Tears of Serra - white nonbasic hate

[brendan]

Tears of Serra
2W
Sorcery
Destroy all non-basic lands

Now, this is obviously very strong. There are three main points of conjecture that I can see being rased:

1) Non-basic hate has traditionally been in red. Despite this, I see no reason why white can't get it. Mass destruction is white, and the idea of cleansing non-basic land is pretty white.

2) The name. Well, rain of tears destroys land, so why can't the tears of a planeswalker destroy a lot of lands?  

3) The casting cost. This is where I would like to see the discussion. I costed it at 2W as that is the lowest cost I could possibly imagine this card might ever get printed at. It will not be hard to convince me to raise it, for several reasons:
a) This is potentially stronger than Armageddon since it is a lot easier to make this a one sided 'geddon.
b) More limited land destruction such as cataclysm and global ruin have always been printed at CMC 4+

Note that this would probably never see play in vintage unless costed at 3 or less CMC. Note also, that this would probably see a lot of play in WW and WW/u in 1.x even if costed at 2WW.

The fact that it wouldn't see play in vintage unless costed at 3 isn't a really good factor in my view, since at 3CMC it could probably do disasterous things to the 1.x metagame.

[Ephraim]

I can appreciate your interest in such a card. However, Ruination exists. I understand that they're not exactly identical. You mentioned that non-basic hate is traditionally red, which is true. If a card that did not have an identical effect already exist in red, I might support the creation of this card. I don't know that it is appropriate to develop your version of the card, though.

Ruination
- Sorcery
Destroy all nonbasic lands.

Reasoning:

1) Ruination exists and, to the best of my knowledge, does not see play.

2) White already has Armageddon, which costs {W}.

3) If the intention of this card is to provide a cheaper alternative to Ruination, for possible inclusion in competetive decks (where else are non-basic lands common enough to make it worthwhile?), then the deck it is in will not be able to depend on non-basic lands, itself. This almost certainly limits the deck to mono-white or white with a minimal splash (blue or green, since Fetchlands are probably the only non-basic land safe from such a card). I think that the impact of the card, even as you have it, would be minimal.

[brendan]

heh, I had no idea that card exists. That's what I get for skipping mirage-apoc. It's unfortunate too, as it sets another precedent about the cast cost of mass land destruction.

The difference between 3CMC and 4CMC is a big one, as red or white aggro decks typically always hit that 3rd land drop on turn 3, while the 4th one is probably turn 4.5 on average. I know my extremely aggressive 1.x WW only runs 16 lands, which probably averages something like 3.3 lands on turn 4.

Having just looked at the results from the Japanese GP, it seems that at 3cc this might not be as bad as I thought. Where are all the 3 colour decks?

The difference between 1WW and 2W is minimal, so if it comes down to being printed at 3CMC we may as well go for 2W. That said, is 3CMC doable?

[dandan]

I should mention that I proposed and had a very similar card added to the old master list. My version merely changed all non-basics into Plains. Similar to Blood Moon but very different (mine was a 3cc Sorcery too)

[Matt]

Seeing as this mostly duplicates the functions of several pre-existing cards, do we need to bother actually making this? Ruination, Armageddon, whatever we endd up naming dandan's card [there was some debate about this towards the end]...