A Beginner’s Guide to Targeted Land Destruction in Casual Commander
In casual Commander, the social contract is often just as important as the power level of your decks. Not every Commander table is ready for a card like Armageddon, but that doesn’t mean that you have to sit there and let your opponents snowball out of control with powerful lands such as Gaea’s Cradle. In this article, I’m going to talk about targeted land destruction and why it’s an important part of Commander that players should both utilize in their decks and expect to see from their opponents.
Targeted land destruction goes all the way back to Magic’s earliest days where cards such as Sinkhole and Stone Rain could be used to deny your opponents from having access to the most basic resource in the game: mana. Lands have only gotten better since then, especially in a format where one of the most universally understood Rule 0 expectations is that mass land destruction is a non-starter. This makes targeted land destruction more important than ever.
Understanding the Threats
Lands that only tap for a single mana and do nothing else usually aren’t a problem in casual Commander. The main offenders that you’re likely to run into are lands that can produce tons of mana. Cabal Coffers and Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx are two of the most popular examples. Cabal Coffers can get out of hand fast in the right deck, but Nykthos in particular tends to snowball exponentially because every new colored permanent cast by its controller adds to their devotion. You can’t afford to let it go too far.
Beast Within and Generous Gift are popular spells that can be used to deal with a variety of threats. An opponent having a 3/3 token creature will almost always be preferable to them having whatever you destroyed with these spells. People often overlook the fact that these cards can be used to destroy lands because they’re so used to the idea of land destruction being a taboo that can’t be questioned. As more powerful lands get printed, it might be time to seriously consider playing cards to remove them.
If your deck relies on damage to win the game, you’ll probably want to be prepared to remove a Glacial Chasm. Decks playing this land as a way to survive against aggro often don’t concern themselves with combat and will usually have multiple ways to find it. The new Urza’s Cave from Modern Horizons 3 doesn’t even require them to cast a single spell in order to do so. When I build decks that win by dealing damage, I always make sure to include a few cards specifically to deal with Glacial Chasm.
As they print more of them, we’ll start to see a greater number of must-answer lands per game. Bloomburrow preview season has just shown us Three Tree City, a powerful land that we can safely expect to be a staple in Kindred decks moving forward. If you’re playing red and running into lands like this multiple times per game, maybe now’s the time to put Krenko’s Buzzcrusher in the 99. It even gets around hexproof and protection because it doesn’t actually target the lands in order to destroy them.
It’s important to remember that lands don’t have to make tons of mana in order for them to cause problems. Maze of Ith doesn’t even tap for mana, but it can cause major problems for decks that need a specific creature to deal combat damage. Cavern of Souls is another land that can be dangerous if your interaction suite is heavy on counterspells. It’s important to remember that it isn’t always going to be a Cabal Coffers or a Gaea’s Cradle that causes you the most problems.
Tools of the Trade
You’re probably thinking that decks slots are limited, even in a 100-card format. Where are we going to find room for targeted land destruction? If you’re playing black and green, you can run Assassin’s Trophy because it hits every permanent type. You can even run Boseiju, Who Endures in a land slot in a deck that needs a lot of green mana production on lands and use it as removal for multiple different permanent types! With the versatility of modern Magic design, you don’t always have to make big sacrifices.
If you’re playing black and white, Vindicate is always a viable option for destroying lands or any other permanent type, even though it comes with the drawback of sorcery speed. I think that it still holds its own in most casual Commander tables because you’re still getting a spell that can hit a ton of different things. If you’re on an aggro plan, you might consider the efficiency of White Orchid Phantom as an early disruptor that can turn a powerful land into an innocuous basic land, making it one of my favorite newer cards.
If you can afford to play lands that tap for colorless mana, there are tons of options available. Strip Mine and Wasteland are the classics in this archetype, known for their ability to activate without you needing to tap any mana. This can be huge if you need to save your mana for something else. Wasteland can only destroy nonbasic lands, but that’s usually what you’ll want to be destroying anyway. While these are the most efficient examples, these aren’t the only lands that can be sacrificed to destroy other lands.
I have enjoyed recent examples such as Demolition Field and Volatile Fault. Both of these cards replace the land that you destroyed with a basic land, but they also both compensate you in some way. This is a type of design space that I really like. These are also both Uncommons from recent sets, which makes them a fantastic option for players who are looking for a budget option to deal with problematic lands. I hope that we’ll keep seeing new lands in this vein in future sets.
You’ll often see spells like Crop Rotation and Expedition Map used to find these powerful lands. If you’re also playing important lands in your deck, you can benefit from playing these cards too. If you’re in a pinch, they can even find your Strip Mine or Demolition Field to destroy that Glacial Chasm so you can swing in for a commander damage kill. Don’t hesitate to use these tools in creative ways. They only become better and better when you have multiple lands that are worth searching out from the 99.
Before I sign off, I did want to mention the existence of cards such as Blood Moon and Harbinger of the Seas. They might not help you win a popularity contest, but these cards can punish greedy land bases while doing very little to hinder decks that are built to operate without access to nonbasic lands. These can be a great option for low-color decks playing in tables where restricting lands—as opposed to destroying them—is the preferred option. Do with this information what you will.
Conclusion
Thanks for sticking with me until the end. These aren’t the only cards that you can use to destroy problematic lands, so I hope that you’ll keep a look out for more as you’re upgrading your Commander decks or building entirely new ones!
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