Fetching against an unknown opponent

[Pomegranate]

I apologize if this is an obvious question, but if you are on the play against an unknown opponent, is it better to fetch a basic land or a dual? Is there a general rule of thumb on which you should do and when?

Thanks!

[SpikeyMikey]

It depends on your hand. If you're rocking 4-5 lands in your opening, you might want to bait the Wasteland to deny your opponent the tempo they'd otherwise gain from having a hand with more business than you. If you're opening with Noble Hierarch and have Daze in hand, you're going to want a Trop and risk the Wasteland in order to have both available. If you think that you can develop your mana properly with a basic (and not be cut off from a color), go for it. Basically, fetch basic when there's not a major disadvantage to doing so. Otherwise, go for the dual. Even if they're playing 4 Wastes, they're going to have it in their opening 7 less than half the time.

[(nameless one)]

I was trying to look for David Price's reply on Todd Anderson about playing tons of lands in a deck but unfortunately I can't find it. Anyways, he made a great explanation on why you shouldn't try to play around Wastelands.

I myself do not own any duals but I would imagine that for the most part, you want to be fetching for duals as it will give you more option.

[lordofthepit]

I was trying to look for David Price's reply on Todd Anderson about playing tons of lands in a deck but unfortunately I can't find it. Anyways, he made a great explanation on why you shouldn't try to play around Wastelands.

That's because his reply was to Steven Birklid. =)

http://www.channelfireball.com/artic...as-basic-land/

[(nameless one)]

That's why I can't find it

But for reference:

Wasteland:

You advocate people playing more basics as an answer to this card. Now on the surface this seems like a logical solution. After all wasteland cannot hit basics, if you play basics you will have all your mana and colors and the wasteland cannot do a thing to stop it. Well, this isn't quite how it actually works out in the real world. Believe it or not the correct answer to wasteland is to play fewer basics and more duals. Now at this point you may be laughing at me and ready to stop reading, but hear me out. This conclusion, which took me years to learn, came from many, many, MANY, instances of playing with and against wasteland. And this is not just my opinion, most of the top legacy players also feel this way. So why is this?

Colors. Basic lands are far weaker at producing colored mana than duals, this is obvious. So say for instance you have out Trop, Savanah, and Tundra, and your opponent has a wasteland, that wasteland cannot cut you off from any color. Now you may say, just have forest, island, and plains and they can't cut you off from the third mana either. Well sure if your opponent has wasteland and you have the option of getting all basics without color screwing yourself then go for it, but as long as you have at least 1 non-basic, wasteland is going to do it's job, and leave you with lands far worse than duals. If you had island, forest, tundra, then you get cut off of white and you lose because you ran basics over duals. The only time basics help against wasteland is when they are going to be casting more wastelands than you have nonbasics, which doesn't happen very often. And if you do run enough basics to always have tons of them, well they your deck is a lot less powerful and you have increased your chance of losing to someone who is utilizing the power of the duals.

Basics can help you against wasteland recursion, such as crucible or loam, or against blood moon or back to basics. But the truth of the matter is those cards are quite rare to see, and to build your deck around cards you are unlikely to see will weaken you against cards you are likely to see, which decreases your chance of winning a tournament.

Ok so I have explained why I feel basics are not the answer to wasteland, and in fact if you are worried about wasteland you should play less basics.

Ok, so what's worse than losing to wasteland? Losing to the wasteland your opponent never drew. That's right, just like losing to the incinerate your opponent didn't have in hand, losing because you were playing around the wasteland your opponent didn't have can be just as terrible. So you fetch up your basics, then find you don't have the exact combination of colors you need in a turn. Say you fetched up two islands, a forest and a plains. Your opponent has two goyfs on the board, each on lethal on their own, and you have a goyf in hand. You rip a goyf for your turn. Congratulations, you just played around wasteland. Too bad your opponent didn't draw it or wasn't running it. And you just lost to a card they didn't even have.

I've had this happen to me before. One example I was playing survival against Eva Green. I fetched up 3 forests and a mountain, since I could cast every spell in my deck with it. He dropped a jitte and a dystopia. I ripped burning wish, with a hull breach in the board. If I had fetched taiga's I could have cast them both that turn. Instead I had to time walk myself, while he got counters on jitte and I had to sac a permanent to dystopia. It straight up lost me the game. He never drew a single wasteland that game.

If you want to be able to cast your spells through wasteland, you should in general, be running fewer basics and more non-basics.

[3eowulf]

It really depends also on your deck and your opponent's.

For example, imagine you are playing landstill against a tribal deck. For sure fetching duals will enable you to have all your colors early (as Price stated), but unfortunately your gameplan against them is to play 3cc or 4cc bombs, so losing a land drop would be terrible!

[kiblast]

It really depends also on your deck and your opponent's.

For example, imagine you are playing landstill against a tribal deck. For sure fetching duals will enable you to have all your colors early (as Price stated), but unfortunately your gameplan against them is to play 3cc or 4cc bombs, so losing a land drop would be terrible!

This. You can't say playing basics is not an answer to Wasteland. Because actually, for certain decks like UWx Landstill, you need to reach 4 mana, 2 of wich WW. So playing basics let's you play Wasteland safe and reach 4 mana easily. For certain decks it might be true the statement '' playing duals is better against Waste'' but for others is not. It depends on your cc curve, on the amount of specifical mana you need, if you're running Bops or Hierarchs, etc...so saying ''the correct answer to wasteland is to play fewer basics and more duals'' in a vacuum doesn't help a lot.

[.nemesis]

There are other things to consider too. Many decks run utility lands as a 1-of, because they can possibly be fetched by Knight of the Reliquary or Tolaria West. Think Maze of Ith or Academy Ruins.

When playing around Wasteland and your opponent actually has a Wasteland, you can scrap the "good" land your opponent doesn't know about yet. If you go for your duals agressively though, you can be pretty sure your opponent is going to blow up your dual land, just to get blown out by EE recursion.

When paired against Merfolk and they don't have a Vial, I usually go for my duals all the way. So when they've wasted my third land that game, it's pretty unlikely they can win against that singleton Kor Haven.