BG Land Destruction

Today’s deck has been a work-in-progress for quite some time. This might seem strange at first, as the theme and general strategy of it are pretty straightforward; so why was it so hard to create? If you believe that restrictions breed creativity to be true, then the opposite of that must also have some truth to it, no? The fact is, there are a lot of cards that do what this deck wants. So what is that? Simple - today we are going to be looking at Land Destruction.

The main difficulty of today’s deck was deciding which colour(s) to play. There are good cards in several of them, so deciding on what to include can becomee somewhat difficult. Because of this, I am going to break down my thoughts on each colour, and why or why not I have decided to include them in the deck.

White. When most people think of land destruction, they think of the original bad boy - Armageddon. I decided not to play this colour because this version does not employ the same strategy as a deck such as Ehrnamgeddon. How? We want to stop them from having access to their mana, while retaining access to our own. While the addition of green would somewhat mitigate this, I decided to simply go another route instead.

Blue. Nope.

Black. Speaking of iconic land destruction in a colour; Black has (arguably) the best one in Sinkhole. Because of its colour intensive mana cost however, this might not seem like an attractive option unless you go pretty heavily into Black. What else could that mean? Well, Encroach is not technically a land destruction spell, but it is certainly good at depleting the opponent’s early access to their lands. Hymn to Tourach is another great option that can also hit other things. A T1 Dark Ritual followed by a Sinkhole/Hymn and an Encroach can outright win you the game. Ok, we’re going to include Black.

Red. When most people think of Red’s land destruction, they think of Stone Rain. The fact is, Red actually has several cards that are capable of this effect. I am not going to go into this colour more because I might write about it in another land destruction-themed deck in the future. It is probably correct to play this as your second colour along with Black, but I didn’t this time.

Green. Considering it’s the colour of mana creation/ramp, it is shocking just how good green is at destroying land as well. Ice Storm is a great example of this, but so is Winter’s Grasp. Because many spells in the deck contain either BB or GG, I decided to include some copies of Birds of Paradise to help smooth out the mana. Along with mana fixing, Birds is also good at allowing turn 2 Ice Storm/Grasp or other 3-cost spells, including the main win condition – Terravore. Green is in.

Colourless. I think the inclusion of the colourless cards is pretty self-explanatory here. Dingus Egg acts as another win condition, and Mox Diamond is great for ramp in a deck that contains a high number of lands. Speaking of which, the lands which generate non-coloured mana also act as great sources of land destruction too. Awesome.

I had considered Ankh of Mishra in the deck, as it seems like another obvious inclusion. This is not a tempo deck however, and the effect is symmetrical. Combine that with any sort of direct damage or fast creatures that the opponent might cast, and we could be at 0 before the opponent. I do think there is a place for the card in some type of build however, and I encourage you all to find it. Happy Brewing!

BG Land Destruction

Land

4 Bayou

4 Swamp

1 Forest

3 Dustbowl

4 Wasteland

1 The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale

7 Fetch lands

Total: 24

Creatures

3 Birds of Paradise

4 Terravore

Total: 7

Spells

1 Dingus Egg

4 Dark Ritual

4 Mox Diamond

4 Sinkhole

4 Innocent Blood

4 Ice Storm

4 Hymn to Tourach

4 Winter’s Grasp

Total: 28

Sideboard

4 Tormod’s Crypt

4 Duress

1 Naturalize

3 Desert Twister

3 Infest