Land destruction, or LD, is a major component for the cube, if you allow it. I personally feel that land destruction is very important for red Cubans. Red doesn't see what I like to call "ridiculous" plays like the other colors, unless LD is there. Turn 3 Molten Rain, turn 4 Baboon, turn 5 Aftershock a land along with a Strip Mine always feels so good.
I haven't played red heavy decks until recently when I found out how powerful playing 4+ LD spells really is. I always play a couple but when you play 4+ LD spells your deck just becomes way more consistent. Of course the more LD your list runs, the better LD becomes.
Whats your opinion on LD in the cube? What LD spells do you play?
We run the following land destruction/mana denial. Under 'Also' I list the stuff that either doesn't directly destroys lands but does screw with the mana, or whose primary function is not mana denial.
EDIT: oh yeah opinion on LD. Obviously, we love it and think it's a vital part of magic to keep control honest. We've also successfully run a higher amount of bounce than most to complement LD and to support tempo in blue.
Land Destruction and disruption in general is key in Cube. Mainly because it is just plain powerfull and power is what Cubing is all about.
We cubed yesterday and I lost multiple games because of land destruction. I did not play any dedicated LD decks (which do happen regularly in our Cube), but just the occasional Strip Mine, Avalanche Riders or Acidic Slime was enough. Often it just wrecks your manabase to have your key dual land destroyed. Land Destruction kills tempo. Together with brute power, tempo is what a winning deck has in cube.
Land destruction is just a support spell. You still need creatures to win.
The best ways to use LD i've found are:
aggro - play some critters then blow up a land turn 3. Or even better a Geddon turn 4.
Green ramp - Casting Plow Under on 3rd turn is awesome and not hard to do.
I think playing LD in a tempo deck is sometimes a bad idea. The chance of mana screwing your opponent is not enough to warrant throwing 3 mana away to destroy something that they paid 0 mana for. The exception is the 2 for 1 spells like Mwonvuli Acid-Moss, Acidic Slime and Goblin Ruinblaster. All of which gain a good board advantage.
I don't play mass land removal. All of my land destruction only hits one land, though I do play a decent amount of land denial with cards like Plow Under and Winter Orb. Despite this, aggro flourishes is my cube, so it hasn't been a problem.
I did a LD archetype for one draft (Obviously I drafted that deck. I know, I'm a bastard). The evening ended in tears and a removal of lots of it in the cube. Now I have mostly nonbasic LD just so that people can kill off Library of Alexandra, Maze of Ith and other such lands (Tolarian Academy, and the affilated gang). I might try this again when I find a new playgroup that is big enough to make actual observations in drafts (I really think 6-8 players is more or less a must to evaluate my cube through play rather than theorycrafting).
The deck had stone rain, aftershock, pillage, strip mine, crucible, molten rain, Wildfire and aftershock and heaps of nonbasic kills plus a lot of mana boosting stuff (unpowered, but chrome mox into turn two LD was still very powerful). The win conditions? Burn en mass and a Rorix Bladewing as my only creature. I went undefeated, and I was mono red. The deck would be so much better with tutors and more effective LD from other colors (too bad they cost so much, like Sinkhole does...) or just more mana accel (that deck with moxen would be insane). I'll see if I can find the list of stuff I ran in the cube at some point.
If I didn't have a playgroup that had ideas of 'unfair' back then, I'd keep it. It seems to make red more of a competitor (red is just sometimes so underwhelming in simple card quality, especially in creatures. The weeneies are worse than red and green and black, the fat guys are just silly dragons that die at times, etc. Not saying red is unplayable but it very often tends to end up as a support color unless you're playing straight burn. Another red archetype I love) and gives it a shot at a more control-ish way of playing.
i agree with this, red is very strong in my cube and a big part of that is mana denial. red excels at aggro more than anything else and mana denial is key to aggro. if you dropped all your LD that would explain why red is underwhelming.
this illustrates the biggest problem i have with the concept of "unfun:" once you remove all the "unfun" cards, only a small number of archetypes function well. which means drafts are stale and entire colors are mediocre. red without LD and blue without counters? how are those colors going to compete if you can't play to their strengths? that is a lot more unfun to me.
When I see Healing Salve, I'm often like "Oh girl, I wish I could turn every card into this." Thanks they removed the gain life part, otherwise this would have been broken.
i agree with this, red is very strong in my cube and a big part of that is mana denial. red excels at aggro more than anything else and mana denial is key to aggro. if you dropped all your LD that would explain why red is underwhelming.
this illustrates the biggest problem i have with the concept of "unfun:" once you remove all the "unfun" cards, only a small number of archetypes function well. which means drafts are stale and entire colors are mediocre. red without LD and blue without counters? how are those colors going to compete if you can't play to their strengths? that is a lot more unfun to me.
Lifegain and LD are the only 'unfuns' that have made the list (and then only lifegain that is mostly lifegain for its own sake. Basically just a small devaluation of lifegain for making cube). Obviously people have complained about counters too, but I quite frankly told them to f off because that's just not going to cut it.
Many archetypes would perform well aginst LD too. I could imagine a couple of White Weenie drops would be hard to deal with in some cases, for instance. The whole 'unfun' thing really just stems from the typical magic-groups I tend to find myself in; some small group (like 3-4 players) are just significantly more experienced with how the game works and the others are beginners or super-casuals. As a Spike-Johnny, I detest this. (Note the Spike being mentioned first for a reason :P)
Lifegain and LD are the only 'unfuns' that have made the list (and then only lifegain that is mostly lifegain for its own sake. Basically just a small devaluation of lifegain for making cube). Obviously people have complained about counters too, but I quite frankly told them to f off because that's just not going to cut it.
Many archetypes would perform well aginst LD too. I could imagine a couple of White Weenie drops would be hard to deal with in some cases, for instance. The whole 'unfun' thing really just stems from the typical magic-groups I tend to find myself in; some small group (like 3-4 players) are just significantly more experienced with how the game works and the others are beginners or super-casuals. As a Spike-Johnny, I detest this. (Note the Spike being mentioned first for a reason :P)
It seems that we are not talking about unfun as being too powerful, at least in terms of lifegain. Lifegain is not powerful at all. It just slows down the game.
I feel that my blue has many things that are super powerful, and of course I haven't added Time Walk and Recall (have the rest of the power nine though). In return I give red powerful land destruction. I do not have Stone Rain and Ice Storm (which for some reason I love, I love the not so on color spells) but I am going to add them because I just love thinking about killing out one of the two colors that my opponent plays.
Yeah, I'm also still waiting for a 2BRain of Tears as well, I'd put that in right away.
Rain of Tears was reprinted more recently than Stone Rain so there is a sort of precedent for this. Still, Rain of Tears and Choking Sands aren't too bad if you want to push black LD.
Rain of Tears was reprinted more recently than Stone Rain so there is a sort of precedent for this. Still, Rain of Tears and Choking Sands aren't too bad if you want to push black LD.
I think LD is a big deal for red!
In addition to all you listed, I run these that can be run in Red (in a large 900 card cube to achieve LD redundancy):
Stone Rain Icefall (a little more mana, but flexable and Recovers plenty) Dwarven Miner (kinda better than blastminer but everyone wants to have as many good morphs as possible ...) Fissure Vent (Surprisingly similiar to Plow Under) Lava Flow (on the chopping block as it is too expensive, but it is flexable like Aftershock) Demolish (See Lava Flow) Orcish Settlers (We like this one actually!) Fulminater Mage Ogre Arsonist (I'm surprised this doesn't see more play ... one more mana than the classic 4cmc dudes, but bigger body w/o any penalties of non-basic or echo ... not better per se but not shabby) Tectonic Edge
Ponder, sorry to say I wouldn't run any of those cards in my cube except for Ajani. All the rest are too much mana for what they do. Some are very good in EDH, but not in any cube that has well-supported aggro.
Ponder, sorry to say I wouldn't run any of those cards in my cube except for Ajani. All the rest are too much mana for what they do. Some are very good in EDH, but not in any cube that has well-supported aggro.
the card that i noticed most on your list is Dust Bowl ill have to look at gettting one of these.
i can understand not wanting to include the cards as a mana denial strategy as you have a strong saturation of these cards already, but consider Fissure as an instant speed hard removal spell. Aftershock is a strong card, and is quite comparable to Fissure IMHO.
, but consider Fissure as an instant speed hard removal spell. Aftershock is a strong card, and is quite comparable to Fissure IMHO.
Aftershock deals with an another entire class of permanents a whole turn earlier.
The issue with Fissure is the fact that white and black pay 1 or two mana to remove creatures at instant speed. Instant speed is much less relevant for land destruction than creature removal, but we pay a huge premium for it in fissure anyhow. And in most cubes, the advantage of removal is investing 1-2 mana in removing something that cost more for mana advantage at card parity. Rarely do I want to spend 5 mana to remove a 2 mana dork.
There is a fairly large list of reasonably good small burn spells (Fire Ambush, Sudden Shock, Carbonize, Barbed Lightning, Hammer of Bogardan, Puncture Blast, Slagstorm, Urza's Rage... etc.) that I don't run which I would much prefer to draft than Fissure, just on the basis of it costing 5 mana. Turn 5 is far too late to actively damage tempo with land destruction.
It would take a very, very slow cube for me to consider running Fissure.
Aftershock deals with an another entire class of permanents a whole turn earlier.
The issue with Fissure is the fact that white and black pay 1 or two mana to remove creatures at instant speed. Instant speed is much less relevant for land destruction than creature removal, but we pay a huge premium for it in fissure anyhow. And in most cubes, the advantage of removal is investing 1-2 mana in removing something that cost more for mana advantage at card parity. Rarely do I want to spend 5 mana to remove a 2 mana dork.
There is a fairly large list of reasonably good small burn spells (Fire Ambush, Sudden Shock, Carbonize, Barbed Lightning, Hammer of Bogardan, Puncture Blast, Slagstorm, Urza's Rage... etc.) that I don't run which I would much prefer to draft than Fissure, just on the basis of it costing 5 mana. Turn 5 is far too late to actively damage tempo with land destruction.
It would take a very, very slow cube for me to consider running Fissure.
Just my two cents, YMMV.
yes black has a lot of hard conditional removal cheap, as red has of cheap soft removal with reach.
though the argument that another colour can perform the same function, at a more efficent mana cost is not that relevant sorry, if the colour in question does not normaly have access to that function.
Fissure targets are not bears or dorks, is used against opponents finishers, and creatures with high toughness. it is run in a deck with support cards like Magma Jet or Incenerate, that can be used early.
it is not used primarily to gain tempo advantage through mana denial, it just takes out problem lands.
my cube isnt that slow, i run Fissure as a second hard removal spell in red to Aftershock. and it doesnt need to be run maindeck, it just very efficent at removing large threats.
the card that i noticed most on your list is Dust Bowl ill have to look at gettting one of these.
i can understand not wanting to include the cards as a mana denial strategy as you have a strong saturation of these cards already, but consider Fissure as an instant speed hard removal spell. Aftershock is a strong card, and is quite comparable to Fissure IMHO.
Yeah, I was only commenting on the cards you listed in the previous post. I dislike the mana cost on them.
Totally agree with TakeABow on the Fissure vs. Aftershock debate. I'd bring back Flame Javelin or try out Puncture Blast before I ran Fissure.
Yeah, I was only commenting on the cards you listed in the previous post. I dislike the mana cost on them.
Totally agree with TakeABow on the Fissure vs. Aftershock debate. I'd bring back Flame Javelin or try out Puncture Blast before I ran Fissure.
Cheers,
rant
ok, i have 40 red non-creature spells, out of 80 red cards. looking at your and TakeABow cube lists, i see that you have about half this number. very understandable to not include both Fissure and Aftershock.
also i can highly recommend Puncture Blast wither isnt something that red gets. that and Brute Force change the way that red interacts in combat.
I haven't played red heavy decks until recently when I found out how powerful playing 4+ LD spells really is. I always play a couple but when you play 4+ LD spells your deck just becomes way more consistent. Of course the more LD your list runs, the better LD becomes.
Whats your opinion on LD in the cube? What LD spells do you play?
My list of LD: Strip Mine, Wasteland, Dust Bowl, Sinkhole, Molten Rain, Pillage, Aftershock (LD a lot of the time), Dwarven Blastminer, Avalanche Riders, Goblin Ruinblaster, Ravenous Baboons, Creeping Mold, Acidic Slime, Mold Shambler (stretching it now), Vindicate, Sundering Titan, Woodfall Primus
Colorless LD: Strip Mine, Wasteland, Dust Bowl*, Sundering Titan
Also: Rishadan Port, Winter Orb, Tangle Wire, Ring of Gix, Icy Manipulator, Mishra's Helix*, Smokestack
Black LD: Sinkhole
Also: Braids, Cabal Minion, Nether Void
Blue LD: no direct land destruction.
Also: Boomerang, Capsize, Cryptic Command, Upheaval
Green LD: Ice Storm, Creeping Mold, Acidic Slime
Also: Plow Under, Woodfall Primus
Red LD: Stone Rain, Molten Rain, Pillage, Aftershock, Wildfire, Fulminator Mage, Avalanche Riders, Goblin Ruinblaster, Ravenous Baboons
Also: no subtleties in red
White LD: Armageddon, Catastrophe
Also: Balance, Scepter of Dominance
Multi-Color LD: Vindicate, Desolation Angel
Also: Recoil, Temporal Spring, Ajani Vengeant
* will likely be cut soon.
EDIT: oh yeah opinion on LD. Obviously, we love it and think it's a vital part of magic to keep control honest. We've also successfully run a higher amount of bounce than most to complement LD and to support tempo in blue.
We cubed yesterday and I lost multiple games because of land destruction. I did not play any dedicated LD decks (which do happen regularly in our Cube), but just the occasional Strip Mine, Avalanche Riders or Acidic Slime was enough. Often it just wrecks your manabase to have your key dual land destroyed. Land Destruction kills tempo. Together with brute power, tempo is what a winning deck has in cube.
I feel compelled to repeat everything I hear
Land destruction is just a support spell. You still need creatures to win.
The best ways to use LD i've found are:
aggro - play some critters then blow up a land turn 3. Or even better a Geddon turn 4.
Green ramp - Casting Plow Under on 3rd turn is awesome and not hard to do.
I think playing LD in a tempo deck is sometimes a bad idea. The chance of mana screwing your opponent is not enough to warrant throwing 3 mana away to destroy something that they paid 0 mana for. The exception is the 2 for 1 spells like Mwonvuli Acid-Moss, Acidic Slime and Goblin Ruinblaster. All of which gain a good board advantage.
My Cube.
Casual Decks
UG Madness GU
W Stonehewer Equipment W
WU Millfolk UW
B Necroskitter (FFA) B
WU Multi-Kicker (FFA) UW
BW Near-Death Experience (FFA) WB
Seconded, it's my favourite green spell. Green is the best secondary LD colour because ramping into LD a turn early is so powerful.
On spoiled card wishlisting and 'should-have-had'-isms:
The deck had stone rain, aftershock, pillage, strip mine, crucible, molten rain, Wildfire and aftershock and heaps of nonbasic kills plus a lot of mana boosting stuff (unpowered, but chrome mox into turn two LD was still very powerful). The win conditions? Burn en mass and a Rorix Bladewing as my only creature. I went undefeated, and I was mono red. The deck would be so much better with tutors and more effective LD from other colors (too bad they cost so much, like Sinkhole does...) or just more mana accel (that deck with moxen would be insane). I'll see if I can find the list of stuff I ran in the cube at some point.
If I didn't have a playgroup that had ideas of 'unfair' back then, I'd keep it. It seems to make red more of a competitor (red is just sometimes so underwhelming in simple card quality, especially in creatures. The weeneies are worse than red and green and black, the fat guys are just silly dragons that die at times, etc. Not saying red is unplayable but it very often tends to end up as a support color unless you're playing straight burn. Another red archetype I love) and gives it a shot at a more control-ish way of playing.
Manic Vandal smashing your bongs since 2010
i agree with this, red is very strong in my cube and a big part of that is mana denial. red excels at aggro more than anything else and mana denial is key to aggro. if you dropped all your LD that would explain why red is underwhelming.
this illustrates the biggest problem i have with the concept of "unfun:" once you remove all the "unfun" cards, only a small number of archetypes function well. which means drafts are stale and entire colors are mediocre. red without LD and blue without counters? how are those colors going to compete if you can't play to their strengths? that is a lot more unfun to me.
On spoiled card wishlisting and 'should-have-had'-isms:
Lifegain and LD are the only 'unfuns' that have made the list (and then only lifegain that is mostly lifegain for its own sake. Basically just a small devaluation of lifegain for making cube). Obviously people have complained about counters too, but I quite frankly told them to f off because that's just not going to cut it.
Many archetypes would perform well aginst LD too. I could imagine a couple of White Weenie drops would be hard to deal with in some cases, for instance. The whole 'unfun' thing really just stems from the typical magic-groups I tend to find myself in; some small group (like 3-4 players) are just significantly more experienced with how the game works and the others are beginners or super-casuals. As a Spike-Johnny, I detest this. (Note the Spike being mentioned first for a reason :P)
Manic Vandal smashing your bongs since 2010
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/3pq
Now that would be awesome.
It seems that we are not talking about unfun as being too powerful, at least in terms of lifegain. Lifegain is not powerful at all. It just slows down the game.
I feel that my blue has many things that are super powerful, and of course I haven't added Time Walk and Recall (have the rest of the power nine though). In return I give red powerful land destruction. I do not have Stone Rain and Ice Storm (which for some reason I love, I love the not so on color spells) but I am going to add them because I just love thinking about killing out one of the two colors that my opponent plays.
Rain of Tears was reprinted more recently than Stone Rain so there is a sort of precedent for this. Still, Rain of Tears and Choking Sands aren't too bad if you want to push black LD.
On spoiled card wishlisting and 'should-have-had'-isms:
Don't forget Rancid Earth and Icequake! I think Choking Sands is bad because you cannot destroy swamps.
On spoiled card wishlisting and 'should-have-had'-isms:
I think LD is a big deal for red!
In addition to all you listed, I run these that can be run in Red (in a large 900 card cube to achieve LD redundancy):
Stone Rain
Icefall (a little more mana, but flexable and Recovers plenty)
Dwarven Miner (kinda better than blastminer but everyone wants to have as many good morphs as possible ...)
Fissure Vent (Surprisingly similiar to Plow Under)
Lava Flow (on the chopping block as it is too expensive, but it is flexable like Aftershock)
Demolish (See Lava Flow)
Orcish Settlers (We like this one actually!)
Fulminater Mage
Ogre Arsonist (I'm surprised this doesn't see more play ... one more mana than the classic 4cmc dudes, but bigger body w/o any penalties of non-basic or echo ... not better per se but not shabby)
Tectonic Edge
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=385729
its instant, and has a quote from Plato. the modal, instant hard-removal, makes it one of the best hi-end red spells, IMHO.
Saltblast
has hundreds of targets, quite often a land.
Orchish Settlers
"American Gothic" artwork, and scalable mana denial, just usally draws a removal though.
Shalazar mentioned this card too.
Spine of Ish Sah
i dont run Desert Twister atm. this seems a lot better IMHO. but surely someone runs Desert Twister, as its an Arabian Nights cards?
Ajani Venjant
yep, hes mana denial.
Boom Bust
a slower Armegeddon, is fine too. sometimes Boom is good enough for tempo disruption.
Incindiary Command
modal makes it a pretty sweet mana denial card
Magic Work Station Winston-180 http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=315755
Cheers,
rant
My Cube
CubeCobra: https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/5f5d0310ed602310515d4c32
Cube Tutor: http://cubetutor.com/viewcube/1963
uhuh. though we do run a few cards in common
the card that i noticed most on your list is Dust Bowl ill have to look at gettting one of these.
i can understand not wanting to include the cards as a mana denial strategy as you have a strong saturation of these cards already, but consider Fissure as an instant speed hard removal spell. Aftershock is a strong card, and is quite comparable to Fissure IMHO.
Magic Work Station Winston-180 http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=315755
Aftershock deals with an another entire class of permanents a whole turn earlier.
The issue with Fissure is the fact that white and black pay 1 or two mana to remove creatures at instant speed. Instant speed is much less relevant for land destruction than creature removal, but we pay a huge premium for it in fissure anyhow. And in most cubes, the advantage of removal is investing 1-2 mana in removing something that cost more for mana advantage at card parity. Rarely do I want to spend 5 mana to remove a 2 mana dork.
There is a fairly large list of reasonably good small burn spells (Fire Ambush, Sudden Shock, Carbonize, Barbed Lightning, Hammer of Bogardan, Puncture Blast, Slagstorm, Urza's Rage... etc.) that I don't run which I would much prefer to draft than Fissure, just on the basis of it costing 5 mana. Turn 5 is far too late to actively damage tempo with land destruction.
It would take a very, very slow cube for me to consider running Fissure.
Just my two cents, YMMV.
[Remixes] - [The Brutal Cube - 360 Powered] - [My Cube Article] - ['Print-This' Wishlist]
yes black has a lot of hard conditional removal cheap, as red has of cheap soft removal with reach.
though the argument that another colour can perform the same function, at a more efficent mana cost is not that relevant sorry, if the colour in question does not normaly have access to that function.
Fissure targets are not bears or dorks, is used against opponents finishers, and creatures with high toughness. it is run in a deck with support cards like Magma Jet or Incenerate, that can be used early.
it is not used primarily to gain tempo advantage through mana denial, it just takes out problem lands.
my cube isnt that slow, i run Fissure as a second hard removal spell in red to Aftershock. and it doesnt need to be run maindeck, it just very efficent at removing large threats.
Magic Work Station Winston-180 http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=315755
Yeah, I was only commenting on the cards you listed in the previous post. I dislike the mana cost on them.
Totally agree with TakeABow on the Fissure vs. Aftershock debate. I'd bring back Flame Javelin or try out Puncture Blast before I ran Fissure.
Cheers,
rant
My Cube
CubeCobra: https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/5f5d0310ed602310515d4c32
Cube Tutor: http://cubetutor.com/viewcube/1963
ok, i have 40 red non-creature spells, out of 80 red cards. looking at your and TakeABow cube lists, i see that you have about half this number. very understandable to not include both Fissure and Aftershock.
also i can highly recommend Puncture Blast wither isnt something that red gets. that and Brute Force change the way that red interacts in combat.
Magic Work Station Winston-180 http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=315755