Right now, nonbasic lands are pretty universal.
Most decks rely on them almost exclusively--
there are barely any basic lands in most
Standard decklists, from FNM through the PTQ,
and at any acronym of a Magic tournament you
could care to mention. Modern, containing both
Ravnica and Alara blocks, has even less
incentive to go monocolored. So Burning Earth
could be absolutely ruinous, especially if the
deckbuilder using it is savvy enough to go
mono-red or at least not rely on nonbasics for
his splash colors.
But here's the thing-- cards like this reach an
equilibrium. In the current format, Burning
Earth would do a lot of damage. If a player
recognizes this and sleeves up a Burning Earth
deck, he might get somewhere with it. But once
the news of his success spreads, people will
start copying him. Soon, Burning Earth will be a
presence in the format that will scare people
away from heavy multicolor with nonbasic land
bases. At that point, Burning Earth will fail,
because it won't do enough damage to justify its
inclusion. Then it'll drop off the radar again.
People might still run them in their sideboards,
but really that's the best this card can hope
for.
That's the best that Burnign Earth can hope for,
really. The alternative is that nobody builds an
archetype around this card, or that people do
but the mono-red decks that run Burning Earth
aren't as powerful as their multicolor victims,
and thus the Burning Earth decks lose
consistently and so the format does not change
because who cares about that janky rogue deck
anyway.
This is an area of red's color pie that has been
really, really underused for the last few years.
They always say people don't find it fun to lose
because they cast their spells; personally, I
don't find it fun to lose to a deck that has all
the best cards from all five colors in it, but
maybe I'm in the minority. Maybe. Compared to
its predecessors, Burning Earth is more specific
and less immediately impactful, but it might
still have enough to have an impact on Standard.
I'm not sure if there are really any mono- or
two-color decks that can make much use of it,
though - the fastest deck recently was Naya
Blitz, and it was both too fast and too heavy on
non-basic lands to make use of a card like this.
Still, I could easily see some sort of meta deck
designed to punish the current trends, making
use of green or black in addition to red, that
this could go in; and the fear of that is
probably enough to have an impact in itself.
Today's card of the day is Burning Earth which
is a four mana Red enchantment that deals one
damage to a player whenever they tap a non-basic
land for mana. The cost is a little too
high and the potential impact far too low for
this to be a serious threat in most formats.
It could see some sidedeck space or a response
to a very heavy multicolor metagame, though
other choices exist that can be more reliable
against any theme. Overall as a card that
benefits from lessening the options of your deck
while relying on design choices of an opponent
it is not very impressive and outside of some
Multiplayer or Commander settings it is unlikely
to see much play.
In Limited there are only three non-basic lands,
one of which is Encroaching Lands which is
fairly worthless in the format aside from
removal for Mutavault , and the last is
Shimmering Grotto. With the odds against
one or more of those being both in an opponent's
deck, having it in play while Burning Earth is
available, and actually needing to tap it for
mana the chances of doing much damage with this
is very remote. Even as a psychological
weapon it doesn't match up to the potential of a
1/1 creature or nearly any other options for a
permanent. It isn't worth the rare draft
due to a low value and should be passed in
Booster and kept to the bottom of the sidedeck
in Sealed.
At a lower casting cost and more dramatic
effect Blood Moon out shines Burning Earth in
constructed. In standard where shock lands run
rampant the extra damage can start to add up,
but this hot tamale hits both sides of the table
so be careful.
In casual few players run non-basic lands,
and nobody enjoys getting pinged while tapping
for mana, so don’t be that guy.
When drafting this card with its M14 cohort,
make the smart choice and pass it on. M14 only
has three non-basic lands and two of them are
likely to not be tapped for mana. Mutavault
won’t be tapped for mana because it’s too busy
attacking as a 2/2 creature/land/blob and
Encroaching Wastes is not tapped for mana when
you pay four to sacrifice it to destroy a
nonbasic land (I suggest Mutavault). For the
same mana cost I’d pick Demolish over Burning
Earth, primarily to deal with Mutavault because
that card is nightmare fuel. Every creature type
AND a land? Make up your mind Mutavault.
Multiplayer is the format where this card has
the opportunity to be hot. Playing it won’t make
you a target or a threat, but it will damage
your opponents slowly and indiscriminately. If
you’re clever and have a non-basic land on the
field you can even intentionally hurt yourself
with the card once or twice to show that even
you are affected by it and that you didn’t put
it in your deck just to annoy that one friend
you have with all the shock lands in his
multi-player deck. You know the one.
