True story. The first tournament I ever won was with a Ponza/ mono red land destruction deck a long, long time ago. Sure it was a FNM type tournament but a win is a win is a win. So that archetype has also been among my favorites. Since then Wizards has deemed land destruction decks “unfun” and seriously nerfed them since say 8th edition (beginning of Modern). It gets worse and worse with each block. So instead of Stone Rain and Pillage we get Melt Terrain, Tectonic Rift and Into the Maw of Hell (seriously that is the best pure land destruction spells available in Standard). Anyways I have been playing a couple of classic Stompy and a Birthing Pod decks lately and in both cases they manged to destroy all my lands at one point. A little brainstorming and I think the best land destruction spells is actually in green.
They have at their disposal:
Beast Within
Bramblecrush
Acidic Slime
Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger
They are all very flexible unlike their counterparts in red and black.
It is easy to splash another color but I think green has enough control spells to keep it mono- green (maybe not)
Prey Upon
Plummet
Wing Puncture
Ambush Viper
Naturalize
Creeping Corrosion
Big creatures with regenerate like Cudgel Troll
Jade Mage
Skinshifter
and believe it or not Leeching Bite
You really need to deal with one toughness creatures at instant speed at the current metagame and Leeching Bite does the job. You can probably use Gut Shot but I really want to pull off killing two illusions with one Leeching Bite!
Maybe throw in a Garruk, Dismember, Rachet Bombs and a couple of Green Sun Zeniths and I might be on to something (again maybe not). I probably would draft a deck and see how it does in FNM next week.
