Magic: the Gathering - Are dual lands "strictly better" than basic lands?

[Urban Ranger]

If I play a white weenie deck, I'll have Wrath of God, Armmageddon, and Balance, other than Crusade.

[SnowFire]

My friend's whole deck was CoP's and white-weeny creatures. I was playing a green deck and I couldn't even touch him.

For causual play, you should always have a little bit of everything being that you don't know what you're facing, compared to some hyper-tuned tournament decks. Playing without enchantment removal- just one card, somewhere- is asking for trouble, for precisely this reason. At least with one Tranquility in your deck, you can stall the game until you draw it, maybe.

Also, don't forget that he's getting a lot of wasted draws if he has ALL the COPs in his deck. Whenever he draws a COP Red or something in his opening hand, it's like you've gotten rid of some of his spells for free, and can beat him down more easily.

For circles, you can toss in a dash of white for Disenchant (dual lands help you here too! ).

You're exactly getting at the problem with duals (ignoring the fact that they recently printed Naturalize). I love multiple color decks, but it shouldn't be so easy and so painless as tossing in some duals. Diversifying your mana base should require a concious decision and being forced to give up some other things to mana fix properly. Duals just say "I'm a forest too, so no big deal!"

Trying to play with a rainbow deck with basic land?

Actually doable, for what it's worth. Apperantly they tried to encourage this in the Invasion block by reprinting the card Harrow (Sacrifice a Land: Search your library for 2 other basic lands. Turn your forest into an island and a plains, or whatever it is you need!) and having cards that did more based on the number of basic lands you have, something I applaud. It would have gone nowhere if duals had been in the enviornment, of course, as painless mana-fixing is still better than spells that fetch lots of basic lands.

I'm thinking flier one or two color deck with some good walls and spells...

Hmm... Blue & White have most of the good fliers. I think the Blue Red idea sounds good- get out big Blue fliers while holding the ground with stuff like Wall of Air, and then use Red to burn off any opposing fliers and maybe your opponent. There's a fun common from Judgement that might be good for your purposes, Arcane Teachings. It's a red and 2 generic mana (3 total) for +2/+2 to enchanted creature with Tap: Do 1 damage to target creature or player. Stick it on a Wall to make it an uber-wall, and since you're never attacking with it, you get to use its tap ability every turn.

Type II

This is "Standard" or the most recent 2 blocks of cards. I gleefully ignore it for casual play, but it's good to have 1 or 2 decks Type II complaint if you feel like a tournament. The logic is that they don't want to make new players have to catch up on 10 years of Magic (aka Type I) in order to be competitive, so only the most recent blocks are legal... while simultaneously encouraging the remaining players to keep on buying new cards since their old ones eventually get rotated out.

I've never played Extended, but it's apperantly in-between Type I and Type II (so the last 7 blocks are legal, or something. I think Tempest and on are legal in Extended, Mirage & Ice Age aren't.).

[Felch]

Man, I first started playing when Ice Age was new. Then I quit like a year later. It's too damn expensive.

[Ben Kenobi]

You can have a five colour deck, but it really helps to have harrow, and some pain lands.

I run a five colour sliver deck, which works if I get some decent lands. City of Brass really helps here.

As for Dual Lands, they're the only cards that I have had stolen. That's why I think they are among the most popular magic cards.

As for green

Creeping mould also helps here. 4 mana, 2GG, destroy target artifact, enchantment or land.

[Mr. President]

Talking of diversifying mana bases - isn't a City of Brass generally better than a painland dual like Shivan Reef? After all, the latter gives you only two colors of mana, whereas a City of Brass can provide you with any color.

FlameFlash: Technically blue and green are enemies, but for they've served me as a good 1v1 combination in the past. I used to play a deck that had blue card-drawing cards and control effects, relying on green for creatures.

The most recent version of it was something like

4 Boomerang
4 Force Spike
1 Sindbad
2 Krovikan Sorceror
2 Prodigal Sorceror
1 Hurricane
4 Scryb Sprites
4 Grizzly Bears
2 Tranquility
2 Stream of Life
2 Llanowar Elves
1 Air Elemental
1 Mana Short
4 Giant Growth
4 Unstable Mutation

(Just to give you an idea of what I think about. ) I got the idea to use blue and green because they're opposing colors and each brings something that the other doesn't.

Edit: In this case blue has card-drawing effects that get creatures and lands out faster, and green has quick creatures and mana acceleration.

[Ben Kenobi]

Do you have any Wall of Blossoms?

They are great because they provided some card drawing for Green without having to diversify mana.

[FlameFlash]

I look forward to trying these out!

Here's another question: interrupts vs. instants.

I know interrupts have been done away with in newer rule sets... should interrupts be used as instants, or still as interrupts? IMHO they should still be used as they were intended for non-serious games with friends which come from a wide variety of years and expansions but I was just curious... the new fellow plays differently than I'm used to, which I think is part of why we haven't had as much fun yet (plus my old group I taught a lot of them how to play ) ...except for that bastard with the Angel Deck.

[Mr. President]

Officially, interrupts are to be considered instants.

Unofficially, you can do whatever you want.

[FlameFlash]

'nother question: counterspells such as counterspell or remove soul which are designated as interrupts... countering a spell is right when the spell is cast, correct?

[SnowFire]

Yup. It ends up working out almost the same as it did before. Functionally, they started calling spells-as-they're-being-cast as being "on the stack," which makes sense since the whole First-in-Last-Out rules were precisely a stack. Functionally, when both players decide to do nothing, the next spell on the stack resolves, and both players have a chance to do something again.

As an example: I cast Giant Growth on my creature. You now have a chance to respond. You can counter it as usual, or do nothing and let the spell resolve. The fact that counters are now instants means that you can also do something like cast Merchant Scroll (1U: Search your library for a Blue Instant or Interrupt and put it in your hand. Well, just Instant I guess), let that resolve (unless your opponent counters it, of course), fetch a counter (that Giant Growth is still "on the stack" and hasn't resolved yet), then counter Giant Growth.

Also note that if for some reason there are multiple spells on the stack, counters can hit any of them. So if your opponent casts a Giant Growth and then somebody else casts a Lightning Bolt, you can still counter the Giant Growth even though something else is "on top of it.

Mr. P: Have you ever heard of a card called Nature's Lore? I have one in my Green-Red deck, and I think it was a common... it's 3GG for "Target player gains 8 life." Since I rarely want to cast something like Stream of Life early (I now have 2 more life. Hurray.), and getting to 9 mana for an 8-point Stream takes forever, I really like that better, myself.

[Grumbold]

Glad I got out of this game at Ice Age time.

Dual lands are "strictly better" unless you see your opponent reaching for a particular deck so you know to pick one with a counter strategy.

Personally I liked dual lands because for fun play it allowed multicoloured decks and Legends decks that I would never ever have seriously considered for tournament play. The strongest strategies are primarily single colour and even with 4 dual lands available I'd not usually try and counter a monocolour deck like a white weenie with a dual colour one.

[Mr. President]

Originally posted by SnowFire

Mr. P: Have you ever heard of a card called Nature's Lore? I have one in my Green-Red deck, and I think it was a common... it's 3GG for "Target player gains 8 life." Since I rarely want to cast something like Stream of Life early (I now have 2 more life. Hurray.), and getting to 9 mana for an 8-point Stream takes forever, I really like that better, myself.

I don't have one of those, but I do have a Taste of Paradise (3G, Gain 3 life; gain an additional 3 life for each 1G you pay in addition). I sometimes use that instead of any Streams of Life at all.

[Shadowstrike]

For just life-gaining, there are quite a few combos which allow you to gain lots of life for little cost... Angelic Chorus/Wall of Junk comes to mind. Of course that's a white combo, so that may not help. Perhaps you should consider replacing Grizzly Bears and Scryb Sprites? They're solid creatures, but green has all sorts of really beat-down creatures for not a lot of mana (at lweast back when I still played a few years back)

Going back to the point about green stomping white weenies - that's where first strike creatures come in real handy, especially since they can be stacked up to block and take out single big threats and remain unscathed. That or Wrath.

Dual-lands are game-breakers. As onthers have mentioned, the flexibility trhey offer, combined with the fact that few things target them specifically makes them really powerful. I couldnt imagine playing decks of more hten two colors without 'em. Of course, they're resally expensive so its not too easy to get for the casual player.

[Mr. President]

A couple of dedicated beatdown players that I talked to think that Wrath of God is the most broken card ever.

I used to have a Killer Bees, which was in all my green decks back in the day. I could toss in a Whippoorwill or Land Leeches in place of one of the Bears or the Sprites, get the versatility up.

[Grumbold]

Of all the deck types I think land destruction is the nastiest to play. Your opponent may win but most of the time is going to be sitting around unable to do anything. Like dual lands, most of the cards needed for a really good land destruction deck are on the banned or restricted list.