I agree with victor about the pillar of the falme. Everyone pretty much says black is aweful but ive had some good times with it. If everybody passes it, then you get alot of good stuff. I have done mono black 2x now both 2-1 with a close ending in finals. One card i have been using alot is fleeting distraction. I don't expect to convince anyone how great this card is but I have done a 3-0 2x with 3 in my deck. It cycles your deck good and can support miricles on the oppenants turn. Other cards I been getting passed to me that I found work good are; Stolen Goods, Rite of Ruin, and Barter in Blood. Those cards keep getting thrown at me and I like it.
The trigger on Death Spark has an "intervening if" clause, meaning that it won't trigger on your upkeep if there's no creature on top of it already; Marshal does nothing to help. Just FYI (assuming you didn't figure this out later in the matches; I haven't finished them)
I feel arguing pick orders is kind of a lesson in futility because people get really attached to their beliefs, but I'll at least take a stab at defending myself.
Bone Splinters - I remember when this was reasonable good with unearth creatures. Now we can use Bone Splinters with undying creatures which usually means playing Butcher Ghoul and Evernight Shade. This makes it a pretty heavy black investment, and not a good splash card at all. Heavy black is bad. There aren't any decent token generators at common so the only nonblack creature I could reasonably want to sacrifice is Timberland Guide. It's quite possible that I'm misevaluating Bone Splinters but that's mainly because I hate black in this set, and have little experience playing it.
Pillar of Flame - I originally evaluated it as a good card but downgraded it after the SORCERY part of it burned my butt a few too many times. Sorceries are very weak against soulbonders. That's why I like Death Wind over these two cards. Instants can often get you a 2 for 1 while sorceries will only get you a 2 for 2 at best.
Trusted Forcemage - I've found that +1/+1 doesn't make a whole lot of difference in a format with a bunch of 2/1s and 1/1s. Trusted Forcemage can't fight off a Seraph of Dawn the way a Nettle Swine can. I'm often struggling to find 2 drops and 4 drops more than 3 drops, so I don't take the forcemage all that highly. I prefer to keep my options open to a 3rd color splash, and that's why I definitely would take Borderland Ranger over the Forcemage in most situations. It's probably misplaced in my filler category, I could easily see it bumped up to good. It might be a good card but it's not even close to 2nd best common.
Geist Snatch - I've never seen it played and have had no desire to play it. 4 mana for a Remove Soul is not good, even if it comes with a rather insignificant 1/1 flyer. With so few instants, holding 4 mana open to counter a creature spell without much chance of playing a flash creature or another instant is just bad.
Snare the skies - I still don't think +1/+1 is all that significant in this format. My green sky defense is usually Geist Snatchers, Gloomwidow, and Eaten by Spiders in the sideboard. Snare the skies is just so easily trumped. Peel from Reality, Crippling Chill, Joint Assault, Necrobite, Death Wind, and a million other cards just destroy it in combat. There are so many situations in which it will be next to useless that I really don't want to play it for that rare circumstance in which I can trade it with a probably smallish flyer.
Borderland Ranger - I've picked this first plenty of times. It's close to a bomb status, but that's mainly because I like splashing a third color with green.
Peddler and Wandering Wolf - These are weak bombs at best, but if you're drafting the archetypes built around these two cards, they are very good top picks. Peddler will break as many stalemates as Forcemage, and it combos well with a lot of cards. I'd almost always take peddlers over forcemages, unless I have plenty of peddlers already.
Good information. It's particularly useful to see this when I hear so many people saying the new set is slow. It CAN be slow if the right decks meet, but it's almost always over quickly.
I started off enjoying the set. I thought I would like it from a flavor-meets-mechanics viewpoint before it came out, then enjoyed it for the first week. But I'm starting to like it less and less, despite the fact that I, too, enjoy tempo quite a bit. I can understand the enjoyment of the lack of removal, but I think removal vs. power is unbalanced in this format. There are so many powerful cards that hit the board and just win the game, some as innocuous as Champion. If it just granted itself the unblockable ability or even granted the ability to each creature on your team based on each creature's power, it would be extremely powerful but ok. The ability as is just wins games, especially if you get it on turn three or four, unless, of course, you're already being blown out. It is an example of a card people just look at and don't think it's anything special and there are dozens of them in the set. But when they come down, you win. And there is almost no removal for it, only a handful of cards that can deal with it and most of them you have to have in hand already and use it pronto or you lose. To me, that's not a fun format. If I wanted to play a non-interactive game, I would go lose to a Legacy Storm deck. I think the power level of the set is extremely high from top to bottom. This set is the first where I really see how far Wizards has turned power creep to power ramp. Some people disagree because there are some "unplayable" commons. Go from top to bottom and look at the power level. It's nuts.
I was thinking about other ways they might design cards that slow ramp without making better LD, and it occurred to me that taxing effects like Thalia and Glowrider could be a nice middle ground, but they would need to be tweaked since ramp uses things like solemn simulacrum as part of their strategy. Maybe that's the way to help aggro fight ramp without LD (and without just adding counterspells and becoming tempo decks like CawBlade and Delver).
While I used to like Armageddon as a way to punish control for tapping out to sweep the board, manabarbs is actually available in type 2 and does that job admirably well, and shockingly sees no play. For that matter there are amazingly good haste dudes now compared to when I played in the 90's, and those are great in that spot also. It's only against ramp that I think aggro's matchup is so bad it needs some new tool to attack, especially since WotC seems committed to printing good ramp and ridiculous fatties in type 2 from here on out. I literally gave up on FNMs during the bulk of fall 2010 because no amount of hate or board plan ever helped my Boros deck steal even a single game from Valakut, the combination of ramp, sweepers, and going over the top is just that crushing. Even now, ramp has managed to keep aggro without blue completely suppressed, despite having such powerhouses as Grim Lavamancer and goblin grenade (!!!) in type 2. Ramp has basically just stolen the place of combo in the metagame.
Green was really good in Innistrad! It was also decent in Scars block and in RoE, as well as Shards of Alara. I think that WotC has been pushing the power of green a lot in the past few years, but that is mainly because it has been so bad historically.
Also, I think that Green is harder to evaluate when it is powerful, so people tend to undervalue it for a while. Green in RoE, for example, was so powerful partly because of its fixing, which allowed you to splash all the removal from the other colors.
I can understand why someone would not like this draft format. It is significantly different from most other draft environments.
With that said, I really like it, but that is because I love tempo oriented environments, and I like it when removal is bad, because it forces you to make tougher decisions, instead of just take the best removal card.
Mono Black has performed very well, but I didn't have a large enough sample size for it to be statistically relevant :( I only saw four of those decks, but they won 3 matches. But it seems like mono-black is the only way to go with Black, but it depends on getting lucky enough to get passed a sick deck.
Wow, the hard work that went into preparing this article really shows. The statistics on deck archetypes and color wins was fascinating, and this article really settles the questions of how fast the format is, and how badly does black suck. This information will be invaluable in my future drafting of this set. All that said, I don't agree that this is a great limited format. High speed, likely stalls, and a higher than usual level of randomness due to miracles and poor removal does not sound like a good format to me.
It's refreshing to see green be an actively good color. I can't remember the last time it wasn't in the bottom two. Sure there's always outliers like Overrun decks, but in general green has gotten shafted time and time again.
An enjoyable and fairly comprehensive review of Avacyn Restored drafting. I liked the approach of evaluating the commons and archetypes, and the set as a whole. I have to agree that I'm not a big fan of Avacyn restored either. Miracles make the games a bit random, I don'y enjoy unbalanced colors, and there aren't too many cards I feel I need to own in this set. Avacyn Restored is a bit of a letdown after Innistrad and Dark Ascension, which were awesome.
That said, there really were a few evaluations that seem a bit off, and the evaluations of the archetypes were a bit superficial. While death wind is good, it's just 1-1 removal for a high cost and I wouldn't consider it a bomb that wins games on its own. A few of the red and green evaluations seemed a bit odd too, though usually I'd only be shifting them one category over, so it's not a huge deal.
Sorry man, but when you put "Pillar of Flame" or "Bone Splinters" in the "Filler" category, I really disagree with your sorting. In a format which removal is so limited you cant put these cards in a 3rd category. There are other cards that IMO are in a wrong category but these two shocked me.
It governs the relationships between society, and it enforces legal rights, such as the right to own property, and natural rights, such as the right to life and liberty.-Arthur van der Vant
The analogy you make of Life to Lands is inaccurate though I understand your meaning. Life essentially doesn't matter as long as you have enough not to lose. As soon as you have 0 it matters (because you lose). And while it is true that you can use life as a resource (or perhaps a better analogy is a timer) as long as you have something you can do you haven't lost yet. However if you are incapable of doing anything your life could be at 200 or even higher and it might not matter. Land locked out, your opponent can take their time killing you off. And conversely even at 5 life you can win the game (in fact there is a card that does just that.)
I agree that it would be good if there was a way to make a punisher for ramp heavy decks but the end result can be very unpleasant for non ramp heavy decks. To keep it balanced LD has been pretty atrocious. GQ is actually one of the better (re) printings of LD of late. It always hits the land you want to get rid of at the cost of maybe not hurting them so much mana-wise. However you can also use it to recover from color screw (not a typical use but it does happen) and it does keep certain lands in check. Inkmoth was something like $20 before GQ was reprinted. Afterward? Lets just say it plummeted.
I used to love Armageddon. I have not played it (though I own 8 copies) in a few years because I started noticing how unfun it made games in more recent times. It used to be a good balancer but they shifted the importance of mana and how spells vs creatures matter. Now if they reprinted Armageddon, there would be a ton of backlash from almost everyone not 100% a spike. (Spikes of course would embrace it like any other efficient strategy.)
Stone Rain (as terrible a card as that is) was considered to be too nasty for constructed play. LD costs 4cmc or more for that reason. Ponza was a great archetype for a while and then it became oppressive. I am guessing the reason why they keep reprinting variations of Duress is that while people also hate hand destruction it isn't nearly as demoralizing as losing your best land in play. The limitations of what can be discarded, and how makes discard a generally iffy plan. You might hit something someone doesn't care about at all.
Or you might even advance their strategy by making them discard something like Obstinate Baloth. All this to say LD isn't merely obnoxious. Tossing a bolt to someone's head is kind of obnoxious. Not to mention generally considered bad unless you are killing them. But most specifically it is an annoying play. But it doesn't get a lot of "whine" because a bolt to the head does not halt your play and make catching up again impossible.
Land Destruction (as much as I have enjoyed it) is a seriously demoralizing effect. Infuriating even. In some cases down right enraging. There are good reasons why it isn't really allowed to be a factor in Standard play.
Also afaik LD was never part of the R/P/S cycle. (Control Vs Aggro Vs Combo/Control). It was just that Ponza happened to have an aggro aspect and many descendents copied that quality since it helps to be swinging if you are going for a tempo win.
I could have come up with some specific matchup as an example, I was oversimplifying it a bit, all I was stating with that example is that there are plenty of game states where one deck is basically dead despite being able to continue playing and casting spells for several more turns. I believe the only real difference between those game states and even the worst and most agonizing game states against a LD deck is the perception of the player. They are just as dead either way, only in one game they may continue going through the motions like a zombie. Your chances of coming back with no lands facing down some dragon from a LD player are about the same as your chances of overcoming a Gideon with mono-black infect, but the infect player can keep casting Plague Stingers or whatever and hope he "gets there" somehow. Whatever specific example, we've all been in those games where we played for several turns despite knowing the outcome with 99% certainty. Since I don't feel this is a meaningful difference, but rather a purely psychological one, I think the bias against LD is purely psychological as well.
Attacking an opponent's resources to stunt his development and limit his resources is a standard tactic in any competitive game. Life is a resource that aggro decks attack, and it's really no different than bombing lands. If I'm at 5 life staring down lethal on the 5th turn, I can't cast Tidings despite having 5 islands in play, because while I have mana to spend I don't have life to "spend" in the form of taking any more hits. At 20 life there are many spells I can cast and still not die next turn, at 5 life very few spells. Attacking any resource limits the opponent's options, the same with lands as with life total.
At the very least, while I understand the psychological factors of why people find LD to be an obnoxious strategy, I wish there were some way it could be worked back into Standard as part of the rock/paper/scissors metagame cycle, just to exert some pressure against the big mana decks.
Ghost Quarter isn't totally unplayable depending on the environment, but it isn't quite up to snuff in Standard, and is woefully inept at dealing with Tron decks in Modern from my own experience against them. If you set up multiple tricks to recur the thing, or run a full set of Aven Mindcensors, you can make it an effective tool, and I actually agree with you that on some level it's more rewarding to find ways to turn your GQ into a Strip Mine. But unless you build good synergies around it, it's basically an Evil Presence that cost you a land drop in addition to being down a card.
You picked the words almost right out of my brain. I was going to post something so similar to this before, it is uncanny. (The only part I disagree with is at the top. I think it is a shame that Land Destruction hasn't been designed in a way that is both fun and playable.) Then I realized I didn't really want to post it. I am happy enough letting other people feel what they like about various cards/match ups.
It is not my job to point out that Wrath of God and Wasteland do not match up in any way shape or form. Nor is it my job to wonder why anyone would be playing Tectonic Edge in a Classic based format. (Commander I guess you might see it.)
I also felt disinclined to point out the strength of GQ to someone who considers it inferior. What's the point? Apparent closed mind and all. But all the same I am glad you did because now I feel like you and I think quite similarly. Which is on second thought not that surprising.
First: I didn't express any judgment on Wasteland; I did express judgment on a Wasteland kind of card being back in Standard/Modern. Anyway, the chances of this happening are exactly 0%. Luckily WotC is "too laid back", apparently.
Second: maybe Wasteland is fair (this concept is actually meaningless: even Demonic Tutor is "fair", that doesn't mean it should be unbanned), but explain to me how it's "fun". Is destroying one permanent with an one-shot effect "fun"? Using, say, Swords to Plowshares is fun? It's necessary. It's interactive (at its most basic level). It's part of the game. But it's the run-of-mill part of the game, not the fun/creative part of the game.
Third: Your version of Ghost Quarter feels very close to Strip Mine.
Fourth: I used Goblin Guide and White Knight to represent simple monocolored decks, not to express any judgment on Goblin Guide and White Knight themselves. And would you still think they were sweet if they were in every single deck you face? It's a meta issue, not a card issue.
I think you missed the point of Kara's post if you feel it is in some way akin to logic. The post is indicating a frustration and anger with being shut out and thus losing the interest in continuing on. Not logical at all. But very relevant. Unfortunately there is no logical fix for an illogical problem except to accept that it exists.
I dont know how anyone could underestimate the strength of Barter in Blood in a format reputedly extremely lacking in removal.
I agree with victor about the pillar of the falme. Everyone pretty much says black is aweful but ive had some good times with it. If everybody passes it, then you get alot of good stuff. I have done mono black 2x now both 2-1 with a close ending in finals. One card i have been using alot is fleeting distraction. I don't expect to convince anyone how great this card is but I have done a 3-0 2x with 3 in my deck. It cycles your deck good and can support miricles on the oppenants turn. Other cards I been getting passed to me that I found work good are; Stolen Goods, Rite of Ruin, and Barter in Blood. Those cards keep getting thrown at me and I like it.
The trigger on Death Spark has an "intervening if" clause, meaning that it won't trigger on your upkeep if there's no creature on top of it already; Marshal does nothing to help. Just FYI (assuming you didn't figure this out later in the matches; I haven't finished them)
I feel arguing pick orders is kind of a lesson in futility because people get really attached to their beliefs, but I'll at least take a stab at defending myself.
Bone Splinters - I remember when this was reasonable good with unearth creatures. Now we can use Bone Splinters with undying creatures which usually means playing Butcher Ghoul and Evernight Shade. This makes it a pretty heavy black investment, and not a good splash card at all. Heavy black is bad. There aren't any decent token generators at common so the only nonblack creature I could reasonably want to sacrifice is Timberland Guide. It's quite possible that I'm misevaluating Bone Splinters but that's mainly because I hate black in this set, and have little experience playing it.
Pillar of Flame - I originally evaluated it as a good card but downgraded it after the SORCERY part of it burned my butt a few too many times. Sorceries are very weak against soulbonders. That's why I like Death Wind over these two cards. Instants can often get you a 2 for 1 while sorceries will only get you a 2 for 2 at best.
Trusted Forcemage - I've found that +1/+1 doesn't make a whole lot of difference in a format with a bunch of 2/1s and 1/1s. Trusted Forcemage can't fight off a Seraph of Dawn the way a Nettle Swine can. I'm often struggling to find 2 drops and 4 drops more than 3 drops, so I don't take the forcemage all that highly. I prefer to keep my options open to a 3rd color splash, and that's why I definitely would take Borderland Ranger over the Forcemage in most situations. It's probably misplaced in my filler category, I could easily see it bumped up to good. It might be a good card but it's not even close to 2nd best common.
Geist Snatch - I've never seen it played and have had no desire to play it. 4 mana for a Remove Soul is not good, even if it comes with a rather insignificant 1/1 flyer. With so few instants, holding 4 mana open to counter a creature spell without much chance of playing a flash creature or another instant is just bad.
Snare the skies - I still don't think +1/+1 is all that significant in this format. My green sky defense is usually Geist Snatchers, Gloomwidow, and Eaten by Spiders in the sideboard. Snare the skies is just so easily trumped. Peel from Reality, Crippling Chill, Joint Assault, Necrobite, Death Wind, and a million other cards just destroy it in combat. There are so many situations in which it will be next to useless that I really don't want to play it for that rare circumstance in which I can trade it with a probably smallish flyer.
Borderland Ranger - I've picked this first plenty of times. It's close to a bomb status, but that's mainly because I like splashing a third color with green.
Peddler and Wandering Wolf - These are weak bombs at best, but if you're drafting the archetypes built around these two cards, they are very good top picks. Peddler will break as many stalemates as Forcemage, and it combos well with a lot of cards. I'd almost always take peddlers over forcemages, unless I have plenty of peddlers already.
As is often the case your article illuminates interesting Johnny strategies with unusual twists. Thanks and keep it coming. :)
Good information. It's particularly useful to see this when I hear so many people saying the new set is slow. It CAN be slow if the right decks meet, but it's almost always over quickly.
I started off enjoying the set. I thought I would like it from a flavor-meets-mechanics viewpoint before it came out, then enjoyed it for the first week. But I'm starting to like it less and less, despite the fact that I, too, enjoy tempo quite a bit. I can understand the enjoyment of the lack of removal, but I think removal vs. power is unbalanced in this format. There are so many powerful cards that hit the board and just win the game, some as innocuous as Champion. If it just granted itself the unblockable ability or even granted the ability to each creature on your team based on each creature's power, it would be extremely powerful but ok. The ability as is just wins games, especially if you get it on turn three or four, unless, of course, you're already being blown out. It is an example of a card people just look at and don't think it's anything special and there are dozens of them in the set. But when they come down, you win. And there is almost no removal for it, only a handful of cards that can deal with it and most of them you have to have in hand already and use it pronto or you lose. To me, that's not a fun format. If I wanted to play a non-interactive game, I would go lose to a Legacy Storm deck. I think the power level of the set is extremely high from top to bottom. This set is the first where I really see how far Wizards has turned power creep to power ramp. Some people disagree because there are some "unplayable" commons. Go from top to bottom and look at the power level. It's nuts.
Not my favorite format, but not the worst either.
I was thinking about other ways they might design cards that slow ramp without making better LD, and it occurred to me that taxing effects like Thalia and Glowrider could be a nice middle ground, but they would need to be tweaked since ramp uses things like solemn simulacrum as part of their strategy. Maybe that's the way to help aggro fight ramp without LD (and without just adding counterspells and becoming tempo decks like CawBlade and Delver).
While I used to like Armageddon as a way to punish control for tapping out to sweep the board, manabarbs is actually available in type 2 and does that job admirably well, and shockingly sees no play. For that matter there are amazingly good haste dudes now compared to when I played in the 90's, and those are great in that spot also. It's only against ramp that I think aggro's matchup is so bad it needs some new tool to attack, especially since WotC seems committed to printing good ramp and ridiculous fatties in type 2 from here on out. I literally gave up on FNMs during the bulk of fall 2010 because no amount of hate or board plan ever helped my Boros deck steal even a single game from Valakut, the combination of ramp, sweepers, and going over the top is just that crushing. Even now, ramp has managed to keep aggro without blue completely suppressed, despite having such powerhouses as Grim Lavamancer and goblin grenade (!!!) in type 2. Ramp has basically just stolen the place of combo in the metagame.
Green was really good in Innistrad! It was also decent in Scars block and in RoE, as well as Shards of Alara. I think that WotC has been pushing the power of green a lot in the past few years, but that is mainly because it has been so bad historically.
Also, I think that Green is harder to evaluate when it is powerful, so people tend to undervalue it for a while. Green in RoE, for example, was so powerful partly because of its fixing, which allowed you to splash all the removal from the other colors.
I can understand why someone would not like this draft format. It is significantly different from most other draft environments.
With that said, I really like it, but that is because I love tempo oriented environments, and I like it when removal is bad, because it forces you to make tougher decisions, instead of just take the best removal card.
Mono Black has performed very well, but I didn't have a large enough sample size for it to be statistically relevant :( I only saw four of those decks, but they won 3 matches. But it seems like mono-black is the only way to go with Black, but it depends on getting lucky enough to get passed a sick deck.
You have trusted forcemage down as filler?!
I'm pretty sure I rank that as (extremely close) 2nd best common in the set (after mist raven).
I also do not think geist snatch is junk.
Wow, the hard work that went into preparing this article really shows. The statistics on deck archetypes and color wins was fascinating, and this article really settles the questions of how fast the format is, and how badly does black suck. This information will be invaluable in my future drafting of this set. All that said, I don't agree that this is a great limited format. High speed, likely stalls, and a higher than usual level of randomness due to miracles and poor removal does not sound like a good format to me.
I also liked the article a bunch. I see a lot of mono-black, and I see it doing well.
It's refreshing to see green be an actively good color. I can't remember the last time it wasn't in the bottom two. Sure there's always outliers like Overrun decks, but in general green has gotten shafted time and time again.
An enjoyable and fairly comprehensive review of Avacyn Restored drafting. I liked the approach of evaluating the commons and archetypes, and the set as a whole. I have to agree that I'm not a big fan of Avacyn restored either. Miracles make the games a bit random, I don'y enjoy unbalanced colors, and there aren't too many cards I feel I need to own in this set. Avacyn Restored is a bit of a letdown after Innistrad and Dark Ascension, which were awesome.
That said, there really were a few evaluations that seem a bit off, and the evaluations of the archetypes were a bit superficial. While death wind is good, it's just 1-1 removal for a high cost and I wouldn't consider it a bomb that wins games on its own. A few of the red and green evaluations seemed a bit odd too, though usually I'd only be shifting them one category over, so it's not a huge deal.
Sorry man, but when you put "Pillar of Flame" or "Bone Splinters" in the "Filler" category, I really disagree with your sorting. In a format which removal is so limited you cant put these cards in a 3rd category. There are other cards that IMO are in a wrong category but these two shocked me.
This was very informartive and well-written. A really neat asset for drafters everywhere.
It governs the relationships between society, and it enforces legal rights, such as the right to own property, and natural rights, such as the right to life and liberty.-Arthur van der Vant
The analogy you make of Life to Lands is inaccurate though I understand your meaning. Life essentially doesn't matter as long as you have enough not to lose. As soon as you have 0 it matters (because you lose). And while it is true that you can use life as a resource (or perhaps a better analogy is a timer) as long as you have something you can do you haven't lost yet. However if you are incapable of doing anything your life could be at 200 or even higher and it might not matter. Land locked out, your opponent can take their time killing you off. And conversely even at 5 life you can win the game (in fact there is a card that does just that.)
I agree that it would be good if there was a way to make a punisher for ramp heavy decks but the end result can be very unpleasant for non ramp heavy decks. To keep it balanced LD has been pretty atrocious. GQ is actually one of the better (re) printings of LD of late. It always hits the land you want to get rid of at the cost of maybe not hurting them so much mana-wise. However you can also use it to recover from color screw (not a typical use but it does happen) and it does keep certain lands in check. Inkmoth was something like $20 before GQ was reprinted. Afterward? Lets just say it plummeted.
I used to love Armageddon. I have not played it (though I own 8 copies) in a few years because I started noticing how unfun it made games in more recent times. It used to be a good balancer but they shifted the importance of mana and how spells vs creatures matter. Now if they reprinted Armageddon, there would be a ton of backlash from almost everyone not 100% a spike. (Spikes of course would embrace it like any other efficient strategy.)
Stone Rain (as terrible a card as that is) was considered to be too nasty for constructed play. LD costs 4cmc or more for that reason. Ponza was a great archetype for a while and then it became oppressive. I am guessing the reason why they keep reprinting variations of Duress is that while people also hate hand destruction it isn't nearly as demoralizing as losing your best land in play. The limitations of what can be discarded, and how makes discard a generally iffy plan. You might hit something someone doesn't care about at all.
Or you might even advance their strategy by making them discard something like Obstinate Baloth. All this to say LD isn't merely obnoxious. Tossing a bolt to someone's head is kind of obnoxious. Not to mention generally considered bad unless you are killing them. But most specifically it is an annoying play. But it doesn't get a lot of "whine" because a bolt to the head does not halt your play and make catching up again impossible.
Land Destruction (as much as I have enjoyed it) is a seriously demoralizing effect. Infuriating even. In some cases down right enraging. There are good reasons why it isn't really allowed to be a factor in Standard play.
Also afaik LD was never part of the R/P/S cycle. (Control Vs Aggro Vs Combo/Control). It was just that Ponza happened to have an aggro aspect and many descendents copied that quality since it helps to be swinging if you are going for a tempo win.
I could have come up with some specific matchup as an example, I was oversimplifying it a bit, all I was stating with that example is that there are plenty of game states where one deck is basically dead despite being able to continue playing and casting spells for several more turns. I believe the only real difference between those game states and even the worst and most agonizing game states against a LD deck is the perception of the player. They are just as dead either way, only in one game they may continue going through the motions like a zombie. Your chances of coming back with no lands facing down some dragon from a LD player are about the same as your chances of overcoming a Gideon with mono-black infect, but the infect player can keep casting Plague Stingers or whatever and hope he "gets there" somehow. Whatever specific example, we've all been in those games where we played for several turns despite knowing the outcome with 99% certainty. Since I don't feel this is a meaningful difference, but rather a purely psychological one, I think the bias against LD is purely psychological as well.
Attacking an opponent's resources to stunt his development and limit his resources is a standard tactic in any competitive game. Life is a resource that aggro decks attack, and it's really no different than bombing lands. If I'm at 5 life staring down lethal on the 5th turn, I can't cast Tidings despite having 5 islands in play, because while I have mana to spend I don't have life to "spend" in the form of taking any more hits. At 20 life there are many spells I can cast and still not die next turn, at 5 life very few spells. Attacking any resource limits the opponent's options, the same with lands as with life total.
At the very least, while I understand the psychological factors of why people find LD to be an obnoxious strategy, I wish there were some way it could be worked back into Standard as part of the rock/paper/scissors metagame cycle, just to exert some pressure against the big mana decks.
Ghost Quarter isn't totally unplayable depending on the environment, but it isn't quite up to snuff in Standard, and is woefully inept at dealing with Tron decks in Modern from my own experience against them. If you set up multiple tricks to recur the thing, or run a full set of Aven Mindcensors, you can make it an effective tool, and I actually agree with you that on some level it's more rewarding to find ways to turn your GQ into a Strip Mine. But unless you build good synergies around it, it's basically an Evil Presence that cost you a land drop in addition to being down a card.
You picked the words almost right out of my brain. I was going to post something so similar to this before, it is uncanny. (The only part I disagree with is at the top. I think it is a shame that Land Destruction hasn't been designed in a way that is both fun and playable.) Then I realized I didn't really want to post it. I am happy enough letting other people feel what they like about various cards/match ups.
It is not my job to point out that Wrath of God and Wasteland do not match up in any way shape or form. Nor is it my job to wonder why anyone would be playing Tectonic Edge in a Classic based format. (Commander I guess you might see it.)
I also felt disinclined to point out the strength of GQ to someone who considers it inferior. What's the point? Apparent closed mind and all. But all the same I am glad you did because now I feel like you and I think quite similarly. Which is on second thought not that surprising.
First: I didn't express any judgment on Wasteland; I did express judgment on a Wasteland kind of card being back in Standard/Modern. Anyway, the chances of this happening are exactly 0%. Luckily WotC is "too laid back", apparently.
Second: maybe Wasteland is fair (this concept is actually meaningless: even Demonic Tutor is "fair", that doesn't mean it should be unbanned), but explain to me how it's "fun". Is destroying one permanent with an one-shot effect "fun"? Using, say, Swords to Plowshares is fun? It's necessary. It's interactive (at its most basic level). It's part of the game. But it's the run-of-mill part of the game, not the fun/creative part of the game.
Third: Your version of Ghost Quarter feels very close to Strip Mine.
Fourth: I used Goblin Guide and White Knight to represent simple monocolored decks, not to express any judgment on Goblin Guide and White Knight themselves. And would you still think they were sweet if they were in every single deck you face? It's a meta issue, not a card issue.
True.
I think you missed the point of Kara's post if you feel it is in some way akin to logic. The post is indicating a frustration and anger with being shut out and thus losing the interest in continuing on. Not logical at all. But very relevant. Unfortunately there is no logical fix for an illogical problem except to accept that it exists.
A little clarification for the Kirin Prize: the deck has to feature 4 copies of all 5 Kirins. No changeling allowed to complete the tribal ranks.