made a curse that punished a player for tapping a non basic.
Blue can turn a land into an island (which facilitates islandwalk if i wanted that)
Green can destroy a nonbasic and refund a basic.
White, tho can steal any land… which i think is flavorful
I think a relevant difference between RTS resources and Mana is scaling vs accumulation. I get new resources per turn in magic but "saving up" is a separate mechanism with a weak representation in Magic,
If Ive had resources in an RTS for any length of time then theres a real possibility I retain access to some stored resources when they are destroyed, and even if not a single resource point can, in time pay for another or for anything 2 could have paid for.
In Magic if you blow up lands you void the card they represent, the land drop or ramp card that played them and remove not just resources but progress. If you blow up land #3 I cannot play 3+ drop cards until I replace it,
ive been set back on multiple axes. Depending on the phase of strategy there may not be cost effective or reliable recovery that can save you from good land destruction well cast and what is avaiable is inconsistent and disruptive to most other strategies. Plus what strategy has room to try to eat a lost land or two and expect to get back to an advvantageous position again, especially in colors that can neither counter the destruction nor rapidly draw replacements.
I think it has a tendency to be either irrelevant or the only relevant thing because of how magic distributes basic resources.
I'm glad u corrected him on the Drone vs Zergling thing :P I was about to hop in the comments to do it myself 😹😹😹
I'm constantly having to remind myself about how my playgroup feels about the interactions in game cuz I don't get salty over play styles, I might taste a li'l salt of player choices but usually I understand those choices n don't take it personally even if it does feel bad for a moment. But I recognize that I'm the outlier n that most people don't like ctrl for those very reasons. But playing against Ponza n UB Ctrl made me into a better player n it kinda sux that people take it so personally. The only thing I think makes sense to feel salty about is when a deck seemingly does nothing in a multiplayer game n then has a combo turn that wins on the spot with li'l to no interaction, but as I said, that's in multiplayer cuz it is the fact they use the politics to trick people, it isn't their deck that won, it was their poker face. Had a "friend" who pretty much only played those kinds of decks (Eldrazi Ramp, Kamigawa Handsize Matters, etc) n it got to the point where at our tables there were always three 1v1 fights going on. 1 of my brothers would target that "friend" cuz he hated those do nothing til u win decks, meanwhile another brother would always target me cuz he knew my decks get exponentially stronger as the game goes, n another brother would always try to convince the table to target a friend of ours cuz he recognized him as the best deck builder n usually the biggest threat at the table (I had strong decks but also played some real jank). N eventually those games started feeling a bit boring.
In lorcana discard is also a big part of the game, and sure you can both not interact with the other player, but that is true I guess of many games, because lorcana definatly has removal, treat of removal in challenger cards, discard, etc.
I think the biggest difference between counterspells and kill spells is that counterspells work on everything (assuming the counter doesn't have some stipulation such as "noncreature spell") while removal spells are usually more limited and can only affect something after it's hit the board.
The key here is *after it hits the board*. When a card's built-in protection, or protection granted from another permanent, kicks in.
If i play a creature with indestructible or hexproof, that creature simply cannot be killed by anything less than an exile or board wipe, respectively. Exile spells are much less common and tend to be more expensive than destroy spells and board wipes hurt everyone, including my opponent.
Counterspells simply ignore these valuable and powerful keywords, and stop me from putting a creature under the protection of my Avacyn, Angel of Hope or Privileged Position.
As mentioned in the video, counterspells also remove any value you'd get from ETB effects, which kill spells cannot do.
Counterspells are also almost exclusively blue and the only way to defend against a counterspell is by cards that say they can't be countered (which are few in number) or playing a counterspell of your own. While it's possible to play cards that say "Your spells can't be countered" or some similar effect, these spells themselves can be countered and therefore are not very helpful against a player using counterspells. This means that counterspells are cheap, versatile, and can only be interacted with by counterspells, forcing you to play blue if you want to defend against them.
Needing to play a something to beat that something screams bad game design to me.
I think counterspells would be much more fair and balanced if the general ones that have no stipulations were either more expensive, less common, or both and the majority of counterspells could only hit specific card types. But this is a mechanic that's been unhindered for decades and at this point there are too many general counterspells to reasonably change course.
"Can't be countered" exists
@@electromancer2645 Reread my comment. I mentioned spells that can't countered and stated that they are too few to be a viable argument. Try again.
@@jordonkautz1470 "try again" implies I was trying to argue. I am not.
@@electromancer2645 Oh. Why say what you did then?
Counterspells however suffer from a timing restriction. You have to hold it and wait until the spell is cast. You may say or think that it isn't relevant, but it is. Counters can't rip the card out of your hand before you have a chance to cast it like discard or mill does. Unlike removal, drawing the counter after the fact is also a dead card scenario, whereas a Doom Blade off the top of the deck may still save you from a threat.
Counters in modern magic are in a generally healthy state (it is WotCs fault that original Counterspell is back in modern, they originally wanted Cancel to be the baseline, they power crept their format to the point that og Counterspell needs to be a part of that format now) as many are limited application or conditional, such as Negate, Spell Pierce, or Stubborn Denial.
The meanest and most unfair land destruction effect I've ever seen MTG print is Modern Horizon's "Break the Ice". Destroy a snow land for BB, or overload it for BB and 4 generic to blow up all snow lands. This is targeted hate if I've ever seen it.
You should read cards like Boil and Acid Rain. Old color hate was wild.
Stench of Evil (2BB) destroys all Plains ✨✨✨
I dunno... I think there needs to be an answer for land mana ramp. Currently land destruction manages to do that. I've let go of my hatred for land destruction because of my hatred for land ramp is stronger when I'm of playing against someone with tons land ramp and I'm effectively locked out from doing anything effective by turn 3.
i would absolutely play a card game that focuses on 'antigame' strategies like land destruction, counterspells, removal etc. make every board progression card be a huge impact hitter to balance it out and bigger resource pools to not be too punishing to play. make it devs
Around 18:50-19:00 have you guys looked into Yo-Gi-Oh? There is a lot of interaction and it fits what you guys were describing
Star Realms uses resource destruction well. You can see what the opponent's going for as you're both building your decks and have a chance to react to it, rather than spending hours building your deck out of game only to be no-sold by that one card.
Urzas sylex is a great card though, i do like the potential to go down a rule setting route in white for maximum amounts of lands which would be excellent against some of the rampy strategies.
The problem isn’t Land Destruction. The problem is Land Destruction In Commander. A 1vs1 game might take 10 minutes. If you get Land destructed you can just concede after afew turns. Shuffle up for the next game, maybe swap decks. No problem. But when 1 game takes 90 minutes, being Land Destructed out of the game Really Hurts.
the problem with land destruction is that you can usually only play one land per turn. it'd be easy enough to play around it if you could play as many lands as you had in your hand, but that would be problematic for other reasons.
Exactly. If you didn’t need to draw lands and you play more than one it would be fine
What I missed in this debate is that most of the time a player wins is if they spent the most mana (or cheated the most mana). If you stop printing interaction of that mana source should land ramp be a option in the game then? I think that MLD for being ahead of mana (maybe if a opponent controls 2 or more additional lands then you something happens. And don't just put them equal put them back 1 land. Having that much mana did some damage at that point. maybe a clause like the new Jace (cant cast it turn 1 and 2).
Former semi-pro SC:II player here and I feel the analogy went off the rails. You don't need to destroy all the workers or even close to it to achieve decisive results. Being at 14 workers when your opponent is at 18 can mean it is gg. Day9 had a great thing on that about how much value 100 minerals is and how utterly massive that is, particularly early game. The compounding effect is hard to overstate and being a few workers behind early will cement your defeat unless you find a way to even things out quickly and/or massively outplay them in the mid to late game.
The reason why it doesn't feel so bad is because of something that MTG just doesn't really have: the attention economy. You have to invest a lot of effort in good early game harass and micro. For a lot of players, and I mean pretty much everyone that was under masters, that would often mean idle time, getting supply capped, or not following through on the next phase of your plan like getting your expansion down or moving up the tech tree. Someone who pulls off good harass and gets two workers while not having those issues is someone who is reeeeally good. You might be able to come back from getting behind but good players punish those gaps. Even so, it's a loss that feels earned because ultimately they outplayed you in micro and macro. They made fewer mistakes than you did and there were things you could have done better to counteract their strategy. Land destruction on the other hand...where is that skill expression? It just deletes resources because you drew the right card.
At the competitive level legacy mtg the things you’re saying exist. I agree that you notice land destruction more in mtg. But playing around wasteland is pretty similar to what you’re describing as skill expression in SC2 it’s just less obvious.
@@distractionmakers Thanks for the reply! I don't mean to imply MTG lacks skill of course, but as with the nature of cards sometimes you lack the ability to meaningfully counter things (like the turn 2 destruction mentioned in the video). Tools exist but there's no guarantee you have them present in your hand. You always have the tools to counter harass and if you do it well it can put you ahead. It's annoying as all heck but feels fair because you always could have stopped it. Scout better, be less greedy, micro better, punish better, etc. Plus harass is only good if they're teching/macroing while doing it which plays into that all important attention economy, something MTG doesn't really have (imagine a version of MTG where APM matters!).
That's not a fault of the game of course, just different strokes. As someone fascinated with game design and has dabbled a bit on indie stuff, it is interesting how similar effects (resource generation rate destruction) can be viewed wildly differently between games and genres. It really is an art as much as a science in getting the "feel" right and even how a culture and norms around things can develop. I always joke with friends in the design world that something can be balanced and miserable. The power being appropriate is important but isn't the only thing even in competitive games.
A pleasant surprise to get a response and keep up the good work! Cheers!
IMO the phasing out (and social "ban" in commander) of land destruction has hurt magic more than it helped .. same with blood moon type effects ... a lot of coulour soup decks run extremely greedy mana-bases and in commander green is the most dominant colour because it can landramp.
I can't realy articulate why ^^ but no LD for basics and at most effects that replace non-basics with basics just empowers any kind of ramp deck a bit too much .. and while it's a bit "feels bad" when your lands get destroyed there are so many lower to the ground strategies that would benefit from more LD and it normalised, that land are sacred ..
I can understand it from a design perspective, there's a lot you can design for 5+cmc, so stone rain, that could potentialy limit a game to 2-4 lands restricts that.. however with todays spells the game is already limited to 3-6 turns in all non-commander formats so it might be interesting to open up the possibility of interacting with lands again .. maybe be able to put stun counters on lands or send them back to hand .. I just don't like this whole don't touch lands mentality in magic design
Doubling lifetotals from 20 to 40 and adding 2 opponents turns ramp from a strategy that gets you killed on turn 3 to one that gives you inevitability.
Green is an overpowered combo enabler when it has the time to set up, because of the official rules of commander they usually have that, the unofficial rules and modern card design also protect this strategy.
I agree, nerfing land destruction has made green a commander powerhouse color.
Yeah, I'd also like to see aggro decks get some kind of mana-denial, to fight back against the control deck's turn 4 wrath in an interesting way. I think land stun might do the trick, without feeling so bad
I think that only really applies to Armageddon effects. Single target land destruction is really bad against ramp decks, it's like single target removal against token decks.
@@Ninjamanhammer more aggressively statted creatures like Keldon Firebombers is more the vibe that works, but is discouraged now.
@@Red_Mag3 Definitely agree with that. Friend of mine plays Keldon Firebombers in his Raksos deck, it's a cool card.
I could see a white "Each player sacrifices half their lands" sort of card working.
Regarding your discussion on the bolting the bird vs thoughtsiezing the bird, I think a big part of the feels bad is also related to the information I have told my opponent. When I play the bird and it gets lightning bolted, that's totally reasonable. My opponent knows 100% that I have the bird, and I know he knows because I'm the one who told him. When my opponent casts thoughtsieze turn one and grabs the bird, he didn't know I had that bird in hand. He might have guessed that I'd keep a hand with the bird, but it is still a guess. There's a real chance I decided to keep a hand because it just had four lands, I know I need to play a lot of them, and the other cards all aren't great thoughtsieze targets. So if my opponent turn 1 thoughtsiezes and gets something good, it feels like he just got lucky, or worse, I'm being punished because I got lucky drawing something good. Meanwhile hitting something with removal doesn't feel like it was luck, it's all down to my opponent's good or bad judgement to use the card when he did.
I think you're close here, but my explanation is that when you are discarding a card to thoughtseize it is usually the best card in your hand whereas bolt might not be usable against the other cards. This means the circumstances where the birds of paradise are the target of thoughsieze are when they are key to you hand (low mana hands, you need colored mana to cast another card, only creature to hold a sword, etc). Ironically it's bolting the bird in those scenarios that is luck, as you have no way of knowing that killing BoP will derail your opponents strategy.
@@Nomad6763 Losing the best card in your hand is a really good point that I hadn't considered, but you're right, absolutely does play into it. Regarding the luck, despite my claim, I think both of them are ultimately an expression of luck. Having bolt or thoughtseize in the first place is a matter of luck. It throwing you off course is also a matter of luck (even in the case of thoughtseize, you might just draw another bird or other solution off the top). The difference, and why I think thoughtseize FEELS more like it's luck on your opponent's part, is that level of knowledge you've given them. You don't know that bolting the bird will derail my strategy, but everything I have done suggests it might. In the case of thoughtseize (early in the game, obviously mid-game this changes), the information my opponent uses to know if they'll throw off my plan is all information they've gained from their card.
Also the level of agency involved. If I play a creature that comes with the expectation that if they have removal it will hit it and if I suspect they have said removal I can wait until they are tapped out or play something to bate the removal or take the risk. On the other hand there is basically no decision I could make which would save my card from a T1 thoughtsieze.
The interesting about the BoP situation is that getting it Thoughtseized from you is better for you than having it bolted. You've saved the mana, you're up 2 more life than your opponent. But it does feel much worse in practice.
This made me realize that there's some potentially great design space that wotc hasn't been using that can mitigate the feelsbads of land destruction.
The main difference between Cry or Contrition and Thoughtseize is that, because of "who makes the choice", they have different effects in practice: Cry will always discard your opponent's worst card, while Thoughtseize gets their best one.
Why don't they do that with land destruction? It would feel a lot less bad if I was forced to sac a land vs have one get destroyed, because then I get to pick the least bad land to lose based on my cards still in hand.
If it was 2 mana (since wotc seems to value "sacrifice" as 1 mana cheaper than an equivalent "destroy"), it could make for some interesting metagame choices. Imagine being on the draw, and choosing to play a worse land on t1 because your opponent might blast it on their t2.
And this can be combined with the other parameters already in other land destruction. Imagine spells like "Sac a non basic land", "Sac a land and take some damage", etc.
That only solves mana destruction messing with your colors, it still has the other issues.
@@Ninjamanhammer Yeah, but letting players choose gives them some agency. The feelsbad is already irrational. Giving them some control over the process lets them come to terms with it.
@@shorewall Except it doesn't. You're still down a land, and getting to choose the color doesn't change that.
It runs into the even bigger problem of only working when you're all in on land destruction, since it can't be used to snipe utility lands, which is the healthiest application of land destruction.
Destroy target creature is useful in basically every matchup whether you use it to take out a small creature with utility or a bigger threat whereas destroy all enchantments is pretty irrelevant in most games but almost guarantees a win against specific decks. Magic is at its best when all players are asking questions of each other "do you have an answer for this and if so what" and it gets unfun when the answer is always the same (either no or yes I counter it) or one player cant ask (because they have no cards in hand or no mana)
The one kind of land destruction I regard fondly is Armageddon, as someone who played cheap white creature decks back in the day. It's a way to lock the board state down & keep things smaller-scale.
"The one kind of land destruction I regard fondly is the most degenerate type that feels the most miserable to play with" lol
@@solbradguy7628 It's generally the opposite. Armageddon wins the game if it goes through. Stone Rain is death by a thousand cuts. It's worse to lose over 40 minutes of watching your opponent playing solitaire than for your opponent to outplay you and you lose within a minute or two.
@@solbradguy7628 Armageddon locks all the exits while the current board state slugs it out. Degenerate? Certainly, what part of "cheap white creature deck" was unclear? 😁
@@solbradguy7628 degenerate? Of course! What part of "cheap white creature deck" was unclear? XD
When you have your thing killed/countered doesn't just feels worse than having it discarded, it is objectively worse, because you spent resources to get it played; like mana, land drop and so on and so forth.
"All you're doing is stopping your opponent from playing the game."
..counterspell looks around nervously...
Land destruction in different formats feel different, and one-for-one vs mass land destruction is allso a discussion on itself. A green commander deck can ramp super fast, so it turns unhealthy when nobody have good counter plays
what if you had land delay instead of destruction? "can't untap target land for x turns" or "return target land to their hand" would more of those cards also carry the same cons as land destruction entirely or would it be more positive since it only breaks tempo?
That might work!
The ability to bounce lands was removed from bounce spells for the same reason land destruction is printed less.
Keeping a land from untapping was tried during SOI, I don't recall their reasoning for discontinuing it.
Do we feel like cards like tarbernacle but for lands
2 cmc artifact if a land enters the battlefield at the beggining of next upkeep its owner pays 1 or it taps.
Or
3 cmc artifact
X1, tap: the next time opponent taps x target lands for mana that land gains "pay 1 to untap this land"?
People who complain about land destruction are typically new players who don't quite understand why its important. Sure it allows for some non games but it also prevents lands from just being an overpowered card type. Fighting ancient tombs and dark depths without wastelands feels awful
I think land destruction works best when it’s fighting against 2 specific things:
1. A specific problem land as you mentioned above.
2. A ramp player accelerating beyond their opponents.
The problem with the old school land destruction spells is that they didn’t just punish those two things, they punished you for playing lands in general.
I think more recent land destruction designs have really honed in on the “good” use cases a lot better:
1. Single target land destruction generally replaces the destroyed land with a basic.
2. Mass land destruction sets everyone to ~5 lands instead of 0 lands.
@@Ishygog I strongly disagree, the replace with a basic and other such nerfs are the problem. The solution is wasteland and sinkhole.
I wouldn't say new players just more casual players in general. I see commander players all the time that just don't like land destruction. "Period. End of discussion."
@@TheNewRidore I think that's a skill issue, those people purposely stay bad at the game because they improvement as taking it too serious. Those are the worst players
@@TheNewRidoreI keep advocating for nonbasic land destruction in my group so that I can actually play my Riptide Laboratory.
Land destruction is a great mechanic IMO. I understand why newer players get frustrated by it, but as you play longer you get to understand the game at a much more intricate level which is where this mechanic is great. Strip Mine and Armageddon are the only two cards that are too pushed in that sphere, in my opinion.
I realized the interaction between Confounding Conundrum and Field of Ruin was very mean... And built an entire deck around it
I wonder if a "Land Destruction" spell that turned Lands into Wastes would be better.. probably still a "no".
Spreading seas basically does that.
that's actually a pretty interesting idea. it may screw you in the first few rounds, but you can also outgrow it in a turn or two with little issue. at least in the case of a deck with only one or two colors. the more colors you use the more this could screw you. it'd really stress a deck's ability to mana fix, but there are things you could use to work around it still.
Blood Moon is a card that turns your nonbasic lands into Mountains and I will confirm that it feels miserable to play against. Very nearly as bad as land destruction.
I have a near 45% land ratio for a lot of my decks, so I actually feel more upset about discard than I do about land destruction (though I do get surprised when it comes up)
Also counterspells are very relevant to that feels bad emotion, where they feel worse than removal yet the reactive player has to sacrifice even more to leave that window of opportunity open to counter, verse removal leaving it up to the caster to remove whenever they want
A good question is at what mana cost does land destruction feel okay? Is 4 mana to destroy a land okay? What about 3 mana to destroy a non basic land (lower cost, more narrow application) or turn a basic land into a waste?
Edit: a side note, giving red the ability to destroy lands is fairly thematic. Red as a color tends to have an advantage early game. Land destruction serves as a way to extend the “early game”.
Good points. I think the big issue is that land destruction feeling ok is entirely contextual. If it’s your first land it’s going to feel much worse than your tenth.
@@distractionmakers Indeed, hence why the cost of such spells is important. If the spell costs 3 or 4 mana, then the odds of destroying your opponent first land is highly unlikely. If that is the case, then they were probably going to have a rough game either way.
I heard Disney tried suing Blizzard over the "Zerg/Zurg" thing
Woooow I wouldn’t be surprised.
To me, you can either have a game with super powerful non-basic lands and also land destruction, or you can have a game with mostly basics and weak non-basics and no land destruction. But you really can't (or at least you shouldn't) have a game with powerful lands and no land destruction. If you are gonna push powerful lands you have to give players an avenue to attack them
I think possibly the only feeling worse than land destruction in Magic is fatesealing. It's an play pattern that cuts off not only one option but future options as well, much like land destruction but taken even a step further because your opponent has the first pick of even letting you draw the card.
One thing I think I've noticed is that discard seems to be a little bit more aggressively costed these days, but I also see less discard at random. Attacking cards in hand, my first thought is deep-cavern bat, and that does, but only in a temporary way. If the player must discard to something like Liliana, they can still retain agency in choice of card to discard, which can let them get the most out of an unfavorable interaction.
Both Fatesealing and Land Destruction target something that you normally only do once a turn. You normally only draw one card a turn, and you normally only play one land a turn. So messing with that hurts more than messing with a creature or spell, that you could still do something else if you have enough mana.
I think land destruction creatures like Obsidian Charmaw are fine. It advances the end of the game without completely locking out your opponent since it only hits non basics. I played acidic slime in standard and that one was more of a problem child since I could clone it each turn and stop my opponent from actually playing the game.
Would wonder how much of the feel bad is due to the potential repeated nature of the interaction. Land destruction as a once-off is not nearly as bad as a ponza deck where they have many land destruction spells. The same is true of discard, counters, and creature removal. Its not about the 1-for-1, its about the feeling that you'll never play a land that doesn't get destroyed / creature that doesn't get killed instantly / you'll never resolve another spell.
The answer here is to have pressure relief valves in the form of weaker creatures that resistant to specific removal, un-counterable spells, and indestructible lands. Allow players to make deck building decisions to defeat single-axis interaction strategies.
Bolt the bird? It's the year of our lord 2024. We are done bolting birds. Foundations is upon us. It is the dawning of a new age. Let the stabbing of the Llanowar Elves begin!
It probably also helps that in legacy you have "alternate land" options with the moxes and lotus.
But yeah, if you have no way of generating mana for 0 cost, then land destruction just locks people out of a game. I may as well just pick up my cards and leave because there's literally no options open to me.
As to the interaction question (because it's very important to our game) - I believe the real question is "what can the opponent do?" Creatures "feel" like a good interaction, because I will probably be playing creatures too and then i can use my creatures to defend against your creatures. Land destruction? Ok, what am I supposed to do about that? Pretty much the only interaction options I have are counterspells or some kind of "land protection" spells (which are very few). But basically it's not something I probably have in my deck.
Basically can a player do something about the interaction without foreknowing the opponent is going to use that strategy? If it requires very specific, very narrow counter-plays that you would almost never bother including otherwise in your deck, that's a interaction.
(If games have a "Queen" problem, what should we call this? the "spy" problem?)
Great points. I agree this needs a name spy problem might be it. Making sure there are multiple vectors of interaction is very important. It seems like nearly all negative play patterns exist in this space and the tension of wanting to win vs having a good time is always present. Magic technically could exist as a game that is all creatures and that would ensure there is always a means of interaction.
@@distractionmakers Yeah, it's a big thing of consideration in our game - if we give a strategy the ability to do ___ how do other strategies handle it? Is there a general way to do it in the rules, or do you have to stock exact counter cards? It's a challenge I freely admit for designers.
Energy is another example. You can build a magic deck around energy, and there's nothing your opponents can really do about it save interact with the pieces utilizing energy.
@@distractionmakers This also explains the lightning bolt riddle too IMHO. Bolting the bird conceptually feels the same as thoughtsiezing it - but I am more likely to have other things in my deck that could save the bird from a lightning bolt (flickering, hexproofing, pumping toughness) than I am to save it from a thoughtsieze. Hence why one feels worse than the other. "If only I had my..." gives you some measure of hope against it vs "well there was nothing I could do about it."
Literally no options? How about 1 mana spells?
@@ZakalweDisenfranchised You'll still need a way to generate the mana for even a 1 cost spell.
Everything feels bad when you're losing or you're behind. If someone is doing busted amounts of card draw or busted amounts of ramp or using some kind of land combo, then discard and land destruction feel justified and fair. Green, Green/Blue, Green/Red, and Red all have aggro/ramp decks that need to be cut down to size sooner or later. The game needs to be more than Red/Green mirrors even if the other strategies "feel bad" sometimes.
Land destruction feels bad in Commander but it's just a part of the game in Legacy. But in general you have a whole different mindset and level of focus when playing legacy as opposed to commander.
How do you make the other team scoring a goal/touchdown not feel bad?
*ptsd from Imminent domain in Ravnica/Time Spiral standard*
12:00 Nezumi Informant, Hopeless Nightmare
You must have not played standard in a while...
Have you guys head of Sorcery: Contest Realm?
Yes! We will have to discuss it soon.
The problem with land destruction seems to be the lack of follow up
The only acceptable land destruction in MTG are ones that allow the player to replace the destroyed land with basics. This allows players to deal with problematic lands like Nykthos, World Tree, or Thesbian Stage while allow the player who lost the land to still retain some access to mana.
Dragon Ball Super used to have interactions for destroying energy (cards in DBS can be turned into "lands" to pay for costs, solves the problem of mana consistency). This destruction was generally on the condition that your opponent had to either be ahead on energy or if your opponent used an effect to place energy. Bandai over time decided to ban out these cards as they also banned the generic ramp cards so that they can have more breathing room for card design. An example of this is the Blue Boujack Brigade archetype which uses the energy as a means of playing their characters for reduced costs and the leader and cards have various effects to replace the energy that leaves so that the Boujack player can stay on curve.
Thoughtseize is actually mana disadvantage as you pay one and they pay none! In practise though you can get mana advantage in addition to strategic advantage, by discarding their only play from some turn if they end up doing nothing with their mana, thus wasting it.
Thoughtseize is very powerful, though only as long as they have cards worth taking in their hand!
Good point. Though, I’m not sure who is worse off when you thoughtseize and there’s nothing worth taking 😆.
@@distractionmakers Haha yes😁 for real though they could have a board presence that you wanted any other action for!
Anything that doesn't allow your opponents to play the game qualifies as "feels bad"