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!
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.
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.
That's because his reply was to Steven Birklid. =)
http://www.channelfireball.com/artic...as-basic-land/
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.
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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.
Island, go.
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