How to beat FOTD?

[pokken]

You're really underestimating the value of the card. It's effectively a free 2/2 nearly every turn, or more, at the low opportunity cost of a single enters-tapped colourless land.

It's very powerful, don't get me wrong, but as random goodstuff an ETB tapped colorless land is a significant cost. It's probably one of the more powerful things you can be doing in a land slot, but let's remember Gaea's Cradle is legal in the format.

This card played as goodstuff in non-lands decks is why us OGs always ran Strip Mine in their commander decks; odds of someone strip mining it are pretty high (or some other random removal spell, or Blatant Thievery or whatever).

[ZenN]

You're really underestimating the value of the card. It's effectively a free 2/2 nearly every turn, or more, at the low opportunity cost of a single enters-tapped colourless land.

It's very powerful, don't get me wrong, but as random goodstuff an ETB tapped colorless land is a significant cost. It's probably one of the more powerful things you can be doing in a land slot, but let's remember Gaea's Cradle is legal in the format.

This card played as goodstuff in non-lands decks is why us OGs always ran Strip Mine in their commander decks; odds of someone strip mining it are pretty high (or some other random removal spell, or Blatant Thievery or whatever).

"dies to removal" has never been a good argument.

[pokken]

dies to removal" has never been a good argument.

What do you think I am arguing about exactly? "dies to removal" is a bad argument re: banning. In this instance my points are, basically:

* As Goodstuff, you should not need to make major changes to deck construction to defeat Field of the dead. Maybe run a bit more land-targeting removal, maybe run more one-sided sweepers.

* The major problem Field poses is when used as a wincon in a Lands strategy, where it's extremely resilient and the usual answers do not work well. The traditional strategies used to combat it as a goodstuff piece are usually worse than useless against a Lands strategy. Strip Mine is just setting yourself back a land against a deck with 2 or 3 land drops a turn and a Ramunap Excavator. Sweepers are largely assisting their strategy. etc.

[3drinks]

As for the dealing with it, I've had a lot of success with Declaration in Stone lately. Token swarms happen, or try to happen, pretty often and even when you don't use it that way, it's still overperformed for me. Taking care of the land itself would be better, but setting their zombie count back to zero can be a real setback.

I've been preaching about dec in stone for months, card is very good, only to get chastised and downplayed with "jUsT pLaY pAtH tO eXiLe" 🙄

Sososo good.

[ZenN]

dies to removal" has never been a good argument.

What do you think I am arguing about exactly? "dies to removal" is a bad argument re: banning. In this instance my points are, basically:

* As Goodstuff, you should not need to make major changes to deck construction to defeat Field of the dead. Maybe run a bit more land-targeting removal, maybe run more one-sided sweepers.

* The major problem Field poses is when used as a wincon in a Lands strategy, where it's extremely resilient and the usual answers do not work well. The traditional strategies used to combat it as a goodstuff piece are usually worse than useless against a Lands strategy. Strip Mine is just setting yourself back a land against a deck with 2 or 3 land drops a turn and a Ramunap Excavator. Sweepers are largely assisting their strategy. etc.

"dies to removal" isn't an argument against banning so much as it's an argument against a card being good. It just so happens that those discussions most frequently happen when discussing whether or not a card is good enough to be banned.

What I was trying to say before is that the growing ubiquity of Field of the Dead has nothing to do with it being used as a wincon in lands.dek, which you see as being the "major problem". It's a strong wincon for that deck, sure. But that doesn't change that you're heavily undervaluing it as "goodstuff", as you put it.

[pokken]

What I was trying to say before is that the growing ubiquity of Field of the Dead has nothing to do with it being used as a wincon in lands.dek, which you see as being the "major problem". It's a strong wincon for that deck, sure. But that doesn't change that you're heavily undervaluing it as "goodstuff", as you put it.

I have not seen it to be ubiquitous outside of lands heavy strategies myself, and even if so I stand by my opinion that it's probably something that can be resolved with modest deckbuilding changes in a meta - and possibly some better decision-making at individual tables.

It may also be that it's good enough to warrant a banning discussion, because if you *can't* solve it with modest deckbuilding modifications and some discussion, maybe it's problematic enough to discuss. Ubiquity remains one of the biggest tip-offs that a ban is worth thinking about.

[Guardman]

I will agree that the power of Field of the Dead and a reason for its ubiquity in my meta at least is it has an extremely low cost to play (ETB, produces colorless), but an extremely high upside even in decks that aren't "abusing" it (i.e. free chump blockers, sac fodder, attacking).

Whether or not it can be answered is to a certain point irrelevant. It requires specific answers as many common types of removal specifically doesn't hit lands and it can't be countered, which warps deck building in any meta where it is common. And it can be played in such a way that you at least get a zombie out of it or two before it gets removed.

I'm staying out of whether or not I think it should be banned. But I will say, I do think it should be on a watch list.

[Ruiner]

I think in general a lot of deck lists I see don't want to prey on lands or the graveyard for whatever reason. As playgroups/metas evolve and start using the grave more and start ramping out more, these items have to be kept in check or else stuff like this happens.

I try to include Soul-Guide Lantern and Scavenger Grounds in most decks as a bare minimum of graveyard hate, and then throw in more if I feel a deck needs it or my playgroup has been getting a little too grave heavy. These types of things can be used on these lands based recursive decks to great effect.

If the decks you see with Field of the Dead aren't graveyard recursive then either various token hate cards or simple targetted land destruction should probably be your go to tactic if you are having issues with your deck being able to compete with it.

Red, Black and White all have some decent permanent-based token hate cards, in addition to sweepers in general, that would all be useful beyond just this specific situation.

Using some combination of targetted land destruction, non-basic land hate like Blood Moon, graveyard hate, and/or token hate is probably going to be necessary if this sort of thing is overrunning your local play group. Some of these things should be in most decks to some degree anyway and aren't just narrow answers to this specific issue. I could see forgoing this type of stuff if you are playing super casual goofy decks (which is fine and fun but obviously if this is occurring and seen as a problem then at least one player isn't following the same spirit).

In my experience, I rarely see Field of the Dead outside of decks that can really capitalize on it (like my own Mina and Denn, Wildborn Lands based deck).

[Sinis]

Scour from Existence is in a few of my decks.

[ZenN]

Scour from Existence is in a few of my decks.

Ew

There are definitely ways to deal with the card, but like others have said, most of the common interaction people run is explicitly non-land (like Anguished Unmaking, Swords to Plowshares, counterspells, etc). Most green decks should probably be running Beast Within, and most white decks would probably benefit from Generous Gift, but most decks also have low opportunity cost recursion. Every blink deck has an Eternal Witness and a Sun Titan that they're going to get multiple uses of, for example.

In my group, it has become very common to have two players coordinate their land removal and graveyard exile to make it forever-gone.

[Sinis]

In my group, it has become very common to have two players coordinate their land removal and graveyard exile to make it forever-gone.

Certainly...

I just think Scour has lots of applications. FOTD is one. But, if your opponent plays some obnoxious thing (like Darksteel Forge or Avacyn, Angel of Hope, or Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre), Scour can deal with it.

Scour is just a nice catch-all, and they pretty much have to beat it with a sac outlet.

[pokken]

I would take a deck apart before playing a 7 mana targeted removal spell (that wasn't like Spine of Ish Sah )

[toctheyounger]

"dies to removal" isn't an argument against banning so much as it's an argument against a card being good. It just so happens that those discussions most frequently happen when discussing whether or not a card is good enough to be banned.

What I was trying to say before is that the growing ubiquity of Field of the Dead has nothing to do with it being used as a wincon in lands.dek, which you see as being the "major problem". It's a strong wincon for that deck, sure. But that doesn't change that you're heavily undervaluing it as "goodstuff", as you put it.

I have not seen it to be ubiquitous outside of lands heavy strategies myself, and even if so I stand by my opinion that it's probably something that can be resolved with modest deckbuilding changes in a meta - and possibly some better decision-making at individual tables.

It may also be that it's good enough to warrant a banning discussion, because if you *can't* solve it with modest deckbuilding modifications and some discussion, maybe it's problematic enough to discuss. Ubiquity remains one of the biggest tip-offs that a ban is worth thinking about.

I will agree that the power of Field of the Dead and a reason for its ubiquity in my meta at least is it has an extremely low cost to play (ETB, produces colorless), but an extremely high upside even in decks that aren't "abusing" it (i.e. free chump blockers, sac fodder, attacking).

Whether or not it can be answered is to a certain point irrelevant. It requires specific answers as many common types of removal specifically doesn't hit lands and it can't be countered, which warps deck building in any meta where it is common. And it can be played in such a way that you at least get a zombie out of it or two before it gets removed.

I'm staying out of whether or not I think it should be banned. But I will say, I do think it should be on a watch list.

It's certainly strong, and aside from the issue of whether it needs banning or not (which I don't think it does) there's a ton of decks out there that don't run enough removal, whether it be mass removal or targeted, and any permanent or lands/creatures specifically. It's not like there's not plenty of options out there that haven't even come up yet. Maelstrom Pulse, Beast Within, Generous Gift, Song of the Dryads, Imprisoned in the Moon, Blood Moon, Alpine Moon, Blood Sun, there are a bevy of ways to nullify this threat, at least once if not more permanently. And that's no shade towards OP, it's about finding the right answer to fit your deck and sometimes its just hard to find a good fit.

I think the issue with it comes from how low the opportunity cost of running it is. ETB tapped and producing colorless is fairly low, and (for the sort of decks that run it) seven lands with different names is a relatively low bar to hit. After that point you get immediate advantage for doing something you're going to be doing anyway. Its money for jam.

As for whether it ought to be banned or not, I think it really only becomes a super ubiquitous card and an egregious threat in the right environment, and it does rely a lot on surrounding infrastructure. It needs fetches, shocks, checks, tangoes, bicycles, triomes, snows, snow duals, so on and so forth. If you're not running them, Field is a dead card. And if you can't landfall more than once a turn, it's definitely not doing enough for you.

Example - I've been asked a lot why I don't run Field of the Dead in my Varina, Lich Queen build, because free zombies. Except they're not free - it's a bad fit on too many axes. The tempo drop from entering tapped is bad for the deck, and it's a colour hungry build, so producing colorless takes it further towards suboptimal. Then add the fact that I can't hit more than one land per turn, don't have and can't afford fetches nor Crucible of Worlds and you've just got a pretty bad fit. I can hit seven individual lands, but its slow, and the tempo advantage for having board presence early is worth far more to me. A good early start beats a free zombie per turn cycle after turn 8 any day.

Comparatively, my Nissa, Vastwood Seer // Nissa, Sage Animist build can generate a stupid number of zombies with ease, through the usual channels of extra land drops, recursion, and variance with basics, snow basics, utilities, all that stuff.

I think the point is the ceiling is very high and can be very consistent, but it requires a lot of surrounding infrastructure to make that happen, and that alone is why it's strong but not banworthy.

In terms of the original matter at hand I think I'd like to know a little more about specific archetypes that are running Field and what builds @Haman is running, that'll make it a lot easier to find some options that'll work for you.

[ISBPathfinder]

I will also back up that Field of the Dead is a very powerful card in this format. It doesn't fit every deck or meta but in metas with less MLD and combo win it makes it a lot harder to play control strategies. Its going to be stronger in token focused decks obviously but it takes up so little space in most decks that its easy to just throw in. Green decks have a big advantage with it in their land ramp and accessibility to the card generally speaking but a lot of colors have things they can do to make it easier to get these days.

Honestly, it looks like others have mentioned most of the main cards I was going to mention so I won't reiterate all of those suggestions. Strip Mine effects are very good and I usually like to run 2-3 of them when I can afford it on my landbase.

Field of the Dead is a card that is very powerful when players have access to good landbases. Its less intimidating when someone makes one zombie a turn but I have seen a lot of situations where you might see three or so zombies in a turn and that adds up a lot faster considering its also usually a case that that player is ramping and putting a ton of pressure into play for free.

For fun I will snip out a game highlight from a week or two back of me using field to get some turn 8 kills. Turn 8 is hardly incredible but you can see the level of pressure it added.

SPOILER

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T1: Land
T2: Land Livio. Muldrotha player plays a sol ring this turn because they played an ETB tapped land turn one.
T3: Land, Reclamation Sage killing Sol Ring. Partners player plays an Aura Shards afterwards.
T4: Land Skyshroud Claim (ramp two forest). Partners player blows up some enchantment of the other player with shards on some value creature etb.
T5: Ulvenwald Hydra (tutors Field of the Dead) Fetchland getting 3 zombies total. Opponent plays a Tectonic Edge and uses it on my field.
T6: Sun Titan off the top rezing Field and getting me two more zombies with a land from hand. The partners opponent hits me with an Acidic Slime on the Field again. I think he does it primarily for the blocker though as he sees the live Sun Titan. Muldrotha player has a few small creatures in play and puts up a Fog Bank for defense. Muldrotha missed a few lands and he was really banking on the Sol Ring to push him into the game.
T7: Kamahl smash. I have like 9 creatures and two of them are freaking huge. I spread the damage out to be nice. Opponents draw for turn and both scoop.

[hyalopterouslemur]

It's powerful, but MLD, grave hate, token hate ()Aether Flash, Repercussion, lol) or nonbasic land hate (Blood Moon shuts it down entirely.) will deal with it. The thing is, it dies to a LOT of removal.

Not in red? Black has Pestilence, Night of Souls' Betrayal, Tainted Aether, Aether Snap, Extinction, Leyline of the Void to shut down recursion. Blue has Leyline of Singularity, Evacuate, Vacuumelt, Cyclonic Rift, Back to Basics and Frozen Aether shuts down their mana. White has Rest in Peace and Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite, not to mentiob Angel of Glory's Rise Green...Anyone can Ratchet Bomb.

Somebody Wojak this.

[Haman]

i ran many type of decks, i do put 2 to 3 pieces of card that can destroy FOTD and glacial chasm...
Destroy a FOTD is easy... Destroy and exile a FOTD much harder... sometimes even exiling FOTD the player can copy FOTD other players own....

There are many suggestions that are good but they would not work if they are permanents. The Multani deck in my meta ran All is dust, ugin, p vault Ostone Karn and eldrazi, So he would reset the board if the board if it is unfavorable to him.
His plan A zombies, Plan B eldrazi and Plan c Multani.

[folding_music]

Annex is a neglected five star card, imho! Seems really useful when the game's getting homogenous and hard to respond to, as you describe.

[PrimevalCommander]

Archon of Justice is one of my favorite cards in white. Granted it is best with sac outlets, but honestly if a card is taking over a table, your opponents would likely "help" you get it in the GY. . One of the cheaper "exile target permanent" effects I know of.

Also a big fan of Massacre Wurm, mentioned above. Won me plenty of games, or forces a bulk sacrifice from the token player, which accomplishes it's goal.
Declaration in Stone looks pretty nice actually, but this form is biased against sorcery removal. I've been playing Vindicate since 2010 and I don't care if it sucks.
Rakdos Charm is one of the best modal charms ever printed in commander. Handles several problems for only 2 mana and can be a blowout against tokens.
Ashen Rider for more reanimator style of play.
Deathrite Shaman has particular use in this situation, as doe's Scavenging Ooze, but this is not a GY hate thread.

If I'm not running white with "catch-all" removal, I'll be adding at least Tectonic Edge and a couple graveyard removal pieces to deal with certain problems. The crappy part is that you almost need the LD + GY hate in hand at the same time to be effective against decks holding recursion for their combo pieces. This is where table talk comes in handy... "I've got Tectonic Edge in play, anyone have any type of graveyard exile?".

[3drinks]

Annex is a neglected five star card, imho! Seems really useful when the game's getting homogenous and hard to respond to, as you describe.

Not to mention it's slightly more overweight cousin, Conquer|6ED.

[toctheyounger]

i ran many type of decks, i do put 2 to 3 pieces of card that can destroy FOTD and glacial chasm...
Destroy a FOTD is easy... Destroy and exile a FOTD much harder... sometimes even exiling FOTD the player can copy FOTD other players own....

There are many suggestions that are good but they would not work if they are permanents. The Multani deck in my meta ran All is dust, ugin, p vault Ostone Karn and eldrazi, So he would reset the board if the board if it is unfavorable to him.
His plan A zombies, Plan B eldrazi and Plan c Multani.

With this in mind, I think you then have to punish your meta for making such a swarm. If you can't reliably get rid of Field, work downstream and either make it not worth making the zombies, or use them against your opponents. Granted, there are less options to do so, but there's not none:

Rakdos Charm, Vengeful Dead, Deadly Tempest, Massacre Wurm, Comeuppance, Disrupt Decorum, Insurrection, Blood Artist are all pretty strong options.

I realise those are all in rbw, so that might be a little hindering...you could always get really nasty with a jank druid tribal build and run Gilt-Leaf Archdruid, steal all the lands and swarm yourself.

[Sinis]

Annex is a neglected five star card, imho! Seems really useful when the game's getting homogenous and hard to respond to, as you describe.

Maybe it's time to dig out those Vedalken Plotters. When Cabal Coffers was super popular in my group, we'd do that.

[toctheyounger]

Annex is a neglected five star card, imho! Seems really useful when the game's getting homogenous and hard to respond to, as you describe.

Maybe it's time to dig out those Vedalken Plotters. When Cabal Coffers was super popular in my group, we'd do that.

There's also Political Trickery and Shifting Borders, and Role Reversal in Izzet.

[pokken]

I find those kinda overly niche approaches to be highly questionable. Answers need to generalize in commander, and wasting actual slots of spells that only deal with a single land seems just awful to me. So many games I run into there's no real use at all for them too.

There are tons of more general approaches that work well against field decks that've been discussed. No reason to have Vedalken Plotter rotting in your hand just for the off chance you get to gotcha to a field deck :p

[Sinis]

There are tons of more general approaches that work well against field decks that've been discussed. No reason to have Vedalken Plotter rotting in your hand just for the off chance you get to gotcha to a field deck :p

There are other problematic lands in the format, and it's a creature, so just recur it when/if the Field shows up.

[toctheyounger]

I find those kinda overly niche approaches to be highly questionable. Answers need to generalize in commander, and wasting actual slots of spells that only deal with a single land seems just awful to me. So many games I run into there's no real use at all for them too.

There are tons of more general approaches that work well against field decks that've been discussed. No reason to have Vedalken Plotter rotting in your hand just for the off chance you get to gotcha to a field deck :p

Agreed, they're pretty niche. If it otherwise fits, sure, but I generally think the best approach is to nullify the horde than deal with the land based on what Haman is telling us.

Thinking on further options: Balefire Dragon, Steel Hellkite (destroys the land and the horde), The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale (and its respective magus), Glacial Chasm, Void Winnower, Syr Konrad, the Grim. There's bound to be more.

I think the key is going to be not just answering/nullifying the Field, but also turning the tables around and using the opponents excess to your advantage.