toctheyounger wrote: ↑3 years ago
Man, there's lots to go over here. You guys went all in on this discussion.
I like to think ISB and I have healthy disagreements.
I think part of my experience for this has been that when you play Lotus Vale, people get this idea that they can 3 for 1 you. It is technically equivalent to Lost Vale, but, I believe more people are willing to kick you down from Lotus Vale because it should (and often does) put you much worse off than where you started.
As always, though, I'm interested to hear how it works out for anyone. I have been known to be wrong, from time to time.
On to your points:
[*] Diminishing returns.
You're right in that these cards do have very diminishing returns, but the counterpoint is that each of them can be quite powerful individually. I think the key is that you want to draw at least one of them, and that having 4-6 of them in your deck is probably okay.
From my own perspective, I dispose of the extra lands and copies of this effect with Scroll Rack or Mask of Memory. Sometimes I use Terrain Generator.
[*] In order to really leverage the mechanic, you're going to need a way to sac your lands, and lands that generate a lot of mana.
I don't believe it's quite so hard to leverage. For my part, I just want to keep up with the other players. Once these cards stop triggering, I'm generally okay, and usually there's leftovers that push me ahead in the land-race (like extras from Land Tax or
Endless Horizons, or a Sun Titan digging them up, etc.). Arguably, we can also play cycling lands (like
Drifting Meadow,
Secluded Steppe that we could play if we needed the land drops, or cycle when we've leveraged one of these cards.
I think that Lotus Vale and Scorched Ruins are a bridge too far, simply because they're pretty vulnerable. Though, it would give us more opportunities to leverage Thespian's Stage. Also more opportunities for
other people to leverage Thespian's Stage.
[*] Other than all of the above. ít really would require a fair amount of redundancy in running land destruction to really reliably trigger them. Things like
Cataclysm and
Balance variants. I'm fine with running one or two,
Magus of the Balance seems reasonable, but I just don't know how unpleasant I want to make the deck, and people tend to jump at the slightest sign of MLD.
Ghost Quarter,
Field of Ruin, sure, that's fine, and used in the right place it can stop you losing the game. Repetitive MLD though, in my experience people just scoop and that's just not how I want to win games, especially when it's purely for the sake of making sure my ramp triggers hit.
I don't think these cards actually enable the triggers; more than anything, these things level the playing field. I think ISB's argument for Magus of the Balance is unrelated to gaming the ramp-from-behind cards, and more that both ramp-from-behind and Balance effects dovetail nicely with compact lands like Lotus Vale/Lotus Field. Even if you're ahead, you're ostensibly losing less than the other players who are getting equalized.
I actually also feel like the whole discussion is at least a little surplus to requirement; most games I can end up with more lands in play than any other player at the table. Reworking the deck to make these triggers work would mean a pretty enormous adjustment, and is it worth it? I'm not overly convinced.
Unless there's something in particular I'm missing? Is there an angle here I'm not seeing?
I, too, end up with more lands than other players. I think that it's because I play a lot of ramp-from-behind, and it usually leaves me with leftovers in hand to play to end up ahead. That's fine enough for me, and I don't feel the need to game it more than with Lotus Field. As for Magus of the Balance, it does have its niches where it can dumpster people playing strats that we might have some trouble with (like tokens when we're without Magus of the Moat). It wouldn't necessarily be a repeated dunk. Just enough to keep people on the back foot against our (ostensibly) superior creatures.