Geomancer's Gambit

Sorcery

Destroy target land. Its controller may search their library for a basic land card, put it onto the battlefield, then shuffle their library.

Draw a card.

Legality

Format	Legality
1v1 Commander	Legal
Archenemy	Legal
Arena	Legal
Block Constructed	Legal
Canadian Highlander	Legal
Casual	Legal
Commander / EDH	Legal
Commander: Rule 0	Legal
Custom	Legal
Duel Commander	Legal
Gladiator	Legal
Highlander	Legal
Historic	Legal
Historic Brawl	Legal
Legacy	Legal
Leviathan	Legal
Limited	Legal
Modern	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Pauper	Legal
Pauper Duel Commander	Legal
Pauper EDH	Legal
Planar Constructed	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Tiny Leaders	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (14)

Xica on Molten Opals

6 months ago

Thoughcast is a fine card. What i meant is that in the age when Meltdown and Wrath of the Skies are common in sideboards, cards that only work when you have lotsa artifacts on the field fall into the "now i win even harder" school of deckbuilding.
They work fine when you are ahead and unopposed, but they are a liability when opponents pack hate cards.

Sure they are explosive. Sadly that aint an important quality in durdly midrange-ish decks. Not accidentally folding to hate cards aimed at other decks is more important, when the deck is too slow to "win before hate card resolves".



And well i have to strongly disagree with your take on land destruction. I agree that ramping provided by Cleansing Wildfire and Geomancer's Gambit is great. But i cannot agree with the rest of what you wrote. Most modern decks rarely run much basic, typically they run less than 3. And to say the least most such decks cannot function on 2 or less lands. As such the Stone Rain impressio of the field cards is very relevant.
Sadly Ghost Quarter is inferior, due to leaving you with fewer lands when you activate it. As much as there is nostalgia for it, its still aint great.
And Leonin Arbiter is completely unnecessary, when people don't have basic to search for anyways.

capwner on Molten Opals

6 months ago

Hello Xica! I very much appreciate you taking the time to look at the deck and leave your thoughts. Let me see if I can address some of your points and explain why I made the choices I did.

1. Field of Ruin and Demolition Field I agree with you these are great denial cards that can fit in many decks, and are especially good when you can combine with Leonin Arbiter and additional cleansing effects like White Orchid Phantom or Geomancer's Gambit. This is generally how I've seen LD built in modern the past couple years and, frankly, I've found this build to underperform. There are a couple reasons that Fields do not fit in this shell, the main one is they are slow colorfixing (2 cost) vs. Ghost Quarter which, combined with any darksteel land, provides immediate colorfixing. This is really important for the deck as a big part of our plan is sticking the turn 2 tempo play of Boom or Cleansing Wildfire (on myself). Opening Darksteel Citadel + Demo Field is just not what we want to see. These are also SOFT land destruction which use up an entire turn of play in the early game, and don't even tempo the opponent. That plus a tight manabase with limited slots for basics is why I don't run these.

2. Experimental Synthesizer This is a solid engine card and you often see it paired with Gleeful Demolition and similar effects. I've built with this card and Ichor Wellspring in previous versions of the deck. The main reason I avoid these here is simple, Thoughtcast is better card advantage and I don't need artifact fodder because the darksteel lands reliably turn on Gleeful already. The fact that you can only play the exiled card on the current turn when we run so many high-cost bombs we may need ALL of our mana to cast, is sub-optimal.

3. Rise and Shine Alright, so I never said I didn't like this card. I've actually been really close to trying to fit it in here, as a 1-of probably. I just think Kappa Cannoneer is better in the slot. As a 2 mana play, it doesn't fit well in my curve where I want to cast boom on turn 2, drop an opal, then do mycospawn/charmaw/saga turns 3-4-5. The reason this deck works is because it chains that early tempo into this creature-based hard land destruction or saga beatdown almost immediately, keeping the opponent on the back foot for the entire game. 4/4 indest body for 2 is very good, but it just doesn't work with my gameplan as well as the other cards I have chosen because it has no tempo value. Our first priority is to disable the opponent, after which we have much more time to worry about the beatdown plan.

I hope that gives you bit better understanding of the deck! Like I said in the description, I've spent quite a bit of time and effort to develop this and I'm pretty confident I'm running about the best cards I can. Mostly I just want to try and fit a 4th Ghost Quarter, Mishra's Bauble, or Thoughtcast, if I were to change anything at this point. I think I'm probably doing something right here because my testing record is currently an absolutely insane 33 match wins to 8 losses.

Thanks again for your feedback, I'd be happy to check out your list and share my thoughts a bit later when I have some more time!

lcarl3035 on Momo: Twice the horns, twice the fun

2 years ago

I would add Darksteel Citadel and Cascading Cataracts just so you can "destroy" them with Cleansing Wildfire and Geomancer's Gambit without actually losing lands.

lagotripha on BOROS BURN AIKIDO

3 years ago

9-lives Ok, so the turn order goes untap, upkeep, draw, mainphase, attack phase, main phase, end step. Whenever you go from one step to the next you lose any mana you've added to your pool.

Upkeep basically exists for things that happen once at the start of a turn, after you untap your lands, before you draw a card. A lot of cards literally had 'upkeep' which makes you pay every turn to keep them (eg. Brand of Ill Omen back in the old days)

Braid of Fire was printed to help pay these, pay for instant speed effects like abilities (eg pump on Shivan Dragon) or actual instants.

If you want to play a big instant speed spell like Searing Wind, pay full price for Thunderous Wrath, or activate Soulfire Grand Master its great because you don't need to play a ton of lands.

---

Harsh mentor is in the same category as Ash Zealot, Immolation Shaman Tunnel Ignus and Ishi-Ishi, Akki Crackshot- they care about your opponents doing very specific things, which most opponents can just ignore.

Effects like great revel deal damage no matter what deck your opponent plays. Even more, compared to things like Young Pyromancer that care about what you are doing, they are a lot less reliable.

You can build decks around and that use them - I have in the past, especially for budget brews, but it takes planning. Tunnel ignus feels bad until you start playing Path to Exile, Cleansing Wildfire and Geomancer's Gambit, but its rare that you want to just put one in there - its home is usually in the sideboard.

Someone whose combo casts a billion cards from the gravyard will hate losing game two to a single ash zealot, and harsh mentor is in the same category.

taylorfisdboss on U.S.S. Deathstar: NCC-1701-FU (Paunza)

3 years ago

Gattison The pay offs you just mentioned for black actually synergize with the Cleansing Wildfire and Geomancer's Gambit in that by helping our opponent search up lands we leave them with less lands and make both Destroy the Evidence and Balustrade Spy mill our opponents for more. Black also has the diverse Befoul for land or nonblack creature removal. Another cool idea is to lean into your Psychic Venom and also run Contaminated Ground so that you can really make their spells cost them.

I totally get what you're saying about playtesting in a vaccum and not wanting to make people play against it a bunch XD - that makes building ponza all the more difficult! love what you'v

taylorfisdboss on U.S.S. Deathstar: NCC-1701-FU (Paunza)

3 years ago

Unless I'm missing something Cleansing Wildfire and Geomancer's Gambit both seem like they don't advance the game plan very much given that they let your opponent search up basics to replace the lands they lose. Pauper tends to involve decks with lots of basics so it would be hard to get rid of so many that our opponents fail to find. That being said since you are running them you might want to consider Silverbluff Bridge over Swiftwater Cliffs because it will let you use either one of those spells to ramp yourself by targeting your own indestructable dual.

zapyourtumor on Zo-Zu, Land Destruction

4 years ago

JonathanSamurai probably Geomancer's Gambit . it kind of sucks

You could consider running Flagstones of Trokair with plains but theres no armageddon type shit in modern and its a nonbo with blood moon, so idk

Gattison on Boom! Yo land gone

4 years ago

So, keep in mind I rarely play out and am not the best guy to ask about the meta. My expertise lies mainly in creativity (which most MtG players call jank, lol).

However, I do play a LOT of pauper regardless, so, I playtested in the tester for lil bit, and I feel draw is problem. I also kept wanting to cast Simian Spirit Guide as a creature. How does the deck play for you? What's your situation by turn 4-5 in most games? And then later on?

Depending on how you play the deck, I would consider putting both Cleansing Wildfire (instead of Stone Rain) and Geomancer's Gambit (instead of Roiling Terrain) in the deck. Both will cantrip themselves, and even though they both allow the opponent to replace the lands they lost, Cleansing Wildfire makes the land enter tapped, so it still slows the opponent down. Plus you should be able to just destroy those lands within a turn or two before they become a problem anyway.

You could also try one each of Forgotten Cave and Tranquil Thicket for even more draw.

I also feel like Raze should be in here. It's SO cheap that it should be considered at least. Maybe swap out Simian Spirit Guide for something like Sakura-Tribe Elder to support the extra demands on your land base?