HL Bannings - Community Thread

[Maqi]

I agree that you sometimes lose to Wasteland when it comes down early. But several side-conditions have to met for both players.

1. You have exactly enough or too little mana.
2. Your manabase is susceptible to Wasteland at the time.
3. Your opponent has excess mana and is therefore able to give up on the colorless mana produced by Wasteland.
4a. As a result of you having one land less, you aren't able to cast relevant spells or
4b. The tempo gained by wasting is leveraged into an (mostly onboard) advantage that leads to a win (often facilitated by Elves or other mana acceleration in company with Wasteland)

All in all, I don't think those conditions are met often enough as to necessitate a Wasteland discussion.

In the contrary, I think the mere presence of Wasteland in the format makes for interesting decisions early on (e. g. play around Wasteland or Mindcensor? play my nonbasic or basic? ...).

[ChristophO]

Due to the singleton rule and the 100 card limit players will not see non-basic hate often enough in most metas to choose a deck that is resistant against that hate. Wasteland can be the most punishing card in the early turns.

However, there are ways to prepare for the impact of that card that are much more sophisticated than fetching basics. Like Maqi has written Tempo is extremely important when coping with Wasteland. Opponent has a flipped Delver and Wastelands your only land? You are in for a bad time. You play Bayou and cast Llanowar elves and the opponent uses his single land drop to waste you? Likely a big missplay by your opponent. Getting legs on the board and using your mana every turn is extremely rewaring for MTG games and especially against Wasteland szenarios. 

Lead with a basic land/fetch land especially on the draw to avoid "losing" your very first turn. This is very important against decks with x copies of "Llanowar elves". Green decks also have acess to Knight of the Reliquary and maybe Crop Rotation. Play in a way that wasteland can not stop your first "big play" from being played. But once you are out of the gates and have 2 or 3 lands in play fetching basics can actually be quite bad against wasteland only because colorscrewing will be a lot easier for your opponent then. This is one of the reasons I religiously avoid playing WW spells other than Karmic Guide in Pattern Rector for example so that I can avoid those screw scenarios as well as keeping the amount of BB spells somewhat on the lower side. 

The alternatives that were mentioned (Ghost Quarter, Tectonic Edge) are also a lot less playable which would have implications for the other lands in the format (lets say Tabernacle, Cradle, Academy, Bazaar) if Wasteland wouldnt be around in every deck.  

[Dalibor]

1. I also think that the WL is not such a big issue. Especially not after change to Free mull, since you do not have the option to sculpt your hand to have a exactly the curve you kind of wish so much by sending away lands in excess for example. So it happens a lot more, that you have more lands and 1 wasted random dual land does almost nothing. At least thats my feeling - I try to use WL a lot more on some special lands.
2. For the scry mull - it has really been welcomed well here,cardthere is no issue I believe. From the strategic point, it looks to me like you have almost 2 free mulligans. Because if you count that scry1 as 0.5 card, it is like 7=>7=>6.5 cards. So, if players are really trying to find some key cards, they have more tries in fact in every game. Which I personaly like and dislike at the same time. I felt like free mull was enough for HL decks. But I am anyway OK with any change and I can adjust always, so ...