Validity of Spell Pierce in Today's Meta

[Rico Suave]

But there's a big difference between:

"Fetchland, Go, Spell Pierce your first card, untap with 2 lands available"

vs.

"Sea, Duress, take your first card, untap with 1 land available"

If you're playing a deck like Oath or one centered around Bob or practically anytime you want to resolve a 2 mana spell...you're going to notice a difference between leading with a non-basic vs. leading with a Waste-proof land.  It's not about being immune to Wasteland, it's about being immune for one turn so you can ramp to X (whatever X may be) and hopefully X will drastically improve your chances of winning.

[Cyberpunker]

I agree.

I am just saying that I do not think it will make too much of a difference in terms of the turn 1 land if you go over a certain number of nonbasics.

Don't get me wrong, there is a huge difference leading off with Duress versus having a Spell Pierce in hand. But usually after a certain number of nonbasics, I will start off with a nonbasic holding either Duress or Spell Pierce anyway.

[Delha]

I think Rico's point is that your immediate exposure is independent of your dual/basic ratio (so long as you have at least 1 Island).

When you lead with a fetch, it doesn't immediately* matter if you have 20 Islands and 4 Seas left in the deck, or 4 Islands and 20 Seas, or only of each. The end result is the same for all three scenarios: T1 Duress prevents you from leading with an Island.

*It will matter later in the game, but not so much at that exact second.

[vassago]

Leading with sea, especially when you dont know what you're up against, is begging to get punished.

[Odd mutation]

For the record, I'm acutally pretty unimpressed by Spell Pierce against Shops.  It used to be reasonable, when you only had Lodestone Golem to worry about, but consider the popular shop decks today, which could easily open with a Lodestone, Metalworker, or Hellkite, none of which make Spell Pierce pleasant to have.

Particularly with Steel Sabotage coming out, I don't see Spell Pierce as an anti-shop card at all - I'd much rather have it in an Oath/TPS meta.

But that's just it, right?  It's going to be right in some metagames and in some decks and wrong in others - but it's not obsoleted at all.  Spell Pierce is a real, legitimate vintage card.  It's not a flagship card like Force of Will, Tinker, or Lodestone Golem, but neither is Duress.  

Specifically on Duress vs Spell Pierce?  I think you're still going to want Duress or Thoughtseize in a combo deck, particularly one with Swamps.  I like Spell Pierce more than Duress in a more controlling deck like Tez.  In Gush it's kind of a wash, but I prefer Spell Pierce.

But honestly I'm not too thrilled with either card right now

I wholeheartedly agree. I've been boarding out Spell Pierce against Workshop decks... I found it doesn't counter the things I want it to counter: creatures. And at times when I need it to counter an artifact spell that isn't Lodestone Golem, Karn, Metalwoker, Duplicant, Goblin Welder, Gorilla Shaman or Steel Hellkite, the Workshop player has the needed two extra mana to render my Spell Pierce useless. I'm definitely not a fan of Spell Pierce against Workshop anymore...

Robrecht