Waking the Trolls

Perspective on Land Destruction

New 21 Feb 2024 Asked by lavilledieu 30 Comments

Each time land destruction becomes the topic, you put this playstyle away as unfun because people don't get to play the game. Yet we get powerful counterspells and powerful tax effects (including ward). In standard, I've had games on the draw where I did nothing because of Thalia followed by Anointed Peackeeper or Elite Spellbinder. Thalia is basically like -1 land if you wanted to play one noncreature, worse if you wanted to play more. It gets even worse: Thalia or the other creatures mentioned do win games, unlike a Stone Rain or similar. Now, I do share the belief we don't need more stone rains, it's too much all eggs in one basket, but cards like Waking the Trolls did a step in the good direction of being interesting and disruptive without being oppressive.
So my take is: people overestimate land destruction, don't let that stop you, as there is a lot of design space here.


We are very careful with counterspells, discard, and taxing for the very reasons you state. Long ago there existed a “permissions deck” which was basically nothing but counterspells and countered almost every spell. We don’t allow that (or a discard deck that makes you discard every spell) anymore.


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