Messing with a mana base- cool or foul?

[WWolfe]

There's been some discussion in my playgroup recently about this. Some think it's alright despite while admitting it can be irritating while some find it totally despicable.

For instance, one player scooped the other day when someone played a Magus of the Moon when it was down to the two of them. He was playing a three color partner deck and said he only had 6 basics in the deck (he had yet to play but one) and it would be near impossible for him to overcome the Magus before the other guy hit his win-con, he'd have to draw into the right lands and draw into an answer for the Magus.

Another game someone played a Back to Basics on turn 2 and a player looked dejected as his turn for the next several rotations were draw, play land/discard to hand size, pass as he was playing a five color deck and was only running 5 basics in the deck. It wasn't until another player was able to deal with the Back to Basics that he was able to really start playing and at that point he was so far behind us that he really stood no chance.

One guy in our group plays a Jhoira suspend deck with several land destruction spells for when he gets several things suspended and it's starting to draw some groans.

So what is everyone's thoughts on messing with a mana base?

[WizardSpartan]

This is honestly a really tricky question.

If your group is playing fun/janky decks, then absolutely not.

If you can't break parity/win after using the land disruption, then absolutely not (aka playing Armageddon because you feel like it).

If your group is at least optimized up to cEDH, then sure, given you can break parity and make use of the board-wide setback.

What people need to realize is that 4-5 color decks have access to many more cards than 1-2 color decks. Their options for removal, ramp, card advantage, tutors, etc. are ample and quite good. The tradeoff is that they oftentimes get hit hard by land hate & their mana bases are more expensive. It would be ridiculous to think that having access to 2-5x the number of cards of other decks is perfectly fine and shouldn't be punished.

[Akira Foxmind]

For me it's a question of having fun while playing commander (casually, no cEDH). If you (or rather I) play against an LD deck which doesn't win within the next few turns after taking your mana base that is absolutely no fun.
If that would happen more often I would refuse to play against that deck anymore. Why would I play without having fun, right?

Responding to your example with Jhoira - Suspend:
Such a deck existed in my playgroup as well. After destroying all lands it had some eldrazi suspended most of the time, so we could start a new match pretty fast. Nontheless it got a little frustrating, if every match ended up in a similar way. In such matchups there is no way you can test new decks.
But it got focused down pretty good so the owner changed it to a 'normal' izzet spellslinger/copy deck.

_________

Edit:
Maybe it would be good to change the poll to:

cool (casual)
foul (casual)
cool (competitive)
foul (competitive)

Since LD strategies are valid options to win a match. I would diferentiate between casual (jank, play4fun) and competitive (doing everything to win).

[Aetherium Slinky]

I think it's prefectly fine to mess with someone's mana base. Not for the fun of it but as a punishment for playing a greedy mana base. You might want to level the battlefield if a Simic player starts pulling ahead with a metric tonne of lands. Similarly a 3C, 4C, or 5C deck must learn that their mana base is fragile and that's a drawback of playing many colours. You don't get your fixing for free and Magic doesn't have many built-in ways to punish that.

Each and every deck must assume that their strategy can be disrupted by any means. I've had Acidic Slime target my Lotus Vale. I lost the game but I definitely deserved it for playing such a land (a combo piece, in fact). You can't play a Yarok, the Desecrated ETB deck with all ETB removal in case someone plays a Torpor Orb. That is just bad deck design. I understand it's away from the synergistic / flavourful card slots but that's life for ya.

So for me it's perfectly fine to mess with someone's lands, ramp and fixing. In any case it's usually very expensive to do targeted LD so feel free to do that paying extra mana and assigning silver bullets to your card slots if it suits your needs. I will keep playing my Torpor Orb and will tutor for it for as long as you don't prepare to answer that. It's not hard to put in some counterspells, instant speed removal, permanent-based removal or any other meaningful way of answering threats that are unusual but thwart your entire plan. Your deck is just about as weak as the weakest link which for most multicoloured decks is their land base.

If your deck is jank and your theme is Chairs Sitting on Women Looking Gorgeous you can still build it so that it's not all nonbasics. Besides, basics are really good lands. I think they're underrated. For most decks it doesn't really matter what you have in play after T5 because you'll have your colours anyway unless you're a brave one running Mind over Matter in a multicoloured deck in which case you definitely need all the fixing you can get.

[CleanBelwas]

I play all manor of shite and I'm totally cool with it. For me, competitive level is irrelevant. If that's what you want your deck to do, go for it. It's my job to make sure my deck can handle it.

I personally don't see it as anything else other than a bad match up. Sometimes you just play a deck that is very good against your deck. Messing with your mana base is just one of many ways this can happen.

We have a buddy in our play group who loves this kind of stuff and no one else cares. He plays all kinds of MLD, taxes, pillow fort, soft locks. If it's oppressive, he likes it. It's just what he likes to do. Sometimes it works, and sometimes we kill him first. All part of the fun. No one gets salty. All good.

[TropicalBoi]

My play style is very aggressive, so when my playgroup plays a MLD spells, or a back to basics, It's very understandable after I just punched all of their faces in with a million hatebears.

It does suck, but who can blame them? They are legal cards, they bought those cards, and they enjoy playing those cards. So I think that screwing up other people's mana bases is a completely VIABLE and Fun way to play the game. Cutting off resources for your opponents is the best!

[dizzybackwaters]

I generally hate having my lands blasted, but that's only because my playgroups have always been pretty shallow gatherings, made up of transient, newer players. For the most part, we were all playing slightly upgraded pre-cons from a recent release. I don't remember much land blasting going on.

Now that I know a little more about deck building, and have been playing online a bit, land destruction is just another thing that's gonna happen. You have to prepare for it.

I say it's OK.

I still hate Infect though 

[WizardSpartan]

To everybody who said it's fine to them (Akira, Musta, Clean, Tropical), would you still say it's fine to play MLD/Back To Basics/Blood Moon if the player can't actually do anything with it? I.e. they play Armageddon and durdle because they can only rebuild as quick as everybody else.

I think a big thing about public perception of land disruption is altered because most non cEDH players don't know how to utilize it. They see that it's recommended in EDHRec and think that it's an auto include and should be played whenever.

[Aetherium Slinky]

To everybody who said it's fine to them (Akira, Musta, Clean, Tropical), would you still say it's fine to play MLD/Back To Basics/Blood Moon if the player can't actually do anything with it? I.e. they play Armageddon and durdle because they can only rebuild as quick as everybody else.

I personally actually touched on this. I said it's not just for the fun of it but rather as a form of punishment. If it hurts your opponents more than you you've achieved something and broken parity. Let's say you Armageddon 6 lands of your own and 12 from the Tatyova player I think you've achieved something. (Assuming they're out of gas and ramp.) Rebuilding at the same pace as a Tatyova player is a win by itself, they do not want to be in that situation. That's justified. If you just don't know what you're doing it's annoying but so is any other form of durdling that prolongs the game for no reason.

[Akira Foxmind]

To everybody who said it's fine to them (Akira, Musta, Clean, Tropical), would you still say it's fine to play MLD/Back To Basics/Blood Moon if the player can't actually do anything with it? I.e. they play Armageddon and durdle because they can only rebuild as quick as everybody else.

Maybe my post was easy to be missunderstood, but I mostly don't like MLD. That is because I play casual commander and want to play decks I have fun with (even if it's a bad Grumgully, the Generous deck). In any case the one utilizing MLD should be able to finish quickly afterwards.
If I were to play cEDH I wouldn't complain about MLD like in Jhoira Suspend, but I don't. So... 

Answering the question:
If I the MLD is more like a 'fair' reset for every player it's not that bad. But most of time a MLD means instant loss (at least that's what I experienced).

[WizardSpartan]

To everybody who said it's fine to them (Akira, Musta, Clean, Tropical), would you still say it's fine to play MLD/Back To Basics/Blood Moon if the player can't actually do anything with it? I.e. they play Armageddon and durdle because they can only rebuild as quick as everybody else.

Maybe my post was easy to be missunderstood, but I mostly don't like MLD. That is because I play casual commander and want to play decks I have fun with (even if it's a bad Grumgully, the Generous deck). In any case the one utilizing MLD should be able to finish quickly afterwards.
If I were to play cEDH I wouldn't complain about LD like Jhoira Suspend, but I don't. So... 

Omg, I apologize. I got your post mixed up with another person's. My bad.

I personally actually touched on this. I said it's not just for the fun of it but rather as a form of punishment. If it hurts your opponents more than you you've achieved something and broken parity. Let's say you Armageddon 6 lands of your own and 12 from the Tatyova player I think you've achieved something. (Assuming they're out of gas and ramp.) Rebuilding at the same pace as a Tatyova player is a win by itself, they do not want to be in that situation. That's justified. If you just don't know what you're doing it's annoying but so is any other form of durdling that prolongs the game for no reason.

Except unlike other forms of durdling, land disruption makes it difficult for your opponents to do anything. Regular battlecruiser-style durdling is inconsequential because your opponents will just win if you don't do anything. Land disruption into durdling sets the clock back either a bunch of turns or just indefinitely for your opponents to wrap up the game.

[Akira Foxmind]

Omg, I apologize. I got your post mixed up with another person's. My bad.

Don't worry, I'll get over it.

Re-post because of my late editing:
If the MLD is more like a 'fair' reset for every player it's not that bad. But most of time a MLD means instant loss (at least that's what I experienced).

[Aetherium Slinky]

That is because I play casual commander and want to play decks I have fun with

Yeeaaahhh... Ok I know this is almost getting off topic but here goes anyway: I'm that player that brings stax, control, or an infinite combo deck to the casual table. I do make sure the power level is roughly the same as the other decks but for me the beauty of Magic is that you can do anything. Playing against such decks is enjoyable because I need to have answers, I can't just play solitaire. I can play solitaire at home alone if I want to. It's a puzzle that needs to be solved.

Control
You need to pace your plays and can't just vomit your pretty hand on the board. You'll lose. You need to unite against that player to break through their weakness: they're probably countering or dealing with threats 1-for-1 and can't keep drawing cards forever. If they're playing some sort of discard theme then they don't usually have that many cards themselves either. Keep dropping threats and aggro and you're there.

Stax
Ooh boy, go after them early. Remove only the pieces that prevent you from winning. Everyone else is already slowed down and the stax player isn't playing for the quick win either. Relax, there's time.

Combo
Aggro. Whatever they do just keep aggroing and targeting. The wins come out of nowhere so it's important to realise that a full hand or a combo piece on the board is a threat. Remove it. Bash their head in. Hard. They deserve it. And they know it, too. (I keep losing to combat damage.)

MLD
Don't be a Timmy and dump your all your lands on the board. Be cautious. Sometimes the correct play is not to play a land if you know an Armageddon is about to hit the board. Have a counterspell ready. Ask the blue player to have one ready if you're not in blue. It's a slow grind but they're limiting their own resources, too, unless it's a weird float-all-their-mana-after-Armageddon combo deck in which case it goes under the category of combo - go at them before your lands turn to dust.

Resource denial in general is a form of Magic where you need to understand that no matter how much they're countering your threats they're still losing resources as much as you are. It's all about timing. All Magic is about timing. It's not unfair, it's just the way the game is built. You can either push yourself up or pull others down more than yourself. It's all relative.

If you feel like you're "not getting to play Magic" you're probably evaluating the situation incorrectly. You might not be able to do that thing you want to do every time and you're forced to improvise and adapt to the situation. Real life works the same way; everything is fluid and in motion and you need to keep prioritising things on the go instead of planning out everything in advance. I only one person who has actually pulled off their plan for life and I think he just kinda got lucky, too.

I already alluded to this idea that you can't let your game (or your life) depend on a single aspect of your deck. You need to understand that Vandalblast will get your mana rocks, a wrath will get your dorks and MLD will nullify whatever progress you made on your lands. Don't put all your eggs in one basket. You need to put in suboptimal cards that deal with your weaknesses. "Regular Battlecruiser Magic" is a Christmasland where you basically win the lottery every time and the competition is about who wins the most in the lottery. Sure, a Cookie Clicker game is probably fun for a while because you keep winning more and more all the time but playing that in a multiplayer setting would become a game of statistics and optimisation. I don't play ranked games because I suck at Magic but I understand why ELO rankings are a thing and why they make the games more interesting (as long as the game itself is balanced *ahem Boros ahem*).

Wrapping it up somehow: MLD and land disruption are difficult things to pull off because there aren't many cards that do that. People aren't used to that meta. Lands feel sacred but in all honesty the only safe space in Magic is your Command Zone. I'm sure MLD would be more acceptable if more cards were printed for it and people actually faced the challenge more often. They'd learn how to deal with the meta. I mean we know how to deal with counterspells, discard and stax. Those are common enough for any decently experienced player to know how to deal with.

More MLD and land disruption. Confounding Conundrum is a good start. I would love to play against more MLD because I don't know how to deal with it that effectively.

[Akira Foxmind]

That is because I play casual commander and want to play decks I have fun with

Yeeaaahhh... Ok I know this is almost getting off topic but here goes anyway: I'm that player that brings stax, control, or an infinite combo deck to the casual table. I do make sure the power level is roughly the same as the other decks but for me the beauty of Magic is that you can do anything. Playing against such decks is enjoyable because I need to have answers, I can't just play solitaire. I can play solitaire at home alone if I want to. It's a puzzle that needs to be solved.

Soooo, let's not get offtopic. Everything you wrote (inlcuding the wall of text that I didn't quote) is fitting for me as well. Not for commander, but for modern or pioneer. For me commander is a pure fun-format and thus I never pay much money for those decks or optimize them perfectly (which I both does for the before-mentioned formats). In fact I stopped playing commander for several times, because I lost motivation and got back to other formats again.

But I don't want to argue around that much. I am just a casual-commander player who plays the format now and then, so please don't give to much on my opinion. 

[WWolfe]

I don't really mind people bringing whatever they want to the table...as long as they have a way to win. Nothing bugs me more than someone who just locks out the board but really has no win condition so you're still sitting there an hour later.

I can even deal with MLD...but not once we're 45 minutes into a game and you have no way to win. That amounts to a game reset and the last thing I want to do 45 minutes into a game is basically start over. To me that's around the time a game should be heading towards the finish.