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After a few brainstorming sessions I realized that all three of these  decks struggled to beat land destruction spells. The decks seemed like  they would flounder when facing a deck that had a dedicated suite of  land destruction spells.

A few quick Gatherer searches revealed that the format doesn't have a ton of dedicated land destruction

Sadly, they've basically taken mana disruption out of the game. Remember the old 5-color Lorwyn decks? Their manabases were Reflecting Pool , Vivid Places , filter land, go. But with one well placed Stone Rain all of their lands would turn into Command Tower (T: do nothing) or Urza's Mine . But that possibility was denied to rogue deckbuilders. ( Drain the Well was too slow.)

Then there was Jund. I'm just going to play all these lands that come into tapped, okay? I'm totally going to untap with them every single time? The Jund deck made playing UB on "turn two" (3) and BRG on "turn 3" (4) too consistent. Well, until people figured out to play Spreading Seas .

Deck builders need to be punished for being too greedy. It's not just those two old decks. New decks might play too few lands (20) or contain a weak splash only supported by a fetchland. (WuB Caw? Others?) Think of it this way. For any "normal deck" (not Dredge, etc) you can cheat on your manabase to make it less reliable, but make your deck stronger. The occasional LD spell teaches players not to "cheat", or punishes narrow builds. Four LD spells in the same game can always be cripping, but R&D has learned how to engineer formats where Draw Go is impossible to build. They can do the same for LD.

Real example: my favorite deck is Legacy Zoo. I'm very greedy - I fetch duals every turn and I need three different colors of mana. Common knowledge says that Wasteland is the nuts against Zoo. They'd be right, if I were playing the gassy 19 land version. But try it with 21 lands, half fetches. Actually, I originally had the two extra lands in the sideboard (for Wasteland), but I kept boarding them in so that's where they stayed. Now when someone Wastes one of my lands I shrug and continue running them over. The 1-for-1 doesn't change my tempo. Sure, I'm slightly weaker against decks without LD. But in Legacy Wasteland is super common.

I'm not saying that adding lands to any deck makes it better against LD, therefore LD is safe. That's dumb, and my Legacy Zoo deck isn't a generalization. I'm saying that LD should be thought of as a form legit form of 'hate', like Pithing Needle or Boil . But instead of hating an archetype, you're hating on greediness. LD has been made into a dirty word recently, but it does a world of good.

Jun 22, 2011 -- 12:34AM, raadface wrote:

Yay for post Jace/stoneforge standard :D
Gives space for a lot more creative archetypes   and yay for pyromancer ascension too ha, its gonna be sad leaving that deck once standard rotates, I've had that deck for a while

Also, I agree with chuckles, tezzerets gambit is actually really awesome in activating the ascension, I'd say the only problem I've had with tezzerets gambit is having a tezzys gambit in hand with no pyro ascension out and you need card draw, cause then it's like you want to save the gambit for once you get your ascension out to then actually activate it but then you also need card draw. Hard decisions lol,

Na but yeah, this should be pretty awesome, I'm sure well see at least a couple new decks out there in the metagame pretty soon

And imo, I think running kiln fiends is never a bad idea, I know in your lists you like to keep a creature-less deck, but I still feel kiln fiend was made for a deck like this, if anything it can be an alternate win condition even though it may appear a little clanky or even slow at times, but I mean, the synergy is there lol, he's even a good sideboard card as well -i think i may like deprive over spell pierce, but im not entirely sure yet

anways, -good stuff

I like the Kiln Fiend as part of a transformation sideboard....transforming to a deck with Splinter Twins, Deceiver Exarchs and Kiln Fiends or playing the first game with this sideboard first can unnerve your opponent....but as you are close to casting Deceiver Exarch at the end of your opponent's turn in order to cast Splinter Twin when your turn begins in your 1st main phase, by casting Kiln Fiend one can get their opponent to tap out in order to respond to the threat of a possible 13 points of damage if two Lightning Bolts are cast for example which protects your combo even if you do not have a counterspell like Manaleak or Spell Pierce in hand or don't have a Gitaxian Probe in hand to look in the opponent's hand either. That would be 12 cards which leaves room for spells to counter Valakut/Primeval Titan - run 3x Kiln Fiend and 4x copies of Flashfreeze.