I think that WotC should print more land destruction as long as it is heavily Boros in the casting cost: it could be a way to try to keep the increasingly broken Green and Simic in check while not giving them access to the same strategy by making it extremely hard to splash (as Modern Ponza shows, the worst one can do is allowing Green ramp decks to also destroy the opponents' mana base).
They won't for the same fact they won't ever print storm again to many people complain about it instead of you know actually try to play the game and come up with strategies to beat it pretty much why the game has devoled into standard being a bunch of mid range and agro decks
I love these histories. So much i missed when I left Magic years ago. I miss these types of decks. I had a friend that played racdos pox and stone rain and it was brutal. I heard wizard doesn’t want to make land destructions card because it is a negative player experience but the still make extra turns decks right.
Nothing wrong with extra turns decks, WotC still prints LD it is just costed in such a way that it isn't effective in the way it was back when Stone Rain was the vanilla variant.
When someone takes infinite turns, they win the game. When someone blows up all your lands, you have to sit there, drawing a card, playing a land, passing, then watching your opponent blow it up, repeat till you die. They both suck, and neither should be the tier deck in any format, but at least the game ends when someone goes infinite.
@@TheRealHungryHobo well, I had many matches in which they've gone infinite and still took a ton of turns for them to kill, and you dont get to even draw and play a land. So I would say it sucks about the same if not more.
@@aritzmartinezrodriguez1825 if they are actually going infinite you should scoop. It's like complaining that a aristocrats deck takes 10 or more turns to slowly ping away at your life total when it's normally obvious you've lost well before that and you are choosing to sit through sacrifice loops.
@@TheEvolver311 well, if they blow up all your lands and there is nothing you can do you should also scoop. I don't think "You should scoop" is a valid argument since it works for any situation in which you are going to lose. I am not complaining, Im just stating my opinion that I don't think infinite turns sucks less than getting "armaggedoned".
Ah yes, my favorite deck archetype. Look, spells are scary, so the best way to play is simply stopping your opponent playing spells is just me being safe. :^]
Same reason I tried to make mill work for yrs which led to one person building a graveyard deck pretty much every 2nd deck. I think the most numerous uncommon in our playgroup was Elixir of Immortality, I personally have over 20 copies cuz almost every deck I built for a while needed 1 or 2 n my friends thought the same way so suddenly I was battling not against people's board state but on whether they were going to draw n be able to play elixir before I kill them soni tended to go for tactical nukes like a kicked Rite of Replication on Halimar Excavator with cheap counter magic as back up. Oh the good old days when decks I built didn't need to be competitive
This is a similar version of the land destruction deck i played in the mid 90’s. It was so long ago Its not exactly it but its pretty close. 4 sinkhole 4 Stone Rain 4 Ice Storm 3 Disenchant 3 Nether Void 4 Swords to Plowshares 4 Juzam Djinn Black Lotus Mox Jet Mox Pearl Mox Emerald Mox Sapphire Mox Ruby Time Walk Time Twister Ancestral Recall Channel 2 Fireball Demonic Tutor Balance
@@gregoryfolsom7882 I played red green land destruction way back then 4 stone rain, 4 pillage, 4 creeping molds. I was a monster, and when I played type 1 I added the ice storms to the deck
@@tonythepokemonguy751 Sinkhole/IS/Stone rain/pillage/creeping mold/fissure with Strip mines and the Tabernacle to really drive the point home, plus winning with black vises
As italian, i find pretty wierd that our “Panzerotto” is called “Ponza Rotta” by americans 😂 You can imitate our dishes, but at least don’t change their names
I’m just getting back into magic but I love that you highlight old decks like this. I started with the monored world champion land destruction deck when I first started playing magic and it’s still my favorite deck
Magnivore was one of my favorite creatures for that time as well...it will always hold a place in my heart for the fact that I couldn't count on one hand how many times people tried to Volcanic Hammer a 3/3 Magnivore.
While not a highly competitive environment, Magic:Duels for some unknown reasons got Mwonvuli Acid-Moss in it's card pool on release and decks built around it were so dominant in the meta, the card eventually got removed.
Oh wow! I had no idea about Pillage! Im fairly new to Modern and I dont know the history of all the cards so I just assumed most staple cards I come across have always been legal n apart of the format for some time! It would be really cool if you made a top ten for this, maybe something like "Top 10 cards that have been reprinted into Modern" !?! Things like Pillage, Lava dart and Opt are the first things that come to mind! It might be a bad idea, or rather an idea that would be best to come back to at a later date as most cards that would fall into this category probably come from Modern Horizons 1-2 lol
A few historical curiosities from Legacy: -The original Team America (BUG tempo/BUG threshold) list was basically a land destruction deck running 4 each of Wasteland, Sinkhole, and Stifle. The deck's creator (can't remember the name) was very, very adamant that it needed to be Sinkhole over Hymn to Tourach because the mana denial plan was so central. Ultimately people realized that Hymn was just the better thing to do at 2 mana and by the time Delver was printed no one even remembered that BUG tempo used to play Sinkhole. -Back before it had evolved into the modern Death & Taxes deck, Legacy White Weenie decks semi-regularly sideboarded Armageddon against control. Similar to Erhnamgeddon the idea was to get ahead on board and then shut the door with Armageddon. I don't think I've ever seen D&T do that, probably because it already has an incredibly strong mana denial plan as plan A. -On the topic of 'geddon there used to be a prison deck called Armageddon Stax. It played the Smokestack and Armageddon (obviously) alongside lock pieces like Chalice of the Void and Trinisphere. The deck powered them out with Ancient Tomb and City of Traitors, similar to how modern day stompy or artifact prison decks do. -Pox decks have been fringe players at various times. Reid Duke once top 8'd an SCG Invitational with a mono black Pox deck that ran 4 each of Wasteland, Sinkhole, and Smallpox alongside two normal Pox. Pox is it's own distinct archetype but that's way more land destruction than most Modern Ponza decks play. -Currently there's an interesting deck called Sushi Loam that uses Urborg and Spreading Algae to machine gun down the opponent's lands. I don't think it has put up great performances but it's a cool little combo.
Great video and thanks for putting the spotlight on one of the most fun archetypes out there! Only thing I would have also like to have seen is a brief commentary the rise of the Boros LD decks that use cards like Boom/Bust + Flagstones and Nahiri + Emrakul as a wincon. Cheers!
I suppose they never put up that many top 8s but I remember a stax deck with exalted archangel and Armageddon, being kind of popular in the early 2000s. Plus arguably wouldn't any deck with Smokestacks in it fit this category? Like it doesn't expressly say to destroy a land but a big part of the game plan is to navigate to a place where they have to sacrifice their lands. Anyway wonderful video, love me some land destruction.
@@NizzahonMagic that's fair. I suppose there is a bit of overlap in the strategies but it would have muddled up the list a bit if you included too many disperate mana denial staregies in the same list.
Never heard of any of these names and I've been playing since Revised. My land destruction deck is named, "The Race to 2" because between Sinkholes and Jeweled Amulets, I can start picking off my opponent's lands on turn 2. Note, I don't play tournaments, so I'm definitely using some cards that are not commonly seen.
I started play magic when kamigawa came out. Me, my friends and the rest of the school didnt know/care about "formats", so when we did tournaments in the school we used whatever cards we had. I ended up in the top 5 (out of 15 or so xD) with a R/G shizatu land destruction deck, with some orochi snake tokens producers. But i lost... to elves
Spreading Seas is one of my favorite cards. Not exactly land destruction but really good disruption against unfair cloudpost/tron decks. I used to play it in the late 2000s early 2010s. Just all around good against people abusing non basic lands.
My Type 1 RG Land D. Deck circa 95-97 was Stone Rain, Pillage, Thermokarst, and 4 Strip Mines (yes, it was legal back then) and when Visions came added Creeping Molds. The beaters were 4 Ernham Djinns and supposedly 4 Balduvian Hordes but the Hordes were the bomb back then so i settled for Shivan and Viashivan Dragons. Now my Pre-Modern Deck is called Blasticore: part Ponza and part Saproling Burst Combo
A bit more in depth about the origin of the Ponza name from someone who played at the same LGS as Brian and Jacob Welch (the guy directly responsible for getting me in the game). The LGS we played at was called VGC (Virtual Gaming Center in West Allis, WI also where the name Team VGC came from) which was not only a place to sell trading card games, but also had a 12(?) PC set-up for LAN gaming. Some of the guys would go to Jimmy's Grotto after a few games to get Ponzas in the neighboring town of Waukesha. I never went with them though as even as a teenager my parents wouldn't let me stay out that late. 1998, when the deck rose to prominance was a bit after my prime at VGC. Most of those guys who were on team VCG were there about every day of the week. I was just on the fringe and was friends with Jacob in high school. Good guy, doesn't play anymore.
This archetype is also special to me as for about a decade I have been obsessed with a RB land destruction deck that could defeat all 2003 world champions. I have been unsuccessful so far but every couple of years or so I go back and try again.
ah yes, LandD decks... we used to call that the "middle finger" deck bec it was a very rude resource denial strategy XD im surprised, tho, that none of the successful decks with this strategy used black. Black had its own set of LD spells that felt pretty good. Although most of them DID cost BB + or costs multi-color... and were more modal like Pillage. Still, I DO remember closing out games when I summon a Desolation Angel with it's kicker paid for: while I had a Phyrexian Scuta or a fully kicked Necrovolver in the field I was also surprised that, for those that used Green, none of them used Plow Under. That card was a game-over back then if you could resolve its 5 mana cost, as it got rid of 2 resources from your opponent's field and denying his next 2 draws of non-land cards. Still, this was a great look back. I used to watch my brother pilot one in a tournament, where he was running Pillage, Thermokarst, Stone Rain and Strip Mine ... if you've lost your lands, a 2/3 Kird Ape and 6/6 Orgg was very VERY hard to deal with
@@epicnessbrian5295 I mean psychologically it's the difference between a kill spell and a counter right? Losing your creature to a kill spell feels bad, but to most people losing your creature to a counter feels worse (feels like you did nothing). A lot of players get frustrated with the feeling of "not being able to play the game" and land destruction/extra turns seem to create that feeling among more players than OTKs or aggro or control or whatever
Circa Ice age i was running r/g ld, thermokast, ice storm, stone rain, strip mine, juggernaught as creature finisher and black vice as hand size damage. Great fun!
I still own the Kai Budde 1999 World Championship deck and break it out on occasion because I enjoy (love) playing it. Like most decks that are successful at the highest level, it's very consistent.
As a kid in the early 90s I noticed there was a popular land destruction deck with Sinkhole, Stone Rain, & Ice Storm. Revised had just released & I remember that I wanted to play & own that deck so badly but Sinkhole & Ice Storm were already out of the price range for a young kid. I enjoyed Revised, 4th Edition, The Dark, & Chronicles but it was incredibly frustrating to be priced out of playing this deck while seeing Ice Age & Fallen Empires be released. This is the reason that I have & will always be against companies that actively suppress the production of their own product to manipulate prices.
Kai Budde's deck is clearly the best of all. only made possible by that incredible cycle that was Urza's. it's so good that it still somehow survives in some archetypes you can draft in vintage cube (one of my favourites for sure). pretty sure btw that the reason why wildfire and burning of Xynye are in cube is exactly that deck from 1999.
Not bad. But you missed Legion Land Lost, the mono-green strategy that did well at several pro-tours running Thermokarst, Winter’s Grasp, and Creeping Molds along with a lot of elves and wastelands. Also didn’t discuss Jokelhaups strategies, although I could understand if you don’t think they count.
Came into this one most interested to finally learn why land destruction is called "Ponza" so I'm glad to say that my hopes were not misplaced 👍🏼👍🏼 Also, while they weren't top tier, my favorite Land Destruction decks of the last few years were Merchant's various Haphazard Bombardment decks for standard and historic, it was always a blast watching 2-3 of them going off and popping lands EOT 🤣 Sadly, he completely scrubbed his channel of all Magic content when he quit Magic 😢
Kinda sad there was no mention of Liquimetal coating from Zendikar/Scars/Innistrad era. I loved that deck back in the day! And it had a similar strategy to land destruction. I thought it posted a handful of top eights back then, but I could be wrong. Hard to compete with JTMS superfriends, cawblade, and Valakut in those days tho. Great video! I always wondered where the name Ponza came from, so thanks!
A friend ran Izzet Ponza in Kamigawa/Ravnica Type II with 4 Boomerang, 4 Eye of Nowhere, 4 Stone Rain, and 4 Annex. I think the deck also ran Wildfire. Win condition was a one of Meloku or mana burn with Spectral Searchlight. The deck sucked to play against; if you were on the draw, expect your land to get bounced. Dissension changed that with the printing of Spell Snare.
I never made the connection between ponza and the food. In my vocabulary, what you described is a panzarotti/calzone. Only place I've heard calzones called panzarotti was in my high school cafeteria
its actually my favorite deck style. austere command wrath of god fumigate wake of destruction orcish settlers dwarven miner dwarven blastminer shattering pulse fanning the flames. 12 lands that can turn into creatures and 12 dual lands. deck blows up all opponents permanents including lands and late game wins with attacking with lands or fanning the flames.
4 Ice Storm, 4 SInkhole, 4 Strip Mine, Couple of Stone Rains, 4 black Vice, 4 Dark RItual, 4 Juzam, Power 9, Chaos Orb, Nether Void, Some direct damage, I miss when Land Destruction was insane.
I feel like Death & Taxes (especially the Leonin Arbiter + Ghost Quarter variants), RIX Boros Land Destruction (with a focus on Haphazard Bombardment), and Owling Mine (Using Eye of Nowhere and Boomerang to keep opponents' lands in hand, while giving them extra cards they can't use with Howling Mine and draining them with Ebony Owl Netsuke) all deserve honorable mentions. But maybe I just consume way too much fringe deck content 😂
Why only ernhamgeddon was featured for 1996? there were two land destruction decks that were prevalent during that time which were ernhamgeddon and RG land destruction. The latter had stone rain, pillage and thermokarst, Ernham and balduvian horde for beaters.
Yeah, I should have talked about the Thermokarst deck, it only had a single GP Top 8, so I don't feel like it is a complete disaster I didn't discuss it. But yeah, definitely should have made the video.
I had't hrard the explanation about the Ponza name. Especially fits since some folks called burn spells "cheese" back in the day since a lot of the card art was big yellow balls or wedges. Add fried crust for land destruction, nyuck nyuck.
My 'Gruul Aggro deck, by Kevin Reynolds' got top 3 at invitational in 2014. It was actually a land destruction deck. I would link it but every time my comment gets deleted.
I had the impression that land destruction was among, perhaps the first recognized deck theme strategy. I thought decks with sinkhole and demonic hoards led the way for the archetype. does anyone have feedback on such? Maybe they were but didn't get top 8 in really big tournaments and hence got left out of the video if there were no written records to look up.
Just found out about Ponza the other day when looking up if any Modern decks ran one of my favorite cards, Elder Gargaroth; and Ponza was the only deck archetype people mentioned it seeing play in :[
Decline of land destruction is because the mana curve of non-rotating formats are getting shorter and shorter due to the power creep brought by creatures introduced in new sets, which also affects standard.
I wonder if that pizza place knows about the deck and how the furthest reach their signature item has had beyond their small Wisconsin town is lending its name to a sort of mean deck that people play in a card game
It makes me laugh; my own scorched earth LD deck is Red/Black, and nothing like these, but then it never ran great, either. Sinkhole is one of my favorite LD cards, and it, Strip Mine, Wasteland, and Pillage make up a lot of the deck. Honestly, I've never appreciated Wizards' negative view of Land Destruction. I get it; taking away my opponent's ability to actually play the game can get annoying, but I'm equally annoyed by so many Green/X decks that just have Green for ramp. It's not like Green costs more, to account for the extra mana, but it would be nice to be able to restrain their growth in mana.
There was one deck I loved to play that would have been considered land destruction, but it was pretty funny when I could pull it off - anyone for the living plane/simoon combo??
My idea of land destruction involves Assassin's Trophy and Gaea's Blessing. Eventually you'll blow up all of their lands and everything else they play.
You missed 2002, where Ponza decks got copies of pillage as well as Rishadan port and Dust bowl. The format was littered with mono green decks that you could wipe the board on with a single cave in or earthquake. Played more like a mono red control deck. Deck would win with lightning dragon or masticore after your opponent was locked out of resources.
Also, you are calling any LD deck ponza generically but I think this is incorrect, the ponza scheme is very specifically the LD/creatures/burn shell. For example the UR magnivore deck was called UR magnivore not ur ponza. But there were indeed a monored ponza deck at the time or maybe a little bit earlier; it ran Zozu the punisher, stone rain and other stuff.
Oh how I miss my R/G Ponza deck from 2006. Yep, they don't do any good/decent land destruction anymore but will print the shit out of overly strong as can be cards/mechanics now. Pauper where I get my land D taste.
The fact that the name of this deck type comes from Ponza Rotta is so silly haha. Here in italy, it's Panzerotti, so to know that I've been playing a deck in italy named after a butchering of the actual name makes me feel conflicted for sure.
No love for destructive urge? (3 mana aura that makes opponent sacrifice a land when enchanted creature deals combat damage). Turn 1 mana dork, turn 2 stone rain, turn 3 destructive urge on the mana dork and lock them down at 1 land all game lol.
“Land destruction decks won against spirit tribal in a landslide”
I see what you did there
That's actually the best subscribed/not-subscribed ratio I've seen a UA-camr have!
That dish is actually called "Panzerotto".
So seeing it written as "Ponza rotta" (broken island of Ponza) is truly hilarious for an Italian.
If I had a nickel for every angry Italian in the comments I would have like...$2.50.
I think that WotC should print more land destruction as long as it is heavily Boros in the casting cost: it could be a way to try to keep the increasingly broken Green and Simic in check while not giving them access to the same strategy by making it extremely hard to splash (as Modern Ponza shows, the worst one can do is allowing Green ramp decks to also destroy the opponents' mana base).
Imagine if there had been a way to interact with Field of the Dead. . .
They won't for the same fact they won't ever print storm again to many people complain about it instead of you know actually try to play the game and come up with strategies to beat it pretty much why the game has devoled into standard being a bunch of mid range and agro decks
Honorable mention to Pox and Smallpox.
I really like the explanation of Ponza. I never knew WHY it was called that!
I love these histories. So much i missed when I left Magic years ago. I miss these types of decks. I had a friend that played racdos pox and stone rain and it was brutal. I heard wizard doesn’t want to make land destructions card because it is a negative player experience but the still make extra turns decks right.
Nothing wrong with extra turns decks, WotC still prints LD it is just costed in such a way that it isn't effective in the way it was back when Stone Rain was the vanilla variant.
When someone takes infinite turns, they win the game.
When someone blows up all your lands, you have to sit there, drawing a card, playing a land, passing, then watching your opponent blow it up, repeat till you die.
They both suck, and neither should be the tier deck in any format, but at least the game ends when someone goes infinite.
@@TheRealHungryHobo well, I had many matches in which they've gone infinite and still took a ton of turns for them to kill, and you dont get to even draw and play a land. So I would say it sucks about the same if not more.
@@aritzmartinezrodriguez1825 if they are actually going infinite you should scoop. It's like complaining that a aristocrats deck takes 10 or more turns to slowly ping away at your life total when it's normally obvious you've lost well before that and you are choosing to sit through sacrifice loops.
@@TheEvolver311 well, if they blow up all your lands and there is nothing you can do you should also scoop. I don't think "You should scoop" is a valid argument since it works for any situation in which you are going to lose.
I am not complaining, Im just stating my opinion that I don't think infinite turns sucks less than getting "armaggedoned".
Ah yes, my favorite deck archetype. Look, spells are scary, so the best way to play is simply stopping your opponent playing spells is just me being safe. :^]
Unfortunately land destruction is only good against combo decks and temporarily green decks.
Land destruction is preemptive counterspells
True true
Same reason I tried to make mill work for yrs which led to one person building a graveyard deck pretty much every 2nd deck. I think the most numerous uncommon in our playgroup was Elixir of Immortality, I personally have over 20 copies cuz almost every deck I built for a while needed 1 or 2 n my friends thought the same way so suddenly I was battling not against people's board state but on whether they were going to draw n be able to play elixir before I kill them soni tended to go for tactical nukes like a kicked Rite of Replication on Halimar Excavator with cheap counter magic as back up. Oh the good old days when decks I built didn't need to be competitive
Basically my Crosis the purger commander deck. My opponent can play if the cant have cards in hand...
This is a similar version of the land destruction deck i played in the mid 90’s. It was so long ago Its not exactly it but its pretty close.
4 sinkhole
4 Stone Rain
4 Ice Storm
3 Disenchant
3 Nether Void
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Juzam Djinn
Black Lotus
Mox Jet
Mox Pearl
Mox Emerald
Mox Sapphire
Mox Ruby
Time Walk
Time Twister
Ancestral Recall
Channel
2 Fireball
Demonic Tutor
Balance
I always wondered why Ice Storm was never really reprinted outside of the base set.
Sinkhole, creeping moss and ice storm don’t get enough love as land destruction spells
Two of those are ridiculously hard to find at a reasonable price. Naturally, I have full playsets of both in my stacks deck
@@gregoryfolsom7882 I played red green land destruction way back then 4 stone rain, 4 pillage, 4 creeping molds. I was a monster, and when I played type 1 I added the ice storms to the deck
Sinkhole got enough to be banned in Pauper
@@tonythepokemonguy751 Sinkhole/IS/Stone rain/pillage/creeping mold/fissure with Strip mines and the Tabernacle to really drive the point home, plus winning with black vises
@@tonythepokemonguy751 i palyed the same setup bro! what were your hitters then?
My favorite deck type
As italian, i find pretty wierd that our “Panzerotto” is called “Ponza Rotta” by americans 😂 You can imitate our dishes, but at least don’t change their names
Yes, they are all messed up...
Where i'm at in New Jersey, they're "panzerotti" which is at least close 🤣
@@dandinan2949 it is the correct name! “Panzerotti” is the plural of “Panzerotto”
I’m just getting back into magic but I love that you highlight old decks like this. I started with the monored world champion land destruction deck when I first started playing magic and it’s still my favorite deck
Magnivore was one of my favorite creatures for that time as well...it will always hold a place in my heart for the fact that I couldn't count on one hand how many times people tried to Volcanic Hammer a 3/3 Magnivore.
While not a highly competitive environment, Magic:Duels for some unknown reasons got Mwonvuli Acid-Moss in it's card pool on release and decks built around it were so dominant in the meta, the card eventually got removed.
Interesting!
Oh wow! I had no idea about Pillage! Im fairly new to Modern and I dont know the history of all the cards so I just assumed most staple cards I come across have always been legal n apart of the format for some time! It would be really cool if you made a top ten for this, maybe something like "Top 10 cards that have been reprinted into Modern" !?! Things like Pillage, Lava dart and Opt are the first things that come to mind! It might be a bad idea, or rather an idea that would be best to come back to at a later date as most cards that would fall into this category probably come from Modern Horizons 1-2 lol
A few historical curiosities from Legacy:
-The original Team America (BUG tempo/BUG threshold) list was basically a land destruction deck running 4 each of Wasteland, Sinkhole, and Stifle. The deck's creator (can't remember the name) was very, very adamant that it needed to be Sinkhole over Hymn to Tourach because the mana denial plan was so central. Ultimately people realized that Hymn was just the better thing to do at 2 mana and by the time Delver was printed no one even remembered that BUG tempo used to play Sinkhole.
-Back before it had evolved into the modern Death & Taxes deck, Legacy White Weenie decks semi-regularly sideboarded Armageddon against control. Similar to Erhnamgeddon the idea was to get ahead on board and then shut the door with Armageddon. I don't think I've ever seen D&T do that, probably because it already has an incredibly strong mana denial plan as plan A.
-On the topic of 'geddon there used to be a prison deck called Armageddon Stax. It played the Smokestack and Armageddon (obviously) alongside lock pieces like Chalice of the Void and Trinisphere. The deck powered them out with Ancient Tomb and City of Traitors, similar to how modern day stompy or artifact prison decks do.
-Pox decks have been fringe players at various times. Reid Duke once top 8'd an SCG Invitational with a mono black Pox deck that ran 4 each of Wasteland, Sinkhole, and Smallpox alongside two normal Pox. Pox is it's own distinct archetype but that's way more land destruction than most Modern Ponza decks play.
-Currently there's an interesting deck called Sushi Loam that uses Urborg and Spreading Algae to machine gun down the opponent's lands. I don't think it has put up great performances but it's a cool little combo.
Was going to mention the Urborg/Spreading Algae combo too. Way too convenient to slide into an enchantress deck as well.
Wisconsin native here; Waukesha is pronounced “wah-keh-shaw” with the emphasis on the first and last syllables.
Great video and thanks for putting the spotlight on one of the most fun archetypes out there! Only thing I would have also like to have seen is a brief commentary the rise of the Boros LD decks that use cards like Boom/Bust + Flagstones and Nahiri + Emrakul as a wincon. Cheers!
My favorite deck history yet. Great stuff man!
Avalanche Riders, so ICONIC! I still use that creature to get rid of Field of the Dead :P
I suppose they never put up that many top 8s but I remember a stax deck with exalted archangel and Armageddon, being kind of popular in the early 2000s. Plus arguably wouldn't any deck with Smokestacks in it fit this category? Like it doesn't expressly say to destroy a land but a big part of the game plan is to navigate to a place where they have to sacrifice their lands. Anyway wonderful video, love me some land destruction.
I think of Smokestacks and the like more as "prison" decks, but I could see including them here.
@@NizzahonMagic that's fair. I suppose there is a bit of overlap in the strategies but it would have muddled up the list a bit if you included too many disperate mana denial staregies in the same list.
Never heard of any of these names and I've been playing since Revised. My land destruction deck is named, "The Race to 2" because between Sinkholes and Jeweled Amulets, I can start picking off my opponent's lands on turn 2. Note, I don't play tournaments, so I'm definitely using some cards that are not commonly seen.
I started play magic when kamigawa came out. Me, my friends and the rest of the school didnt know/care about "formats", so when we did tournaments in the school we used whatever cards we had. I ended up in the top 5 (out of 15 or so xD) with a R/G shizatu land destruction deck, with some orochi snake tokens producers. But i lost... to elves
My favourite MTG series in UA-cam
Spreading Seas is one of my favorite cards. Not exactly land destruction but really good disruption against unfair cloudpost/tron decks. I used to play it in the late 2000s early 2010s. Just all around good against people abusing non basic lands.
My favorite deck type for 1v1 and played that back in the 90's and ran sinkhole, ice storm and juggernaut.....later included Army ants and blood moon.
My Type 1 RG Land D. Deck circa 95-97 was Stone Rain, Pillage, Thermokarst, and 4 Strip Mines (yes, it was legal back then) and when Visions came added Creeping Molds. The beaters were 4 Ernham Djinns and supposedly 4 Balduvian Hordes but the Hordes were the bomb back then so i settled for Shivan and Viashivan Dragons. Now my Pre-Modern Deck is called Blasticore: part Ponza and part Saproling Burst Combo
A bit more in depth about the origin of the Ponza name from someone who played at the same LGS as Brian and Jacob Welch (the guy directly responsible for getting me in the game). The LGS we played at was called VGC (Virtual Gaming Center in West Allis, WI also where the name Team VGC came from) which was not only a place to sell trading card games, but also had a 12(?) PC set-up for LAN gaming. Some of the guys would go to Jimmy's Grotto after a few games to get Ponzas in the neighboring town of Waukesha.
I never went with them though as even as a teenager my parents wouldn't let me stay out that late. 1998, when the deck rose to prominance was a bit after my prime at VGC. Most of those guys who were on team VCG were there about every day of the week. I was just on the fringe and was friends with Jacob in high school. Good guy, doesn't play anymore.
This archetype is also special to me as for about a decade I have been obsessed with a RB land destruction deck that could defeat all 2003 world champions. I have been unsuccessful so far but every couple of years or so I go back and try again.
ah yes, LandD decks... we used to call that the "middle finger" deck bec it was a very rude resource denial strategy XD
im surprised, tho, that none of the successful decks with this strategy used black. Black had its own set of LD spells that felt pretty good. Although most of them DID cost BB + or costs multi-color... and were more modal like Pillage. Still, I DO remember closing out games when I summon a Desolation Angel with it's kicker paid for: while I had a Phyrexian Scuta or a fully kicked Necrovolver in the field
I was also surprised that, for those that used Green, none of them used Plow Under. That card was a game-over back then if you could resolve its 5 mana cost, as it got rid of 2 resources from your opponent's field and denying his next 2 draws of non-land cards.
Still, this was a great look back. I used to watch my brother pilot one in a tournament, where he was running Pillage, Thermokarst, Stone Rain and Strip Mine ... if you've lost your lands, a 2/3 Kird Ape and 6/6 Orgg was very VERY hard to deal with
Omg, I forgot Temporal Aperture existed. Loved playing that cards in Ponza blowing people out with Colossus or Wildfire off the top.
It's fun if your the one destroying lands but the moment someone does it to you it feels really bad hahaha
its no different than losing to any other strategy
@@epicnessbrian5295 I mean psychologically it's the difference between a kill spell and a counter right? Losing your creature to a kill spell feels bad, but to most people losing your creature to a counter feels worse (feels like you did nothing). A lot of players get frustrated with the feeling of "not being able to play the game" and land destruction/extra turns seem to create that feeling among more players than OTKs or aggro or control or whatever
4:39 this is my favorite part of old school magic.
Circa Ice age i was running r/g ld, thermokast, ice storm, stone rain, strip mine, juggernaught as creature finisher and black vice as hand size damage. Great fun!
I still own the Kai Budde 1999 World Championship deck and break it out on occasion because I enjoy (love) playing it. Like most decks that are successful at the highest level, it's very consistent.
"Blinkriders" was a land destruction deck that was putting up good results in the TSP timeframe
As a kid in the early 90s I noticed there was a popular land destruction deck with Sinkhole, Stone Rain, & Ice Storm. Revised had just released & I remember that I wanted to play & own that deck so badly but Sinkhole & Ice Storm were already out of the price range for a young kid. I enjoyed Revised, 4th Edition, The Dark, & Chronicles but it was incredibly frustrating to be priced out of playing this deck while seeing Ice Age & Fallen Empires be released. This is the reason that I have & will always be against companies that actively suppress the production of their own product to manipulate prices.
Jacob Welch won Wisconsin states in 1998, beating Bob Maher in the finals. Kowal may have helped design the deck, but he didn't win that year.
You're right.
I see that foil "Tehila" in the background. My friend has one too.
Now this is my kinda deck 😂
💜⚡
agreed
Kai Budde's deck is clearly the best of all. only made possible by that incredible cycle that was Urza's. it's so good that it still somehow survives in some archetypes you can draft in vintage cube (one of my favourites for sure). pretty sure btw that the reason why wildfire and burning of Xynye are in cube is exactly that deck from 1999.
Pox in Legacy has a big land destruction component. Did it never Top 8?
I was about to mention pox and saw this. I know it has top 8 in invitational's.
Not bad. But you missed Legion Land Lost, the mono-green strategy that did well at several pro-tours running Thermokarst, Winter’s Grasp, and Creeping Molds along with a lot of elves and wastelands.
Also didn’t discuss Jokelhaups strategies, although I could understand if you don’t think they count.
You're right, I forgot about Legion Land Loss. It only has a single GP Top 8, so not a huge disaster, but it still should have been here.
@@NizzahonMagic really? I would have sworn it had a PT top 8 but I could be wrong.
Maybe it was a PT top 16.
Came into this one most interested to finally learn why land destruction is called "Ponza" so I'm glad to say that my hopes were not misplaced 👍🏼👍🏼
Also, while they weren't top tier, my favorite Land Destruction decks of the last few years were Merchant's various Haphazard Bombardment decks for standard and historic, it was always a blast watching 2-3 of them going off and popping lands EOT 🤣
Sadly, he completely scrubbed his channel of all Magic content when he quit Magic 😢
Really enjoy all your videos. Very informative. GO POKES!!
Kinda sad there was no mention of Liquimetal coating from Zendikar/Scars/Innistrad era. I loved that deck back in the day! And it had a similar strategy to land destruction. I thought it posted a handful of top eights back then, but I could be wrong. Hard to compete with JTMS superfriends, cawblade, and Valakut in those days tho.
Great video! I always wondered where the name Ponza came from, so thanks!
A friend ran Izzet Ponza in Kamigawa/Ravnica Type II with 4 Boomerang, 4 Eye of Nowhere, 4 Stone Rain, and 4 Annex. I think the deck also ran Wildfire. Win condition was a one of Meloku or mana burn with Spectral Searchlight. The deck sucked to play against; if you were on the draw, expect your land to get bounced. Dissension changed that with the printing of Spell Snare.
Yep, that was more or less the Eminent Domain deck that was covered in this video.
Luv Erhnamgeddan. You can play it in Old School, so it happily lives on.
I never made the connection between ponza and the food. In my vocabulary, what you described is a panzarotti/calzone. Only place I've heard calzones called panzarotti was in my high school cafeteria
Most people don't have youtube accounts. The fact that half your viewers are subscribers is a miracle.
its actually my favorite deck style.
austere command
wrath of god
fumigate
wake of destruction
orcish settlers
dwarven miner
dwarven blastminer
shattering pulse
fanning the flames.
12 lands that can turn into creatures and 12 dual lands.
deck blows up all opponents permanents including lands and late game wins with attacking with lands or fanning the flames.
4 Ice Storm, 4 SInkhole, 4 Strip Mine, Couple of Stone Rains, 4 black Vice, 4 Dark RItual, 4 Juzam, Power 9, Chaos Orb, Nether Void, Some direct damage, I miss when Land Destruction was insane.
I feel like Death & Taxes (especially the Leonin Arbiter + Ghost Quarter variants), RIX Boros Land Destruction (with a focus on Haphazard Bombardment), and Owling Mine (Using Eye of Nowhere and Boomerang to keep opponents' lands in hand, while giving them extra cards they can't use with Howling Mine and draining them with Ebony Owl Netsuke) all deserve honorable mentions. But maybe I just consume way too much fringe deck content 😂
Why only ernhamgeddon was featured for 1996? there were two land destruction decks that were prevalent during that time which were ernhamgeddon and RG land destruction. The latter had stone rain, pillage and thermokarst, Ernham and balduvian horde for beaters.
Yeah, I should have talked about the Thermokarst deck, it only had a single GP Top 8, so I don't feel like it is a complete disaster I didn't discuss it. But yeah, definitely should have made the video.
they should teach this history in school
I had't hrard the explanation about the Ponza name. Especially fits since some folks called burn spells "cheese" back in the day since a lot of the card art was big yellow balls or wedges. Add fried crust for land destruction, nyuck nyuck.
My 'Gruul Aggro deck, by Kevin Reynolds' got top 3 at invitational in 2014. It was actually a land destruction deck. I would link it but every time my comment gets deleted.
I had the impression that land destruction was among, perhaps the first recognized deck theme strategy. I thought decks with sinkhole and demonic hoards led the way for the archetype. does anyone have feedback on such? Maybe they were but didn't get top 8 in really big tournaments and hence got left out of the video if there were no written records to look up.
been watching forever... totally thought I was subscribed haha
Just found out about Ponza the other day when looking up if any Modern decks ran one of my favorite cards, Elder Gargaroth; and Ponza was the only deck archetype people mentioned it seeing play in :[
for years back in the 90s i played black LD
Never knew my states magic players love land destruction and have a huge amount of history with the archetype.
Very nice!
Do a video for the history of discard decks!
I feel the only land destruction spell I actually like is Vindicate.
But I remember the day where Land Destruction was a force in Standard!
haphazard bombardment was a decent land destruction spell for it's little bit of time in standard
Waukesha (WAW-kuh-shaw)
I would think Smallpox decks in Legacy would qualify as land destruction decks that are important to the history.
Subbed. Sorry, didn't realize I wasn't subbed. I watch every video.
Thanks for the sub!
Decline of land destruction is because the mana curve of non-rotating formats are getting shorter and shorter due to the power creep brought by creatures introduced in new sets, which also affects standard.
I wonder if that pizza place knows about the deck and how the furthest reach their signature item has had beyond their small Wisconsin town is lending its name to a sort of mean deck that people play in a card game
I feel like they have to know at this point, since if you Google ponza rotta you get their restaurant and stuff about the deck haha
I would love to see a pox history
For all the fear of sinkhole back in the day, black land destruction really never got its day. I saw a few pox/smallpox variants, but nothing major.
What about the use of sinkhole and Ice Storm on the early days of MTG? Did they not make an impact on competitive play?
People played them, but they were just in decks, they weren't land destruction decks.
No Legion Land Loss? It was supposed to be the anti-Necro deck. Well, I guess if it didn't make the list, it didn't succeed in its intent.
It should have been here. It had one GP Top 8, which is enough. It slipped my memory.
You should watch mono black mtg's land destruction arena content. He's really good at brewing!
It makes me laugh; my own scorched earth LD deck is Red/Black, and nothing like these, but then it never ran great, either. Sinkhole is one of my favorite LD cards, and it, Strip Mine, Wasteland, and Pillage make up a lot of the deck.
Honestly, I've never appreciated Wizards' negative view of Land Destruction. I get it; taking away my opponent's ability to actually play the game can get annoying, but I'm equally annoyed by so many Green/X decks that just have Green for ramp. It's not like Green costs more, to account for the extra mana, but it would be nice to be able to restrain their growth in mana.
you can run land destruction right now in standard! izzet or gruul whichever you prefer
Big fan of the land destruction
boom//bust never gets any love
There was one deck I loved to play that would have been considered land destruction, but it was pretty funny when I could pull it off - anyone for the living plane/simoon combo??
Fall of thran and tormods crypt combo is a cool way to destroy lands
Always wondered why OG ponza didn’t run pillage.
It wasn't in Standard for OG Ponza.
My idea of land destruction involves Assassin's Trophy and Gaea's Blessing. Eventually you'll blow up all of their lands and everything else they play.
I built an extremely powerfu G/Bl great henge land destruction deck🔥🤠
You missed 2002, where Ponza decks got copies of pillage as well as Rishadan port and Dust bowl. The format was littered with mono green decks that you could wipe the board on with a single cave in or earthquake. Played more like a mono red control deck. Deck would win with lightning dragon or masticore after your opponent was locked out of resources.
We need an episode on sui-black
Also, you are calling any LD deck ponza generically but I think this is incorrect, the ponza scheme is very specifically the LD/creatures/burn shell. For example the UR magnivore deck was called UR magnivore not ur ponza. But there were indeed a monored ponza deck at the time or maybe a little bit earlier; it ran Zozu the punisher, stone rain and other stuff.
Wisconsin showing up! Also the "e" in waukesha is pronounced like in "et cetera"
Walk eh shaw
Oh how I miss my R/G Ponza deck from 2006.
Yep, they don't do any good/decent land destruction anymore but will print the shit out of overly strong as can be cards/mechanics now.
Pauper where I get my land D taste.
The fact that the name of this deck type comes from Ponza Rotta is so silly haha. Here in italy, it's Panzerotti, so to know that I've been playing a deck in italy named after a butchering of the actual name makes me feel conflicted for sure.
Did loam pox decks not count for this?
No love for destructive urge? (3 mana aura that makes opponent sacrifice a land when enchanted creature deals combat damage). Turn 1 mana dork, turn 2 stone rain, turn 3 destructive urge on the mana dork and lock them down at 1 land all game lol.
4:48
On Wisconsin!
I used to live in Wisconsin, and my father still lives there.
It's pronounced, "waa·kuh·shaa
'The great state of Wisconsin'- hmmm, I wonder which state Nizzahon is from... 😉
Not Wisconsin haha. Seriously.
My mistake was watching this while hungry
What? No more "Stone Rain" in MTG? Sacrilege!
I’m really surprised, no black splash anywhere? There are extremely powerful black land destruction cards
ooooooof Mark Le Pine!
i thought u said Marc Lepine (polytechnique klr)