Pointed Discussion

You get land? No, I get land.

I like this card! I do not quite get the new uncommon status though. This would have passed as a common and no one would have complained for it being "too powerful", but I guess it's not surprising seeing how they have been treating land destruction lately (right Craterize?)

This still doesn't get Borborygmos out the turn I want him.

Why not keep it common?

Hey, LD in standard that doesn't totally suck! (I'm looking at you, Scorch the Fields)

So with the added Rampant Growth effect for . Gruul LD is apparently worth . Which reminds you of something, doesn't it?

Hey, it's decent LD in Standard!

If your opponent doesn't have any lands you can destroy your own land to in order to pick one that better suits your needs.

This was tons of fun in Invasion. Land destruction, other than land-based land destruction (ie Wasteland), works best when you can ramp into it before you're opponents can get more than two land out. So if you're wasting a card to ramp into a spell that blows up a land, it's very helpful for that spell to also give you a land so you won't need another ramp spell to blow up a land the next turn.

Granted we don't have the acceleration or other land destruction cards in Standard to make land destruction a viable thing, but this could become good friends with Mwonvuli Acid-Moss in modern.

On the play:
T2: farseek
T3: chandra the firebrand
T4: frenzied tilling + chandra copypasta
Land count: opponent 1 - 7 you

Still probably not good enough, but hey at least I tried to make poor chandra do something seemingly impressive.

More than likely this card singlehandedly caused WoTC's recent Development of Shoddy LD.

They decided they wanted Gruul to have this card.

They realized that the only thing worse than getting Counterspell balance wrong is getting LD balance wrong.

Look, right there- Zenzei shows you something you can do in Standard that is quite far above the normal power level of Land Destruction, at a speed which is probably not enough to cinch tournaments, but is enough to make Wizards say 'right, yeah that's a good place to stop'.

If there were many other good LD cards in Standard, a Stupid Land Screwing Deck might actually have been a perfectly valid option-- Chandra as your Planeswalker, Green Ramp spells, and top out with 1x or 2x Borborygmos?!

Think for a bit if any of the nerfed 4R or 5R LDs had cost 3R or 2RR. You'd actually want to play them in this theoretical Borborygmos deck, wouldn't you? Sure, they ain't Stone Rain, but they're something, and Frenzied Tilling makes it worth it, right? The others would just be to add extra pseudo-copies of almost-Frenzied Tilling to get 'em while they're down to make sure they don't get back up.

It doesn't take more than 2 good LD cards in Standard to make a harsh deck possible with the right support cards. I'm not even THINKING about 3-color decks here, and really, I should be. Wizards probably is. So. That is why LD has sucked. Because they wanted to give us this, but they didn't want LD to actually be a deck in Standard.

Between Red, Green, and either Black or Blue, I'm sure we would have done something terrible. :P Wizards has just been protecting us from ourselves.
Not a very nice argument to bring up most of the time, but probably valid when it comes to Land Destruction.

It might look like Rampant growth and Stone Rain stapled together. It might even seem better since it's like playing both and drawing a card for no reason. But also, remember that it's playing land destruction by turn 5. Stone Rain allowed you to destroy land on turn 3, effectively robbing them of a third of their mana, but by turn 5... It's only a fifth. It's likely your opponent will already be able to play a lot of their cards too. Ramping up by turn 5 as well is also needless to say, lackluster.

But if you put these two lackluster effects on the same card? That's something I'd like to see.

Even better in this set now with all the gohddamn guildgates and shock lands.

With a Gruul Keyrune out, this on turn 4 can get you a Borborygmos Enraged on turn 6. Also, is a gruul land destruction, pretty awesome

This card is so AWESOME! It's Stone Rain + Rampant Growth, that's fantastic! Unfortunately, both abilities are significantly weaker by the time you get enough mana to play this.

Play this on the play, opponent goes from 4 to 3 (then presumably back to 4 on their turn) and you go from 5 to 7 next turn (assuming you hit all your land drops). Not really too special, not a huge set back for the opponent and not a huge gain for you, meanwhile you lost any other 5 drop you coulda played instead.

Better to go Rampant Growth into Stone Rain! Yeah, now we're talking!

Your T1: Land, mana dork
Opp T1: Land, whatev
Your T2: Land, Stone Rain.......... wait, what about.... alright screw Rampant Growth, just play Stone Rain, it's insane.

I don't know how this hasn't been brought up yet, but how come no one else is thinking of running Jund land destruction in this set?

Seems like people are looking at this and only seeing the possibilities of ramping into this to ramp into Sylvan Primordial or big Bob himself.

But think of the possibilities of land destruction alongside Contaminated Ground. You can't quite shut down someone's entire mana pool, but you will make it awfully hard for anyone that isn't running black to do much and they'll have to eat a lot of damage in the process. Turn all their shock lands into swamps, nuke any land that isn't affected by Contaminated Ground, then get Roaring Primadox out there alongside Sylvan Primordial. Easily done, reliably done, and with enough tricks in those colors if you don't get your land destruction ramp going that you'll survive early game mega-aggro decks.

So much better art... I may have to buy this playset and get over having a set go unused..

I almost want to play standard and start competing.

I wondered why they made a crappy Tinder Wall in Burning-Tree Emissary. Then I saw this, and I understood. One of the biggest conundrums of the LD player is "Cast a creature or sink a land?" With Emissary, this is nicely fixed.

The original happens to be one of my all-time favorite 'cards with fugliest art' picks.I haven't completely gone through the set list, but I'm pretty sure there's a way to bang someone with this T2ish, because in Vintage/Legacy that's an easy T1.

I love the art on this card. You can see the motion of the flames and the power of the mage summoning new growth in the center of an inferno. The Gruul have some fancy stuff.

@Psychrates: You haven't a clue what you're talking about.
1) This never sees play in Type 1 or 1.5 and it never will. They would rather be casting crazy stuff like Jace, the Mind Sculptor (which even costs 1 less mana!).
2) Burning-tree emissary was never designed with land destruction in mind and is a great card in itself. If you don't understand why free creatures and card advantage are good things, then you aren't ready to play competitively.
3) No, there is no way to get 5 mana Turn 2 in Standard. That's very hard even in modern. You clearly haven't played enough standard to play competitively.

This is a nice casual card but for 5 mana there are so many better things to do in every format that this never sees competitive play. Stone Rain and Sinkhole are where you should be looking.

Often uses this card on turn 3, enough said! I love this card, finally an awesome reprint!

It isn't bad, but unfortunately by turn 5 it's likely to be a touch irrelevant.

@hothit
Under normal circumstances, yes, this card is a turn 5. However, playing Green encourages mana-ramping, so it's not unlikely that you can still get this by turn 3.

Good card to reprint. Not too broken.

Ohai Stoneshaker Shaman! Learn some new tricks?