The only reason I remember Temple Bell as a card is because I saw a Zurzoth, Chaos Rider player activate it trying to sneak in some extra devil tokens precombat (Anger in the graveyard, it made sense to try) while saying "What's the worst that could happen?" hinting at the disadvantage of giving your opponents extra cards. But by doing so, miracled an opponent into Devastation Tide, answering their own question while they took at least 20 devil tokens back to hand without the death trigger.

Very memorable game, horrible advertisement for the use of Temple Bell.

Assume no mulligans (7 cards), no fetchlands and no extra carddraw (past turn 5, 5 cards drawn); the hypergeometric calculator says that no bolts in a sample size of 26 cards is about 9,5%, that feels like it should be smaller.

Say you cast Faithful Mending twice and played 3 fetch lands, upping the sample size to 33, that increases the chance to see at least one Lightning Bolt to 96,4%. About one in 30 games still, that is expected to happen.

Or you could say Legendary doesn't count as vanilla... since there's legendary matters cards, and that will be with Bloomburrow '^^

I'm sorry, I don't mean to be rude trying to prove you wrong twice in the same thread :P

I do think it's silly how wordy cards have to be to be playable these days, must be a conspiracy to make kids read again or something.

Standard Seasons Dominaria United, The Brothers War and All Will Be One were already Standard seaons without any vanilla creatures, outside of Yargle and Multani the last actual vanilla creatures were Ageless Guardian and Spined Karok in Strixhaven, which rotated out when Dominaria United hit. So it won't be the first standard season without vanilla creatures.

That is true, just like a gun makes a better tool for murder than a knife, Strip Mine is a better tool for salt than Murder, but neither will stop someone with bad intentions.

However, touching the lands in casual formats does come across as a bigger a*hole move than removing a creature or an artifact, or even counterspells. Armageddon is generally more hated than Farewell in that context.

Lands make you play the game, you're not removing my permanent with Strip Mine, you're hampering the ability for me to cast my spells and play the game. Most casuals will get more mad for being prohibited to play than to have your plays answered. Mana screw is a feel bad, but external intentional mana screw is rage-inducing.

There is an issue with running these in commander; it's an excellent way of making someone feel targeted. If your Selesnya Sanctuary gets blown up by Wasteland while the third player's Thespian's Stage is left alone, prepare for some conflict.

If someone gives up one of their lands to eliminate one of yours in a multiplayer setting, that's very balanced, but also easily interpreted as spiteful vs. proper threat assessment.

Even though Strip Mine is probably very good in any commander deck with 3 or less colors, I'm not running it in any because of those feelbads, because of Commander being a social format instead of a competitive one.

I prefer Ghost Quarter, replacing the land you blow up with a basic, without the mana investment a Demolition Field needs. When that happens to be a Strip Mine, you can blame the target for building their deck with too few basics :P