Monday, April 15, 2019

Explosion Zone and its use in Lands

Explosion Zone was spoiled yesterday and Ari obviously tagged me in a tweet about it, since it clearly is a great card for Lands-based strategies.

A few notes // rough translation of the card:

Explosion Zone comes into play with 1 charge counter.

Tap: add a colorless
XX tap: add x charge counters to it
3 tap sac: destroy all nonland permanents with converted mana cost equal to the number of charge counters on Explosion Zone

Notes:
Stage can copy it (to be a slow answer to empty // chalice, etc). Unfortunately you can't use it to kill Nexuses etc, but your Wasteland / Port / Ghost Quarter deck shouldn't have an issue with that.
It says nonland to prevent an accidental Armageddon (or intentional, if your name is April.....).
Bad versus Blood Moon and Back to Basics unfortunately (can't really activate any of those abilities // can't untap it).
Might be ok in Maverick // Stax as a 1-of (maybe even more in Stax, searching it up in Maverick with Knight sounds sort of appealing)

This in my mind really obsoletes the blue builds, although Zack will probably disagree with me. Having better mana for virtually no power loss is a boon.
Here's a quick example of a 'neo' RG Lands build (off the cuff):

//36
1 Ancient Tomb
1 Explosion Zone
4 Thespian's Stage
4 Dark Depths
1 Horizon Canopy
1 Tranquil Thicket
1 Sheltered Thicket
1 Wooded Foothills
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Forest
2 Taiga
4 Grove of the Burnwillows
1 Glacial Chasm
1 The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
2 Rishadan Port
1 Ghost Quarter
4 Wasteland
1 Bojuka Bog
1 Karakas
2 Maze of Ith

//24
4 Exploration
2 Punishing Fire
4 Crop Rotation
4 Gamble
2 Sylvan Library
4 Mox Diamond
4 Life from the Loam

Sideboard
1 Explosion Zone
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Experimental Frenzy
1 Tireless Tracker
4 Krosan Grip
4 Sphere of Resistance
2 Choke
1 Chalice of the Void

Explosion Zone supplants the need to play Barbarian Ring (mostly there to kill Prelate/Meddling Mage and the like) and Drop of Honey (in the sideboard).

I still like playing Karakas at the moment because of Thalia/(soon to be Tomik) and opposing Depths decks. Occasionally you can win a game versus Sneak or Reanimator in corner case scenarios with the card, but I wouldn't Gamble on that (pun intended).

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