One constant in Magic, is the horrible and gross Lands combo decks. From the Legacy Dark Depths deck to the Modern Scapeshift deck. But what about EDH? What happened to the “Lands Matter” Nature's Vengeance deck in C18? Well, apparently a lot of players had a different understanding to Wizards about “Lands Matter” vs ”Lands Combo”.
Interestingly enough, M19 made some of the parts to this deck a wee bit cheaper and that makes me VERY happy indeed. It means I am able to look at playing one of the dirtiest decks around and not feel as bad.
A NOTE ABOUT THIS DECK
If you want to keep your friends and your playgroup, you may not want to play this deck, or at least, water it down and maybe take out the gross combo land destruction of Strip Mine and Wasteland.
THE COMBO
It's almost as if this deck was built on the grounds of a Legacy staple, isn't it? Well, that's exactly where we start.
First up we have the good old Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle combo built in to the deck. Valakut is known for being entirely terrible and making players grown ever since it hit our grubby little hands because once Valakut hits the battlefield and we have five mountains in play, each additional mountain we play turns into Lightning Bolt.
This is how it works:
The first combo is Scapeshift all your lands TO THE FACE. Okay, sorry I actually need to walk this through. Have Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle in play, have Prismatic Omen in play and then just Scapeshift.
RULES EXPLANATION TIME
When you sacrifice six lands with Scapeshift to grab Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle + 5 mountains, immediately after the event, the game checks what needs to trigger. So for mountain #1, the game sees:
1. Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle is on the battlefield
Mountain #1 just entered the battlefield
There are 5 mountains on the battlefield other than Mountain #1. Repeat check for all other Mountains.
We can kill more players with more Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle, but how can we get more in a singleton format? Well, we copy them of course! Thespian's Stage and Vesuva allow us to copy Valakut and that way we can burn multiple opponents at once.
Throw in Ob Nixilis, the Fallen so that target player then loses three life per land that enters play and you have a great way to burn out multiple opponents in one amazing and explosive turn. We can search for the combo pieces fairly easy using all the cool land search cards such as Expedition Map, Sylvan Scrying, Crop Rotation and Realms Uncharted. Oh, don't let Realms scare you off, we have multiple ways to play lands from the discard pile.
Once you're all set up, you can even reset the board, sort of, with Warp World. This terrifying Sorcery is expensive and chaotic, but you never know what will happen when you spin the wheel. Will you get a stacked Ob Nixilis, the Fallen or will you get nothing but lands? Who knows!
LANDS, LOTS OF LANDS
We want to make sure we can play multiple lands if we can on a single turn, so we should include Azusa, Lost But Seeking, Wayward Swordtooth, The Gitrog Monster Oracle of Mul Daya and Exploration so we can play an additional land. These help us out not only to empty our hand of lands, but also to assist in playing multiple lands that have ended up in our graveyard via Scapeshift and (Lord Windgrace) using our Crucible of Worlds, (Lord Windgrace) negative three ability to get two lands back into play, Life from the Loam, Petrified Field and Ramunap Excavator. Remember that Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle doesn't care WHERE the mountains come from, only that they are “Mountains”.
Remember what I was saying about the deck being kind of gross? Strip Mine and Wasteland are a combo with both Life from the Loam, Crucible of Worlds and anything that allows us to play multiple lands in a turn. Doing this will make you a huge target, but even I like to indulge my terrible side now and then.
Sadly Fastbond is banned in EDH. No Fastbond to zero.
For the landfall triggers outside of the combo, we have Courser of Kruphix for that sweet, sweet life gain. Tireless Tracker can draw us cards over time by creating Clue tokens, and when we pop those tokens, the tracker gets swole. Avenger of Zendikar enters the battlefield and gives you a tiny forest that grow with each land you place into play. Rampaging Baloths provides an army of 4/4 Beasts to smash your opponents with if the need arises to play the long game. And finally we can also draw a heap of extra cards thanks to Horn of Greed, because whenever a land enters play, that player draws a card. Mmmmm fetchlands!
CRADLE 2 THE GRAVE!
Rocking a sweet combo of Titania, Protector of Argoth and The Gitrog Monster helps us generate a mass of 5/3 Elemental tokens and drawing additional cards respectively. The Gitrog Monsterworks frightfully well with (Lord Windgrace) and his +2 ability, netting three cards instead of two. We also have Zuran Orb to help us net a whole stack of life, if we get desperate.
BY THE POWER OF GREY SCALE!
The pre-con out of the box didn't really care enough about lands, but more about ramping in to stuff, so we gutted the deck entirely. there are some great cards for OTHER decks, but very few cards we really wanted for this deck, and certainly not enough “Lands Matter” reprints such as Lotus Cobra. But you know, that's fine because these products are made for newer players, rather than enfranchised players. This means we will see a theme in the deck, but we need to expand on it to make the deck what we want.
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