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LDiCesare
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La Ferté sous Jouarre France
Jan 2001
time: 05:27
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Dual lands allowed a lot of early mana, allowing multi colored decks to be effective. Thus they allow a stronger start. They are strictly better because you would gladly put versions like those which cost you 1 life to produce colored mana in your deck.
Before Blood Moon, the dual lands were exceedingly powerful. If you don't have cards specailly made to destroy non basic lands, you will have trouble getting rid of the basic lands.
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Static Universe
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quote:
Originally posted by Caesar the Great
i remember in the olden days i played in a tourney.... blue/green deck the dual lands were incredibly helpful - i was able to do over 15 damage in 4 turns in 6 seperate games |
I certainly prefer the old days. I pick up a stack of new cards every 12/18 months or so, and I think there's just too many concepts in the game now, some better than others. While they've kept the balance fairly well maintained, I think they've pushed it about as far as they can logically push it idea-wise.
I tried teaching someone the game now, and it seems much more difficult than teaching someone seven or eight years ago. How much more can they possibly add?
Given the cards out now, I think reintroducing the original dual lands concepts back into the game would tip the balance too far on this game.
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SnowFire
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New York City, NY
Jan 1970
time: 00:27
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The point is, Mr.P, that ignoring hosers the dual lands are better. You can tap for either color right away! It punishes people without lots of cash. At least painlands have a drawback, so there's something said for playing with less of them. Dual lands are just beyond broken. This really punishes people who just start, and have basic lands that are just worse.
Note that in causual play, lots of people play sans hosers of any kind- making duals awesome. In tournament play, this would force everyone to start packing non-basic hate, when it would be nice to have people concentrating more on their own strategies.
The current crop of non-basics are fine- they're good and useful in the right decks, but it requires a conscious decision to use them.
So in short:
1. This is true of any card. Is Ancestral Recall any less broken being that you can only have 1 of them in your deck?
2. Yes, and because they're so awesome that weakness will have to be used more. This is a very specific Achilles Heel, too... imagine if The Abyss was reprinted in 8th edition. Sure, it has a weakness (untargetable and artifact creatures ignore it), but it's darn specific, and making everybody play decks of nothing but artifact creatures, haste creatures (as burn spells), and untargetable creatures seems dumb. Because that card is too good, and WILL define the enviornment.
3. See 2.
I just returned from splitting for 3rd place with a Psychatog deck- with 12 Islands and 12 Swamps, since I don't own any painlands. I'm glad I didn't have to shell out 40 bucks for 4 copies of Underground Sea if that was reprinted and the price fell to 10 each (it'd be $100 + for that now, I'm sure).
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Richard Bruns
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NC, USA
Nov 1999
time: 06:27
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On the main topic, market forces (the price) clearly state that dual lands are strictly better. Flexibility is power. Any dual land should have some kind of drawback, like pain or coming into play tapped.
I like the addition of new concepts. Remember that each set only has a few, as they let all the old concepts go away. If you play Type 2, there are actually less things you need to learn now compared to several years ago. They got rid of things like Rampage and replaced it with a clear sentence that explains the ability.
Green should have no problem getting around white weenies and CoP´s by speed and/or brute force. If you get your critters out fast, you will keep him on the defensive, and he´ll be tapping so much mana for that CoP that he will never be able to take the offensive. Don´t make the mistake of not attacking just because you will do no damage. Force him to use up all his mana, and you will come out on top.
If it is a stalemate, remember that green creatures usually stomp whites, especially with the recent crop of good green weenies. You can pick his army to bits, and then attack. Anyone who uses CoP´s is at a serious mana disadvantage, and if you are green you will have mana advantage. Instead of attacking the CoP directly, try putting howling mines in your deck and put a vast army on the board as his hand fills with cards he can´t cast.
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FlameFlash
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Minnesota, USA
Dec 2001
time: 23:27
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I'm going to agree here with Burns: flexibility is power... but you also need to consider that fast start is power as well.
I'm just remembering a recent game with a friend of mine during lunch. He brought out his cards and I randomly grabbed a deck to use. Turned out it was his white deck.
When we play, we don't care if cards are banned or not... a lot of the banning in our minds is the fact that WoC just wants to sell more cards to those of us who have decks we love but are now illegal in tournaments (like I ever played in one of those anyway  )
To the topic at hand, I would repeat that I'd love to have one of those cards (and have recent versions that come in tapped or the like) but I like playing with rainbow decks that require such mana needs as blue/black or red/green etc.
Trying to play with a rainbow deck with basic land? I think not. It's possible, but it denies the fast start principle... so unless you know you're playing somebody else who isn't a fast start player, you're screwed.
In recent games I've been screwed anyway... anybody remember the Battle Royal chest (or whatever the multiplayer game box was called with the 40-card premade decks)?
I still have my decks in the shape of multiplayer games that take some time to start up, but because you're in a multiplayer game, you don't get beaten to a pulp as much early on.
I was kicking butt.
Now I'm in college, out of HS, and the one other guy who knows how to play magic goes on the 1v1 strategy. It's killing me! If I only had more time in the day I'd have already redesigned a couple of decks to go with this strategy... maybe for another thread, but hopefully I get some MtG faithfuls this way: any recommendations to a 1v1 deck design? Just general info, I'm thinking flier one or two color deck with some good walls and spells... probably red/blue, red/green, or red/black.
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SnowFire
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New York City, NY
Jan 1970
time: 00:27
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My friend's whole deck was CoP's and white-weeny creatures. I was playing a green deck and I couldn't even touch him.
For causual play, you should always have a little bit of everything being that you don't know what you're facing, compared to some hyper-tuned tournament decks. Playing without enchantment removal- just one card, somewhere- is asking for trouble, for precisely this reason. At least with one Tranquility in your deck, you can stall the game until you draw it, maybe.
Also, don't forget that he's getting a lot of wasted draws if he has ALL the COPs in his deck. Whenever he draws a COP Red or something in his opening hand, it's like you've gotten rid of some of his spells for free, and can beat him down more easily.
For circles, you can toss in a dash of white for Disenchant (dual lands help you here too! ).
You're exactly getting at the problem with duals (ignoring the fact that they recently printed Naturalize). I love multiple color decks, but it shouldn't be so easy and so painless as tossing in some duals. Diversifying your mana base should require a concious decision and being forced to give up some other things to mana fix properly. Duals just say "I'm a forest too, so no big deal!"
Trying to play with a rainbow deck with basic land?
Actually doable, for what it's worth. Apperantly they tried to encourage this in the Invasion block by reprinting the card Harrow (Sacrifice a Land: Search your library for 2 other basic lands. Turn your forest into an island and a plains, or whatever it is you need!) and having cards that did more based on the number of basic lands you have, something I applaud. It would have gone nowhere if duals had been in the enviornment, of course, as painless mana-fixing is still better than spells that fetch lots of basic lands.
I'm thinking flier one or two color deck with some good walls and spells...
Hmm... Blue & White have most of the good fliers. I think the Blue Red idea sounds good- get out big Blue fliers while holding the ground with stuff like Wall of Air, and then use Red to burn off any opposing fliers and maybe your opponent. There's a fun common from Judgement that might be good for your purposes, Arcane Teachings. It's a red and 2 generic mana (3 total) for +2/+2 to enchanted creature with Tap: Do 1 damage to target creature or player. Stick it on a Wall to make it an uber-wall, and since you're never attacking with it, you get to use its tap ability every turn.
Type II
This is "Standard" or the most recent 2 blocks of cards. I gleefully ignore it for casual play, but it's good to have 1 or 2 decks Type II complaint if you feel like a tournament. The logic is that they don't want to make new players have to catch up on 10 years of Magic (aka Type I) in order to be competitive, so only the most recent blocks are legal... while simultaneously encouraging the remaining players to keep on buying new cards since their old ones eventually get rotated out.
I've never played Extended, but it's apperantly in-between Type I and Type II (so the last 7 blocks are legal, or something. I think Tempest and on are legal in Extended, Mirage & Ice Age aren't.).
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SnowFire
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New York City, NY
Jan 1970
time: 00:27
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Yup. It ends up working out almost the same as it did before. Functionally, they started calling spells-as-they're-being-cast as being "on the stack," which makes sense since the whole First-in-Last-Out rules were precisely a stack. Functionally, when both players decide to do nothing, the next spell on the stack resolves, and both players have a chance to do something again.
As an example: I cast Giant Growth on my creature. You now have a chance to respond. You can counter it as usual, or do nothing and let the spell resolve. The fact that counters are now instants means that you can also do something like cast Merchant Scroll (1U: Search your library for a Blue Instant or Interrupt and put it in your hand. Well, just Instant I guess), let that resolve (unless your opponent counters it, of course), fetch a counter (that Giant Growth is still "on the stack" and hasn't resolved yet), then counter Giant Growth.
Also note that if for some reason there are multiple spells on the stack, counters can hit any of them. So if your opponent casts a Giant Growth and then somebody else casts a Lightning Bolt, you can still counter the Giant Growth even though something else is "on top of it.
Mr. P: Have you ever heard of a card called Nature's Lore? I have one in my Green-Red deck, and I think it was a common... it's 3GG for "Target player gains 8 life." Since I rarely want to cast something like Stream of Life early (I now have 2 more life. Hurray.), and getting to 9 mana for an 8-point Stream takes forever, I really like that better, myself.
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05-04-2003 14:05
). Green has Tranquility and the like from the older sets; also, they just added (in Onslaught) a card called Naturalize which is functionally identical to Disenchant except with one green mana instead of one white mana in its casting cost.
Historically (with the exception of Legends) there have only ever been a couple of cards from each expansion that I got excited about anyway.
I look forward to trying these out!
I could toss in a Whippoorwill or Land Leeches in place of one of the Bears or the Sprites, get the versatility up.
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