Why/when/how was it good? In what deck? Against what strategy?

I used to have 3 reclamation sage, then replaced with 3 creeping mold. There's turn 3 land destruction oppotunity when it's in opening hand, and top deck it's still an off-curve artifact enchantment hate similar to reclamation sage.

Kind of ramp deck? I meant this, the card is far from hot garbage without testing. It gives you more spells to be consistent on turn 3 along vegetation to go ahead on mana, and it's not dead against aggro or bad mathups or lategame.
4 mana is a lot for this card, but it doesn't make it unplayable or garbage without any possible home. It is quite flexible and in a good deck it can be useful in the duels ladder format. I haven't tested it yet, but i will definitely try it when i rebuild my ramp deck. At least it deserves to be tested.

I don't see Creeping Mold as garbage, but that's just me I guess. I don't have it to play it at the moment though. I used to use the cards that all said were trash and then beat them with it in my deck and using it effectively. Yes it sucks that it's a sorcery, but it's a sorcery that lets you use it in one of 3 ways.

If it was an instant, people would say it's overpowered. It's just one of those things. But, again it's a sorcery for what it does. I don't have all the cards unlocked so look this up, but what else does green have in the way of getting rid of all 3 of those things? White it the usual go to for getting rid of artifacts and enchantments. and usualy, even if it's an instant in white, it still costs 3 mana generally and can't do anything about the lands.

And seeing as a lot of decks out there in the meta are 2 or 3 colors if you need to use it on a land, go for what land they have little of. It also targets all lands, not just basic. and can be used on turn 3 with a "mana elf" or something like it.

Meh, I don't worry what people on the internet say most of the time. It's been the same with every duels game, people saying things are so bad to use. Because, yeah no one on this forum has ever been mana screwed before playing this and being stuck as like 3 mana for so long and the opponent is sitting pretty over there with plenty and, oh wait, he just Creeping Molded you down to 2 lands. Seen it happen plenty of times with things like that.

But again it is the internet and everyone here always gets god hands apparently, lol.

Well it's never irrelevant, but it's far from a 'mistake.' I think its upside is fairly high, but its bottom is abismally low. I wouldn't play it, but I wouldn't necessarily think badly of someone who did. If we aren't in the realm of hyperbole, it's an okay card, but there are much better options for 4 drops in green.

You could run mold with possessed scab, and displace (there may be better options, but we'd want to return 2 creatures to hand) for a quasi-infinite loop. When it works it would be game over, but generally it would be pretty inconsistent and klunky.

That said, if we ever get a 4 drop creature that returns a sorcery from GY to play, Baral's expertise + that creature would be a heck of a strong lock. And you could run it in a shell somewhat similar to what I've just described.

Depends also on what you are trying to make the deck do. Meta isn't the same between ios, xbox and steam all the time. heck, all the things people say are in the meta, I hardly ever see people running in 1v1 when I play on xbox.

I make decks based on what i see being played, not based on what people on forums say. Don't take it wrong way though, i do value what people say about cards on here. But i am also not going to run the same deck that everyone else is. in my opinion, that is not fun at all. but i know others feel different.

i also see a card like this having more value in 2hg than in 1v1. People on here(and its not a bad thing) only think about the 1v1 value of things. Part of the reason i get put down about running things like my all blue, creatureless deck i use in 2hg. But i have fun and win games with my random team mates.

My deck isn't the vegge prigrimage ramp but just a mini T2 mana dork ramp. It's green based midrange with many 4 drop threats, bristling hydra, TKS, mold, Fleetwheel cruiser, Pia Kiran etc. Once T3 mold is set up, the deck can quickly build a pressuring board. If T3 mold isn't available, it's just a hate card top deck. In the current meta it happen to have some sort of targets most of the time.

I'm just trying to sort out the number of situations in which Mould beats out Rec Sage.

Sage:
Costs 2G - 3CMC, easy splash.
Has a 2/1 body.
Fetchable by Woodland Bellower
Can recur with Grapple with the Past.

Mould:
Can hit lands.
Can recur once via baby Jace.
Castable if opponent has active Brisela (but does nothing to her.)

I mean if you're specifically having problems with Rogue's Passage or Westvale Abbey, I guess...but otherwise I'm not seeing the point. It's not a bad card, but the number of situations where's its better in a practical sense than Sage are narrow, outside of the chance that you can maybe nail someone's access to a colour temporarily - which, yes, can win games - but how often do you try to do that, they have a spare land, and then you wish you had Mould later for an artefact or enchantment?

You guys do know that I wasn't saying the card is overpowered, right? The power level isn't the issue. It's not like Stone Rain was OP AF. The issue is that land destruction isn't fun, and isn't meaningfully interactive. I haven't lost a single game due to LD, but I have had many games take far longer than they otherwise would because of LD. It's an annoying stall tactic at worst, and if you get a bad shuffle it can lock you out of casting literally half your cards or more.

It's the same reason Void Winnower is one of the dumbest cards they've ever printed.

Funny enough, if the cost on that was lower and easier to get out, I would love to use it. Even casting cost, kills a lot of nice stuff that I see people use. I am not saying its a super awesome card, but it has it's uses. especially if it was cheaper to get out. I would have to fire the game up to look, but there are plenty of card that everyone plays at 2, 4 and 6 cost. both in instants, sorceries, artifacts and creatures. The only reason I would even say the card is horrible is its casting cost. And once again I will say it, 2hg is better arena for it than 1v1. but also everyone thinks everything that doesn't fit in their decks is crap all the time or it doesn't fit within the meta you play.


things people need to realize about magic. its not all about 1v1 and tournament play. cards are designed to be used for different play types and for different formats. when I played paper magic, I didn't play by the current block rules, my friends and I played using all sets. only rules for building we used, were the limits on cards like no mor than 4 of anything, if it was restricted to 1 that's all we used. banned we didn't worry about because, well, we are not playing in tournaments.

when the developers make cards, that look at all things when doing it. old cards, upcoming concepts, recursion, you name it. that card could easily be brought into play.

This reminds me of what's-his-name from 2013 talking about how Crosswinds was OP and ruining DotP and destroying 2HG even though he had a 98% win rate vs. it personally.

If you are using it for artifact hate, it's strictly worse than Rec Sage and almost certainly worse than Conclave Naturalists. If you are using it for LD, it's way less tempo than Explosive Vegetation

GoA: Right. comparing card by card in vacuum Sage is a more versatile one. However if I don't play Bellower, don't care about color splashability in a dual colored deck, don't play grapple, meanwhile if I have 6 T2 mana dorks for potential T3 LD, the LD possibility may be better than the 2/1 body in this particular deck? I will test more.

Vert: It's not a better LD card than many cards, it's not a better hate card than many cards, but it's one card that can do both. It gives me an additional option.

This guy knows his stuff. I only play mold in the temurge deck, but this is why I run it. Currently everyone is casting busted artifacts t2/3 and I can just go 'no' in a deck that is trying to get to the later game. Very valuable, even though rec sage gives a body and is a better card; I can get the molds back with scuttlers in case I milled em for later hate (or like in Yondar's case, if they are leaning heavily on vehicles or other shenanigans to get past blockers), or, go for double land destruction if my opponent is stumbling (which are free wins). I wouldn' t play the card if the meta wasn't conductive to it.

It seems like WW is using it as a strip mine effect after he drops a threat though, which is really interesting, and something I'm too conservative to try with a card as low powered as mold.

Pretty much what WW said, this card is worse than other ld or artifact hate, but it can do both. So if you have a deck with 6 mana dorks to consistently use it in turn 3 as land destruction is a huge effect, if you draw it later (or bad matchup) it's an artifact hate that has not many vital downsides than other artifact hate spells.
The land destruction option is mainly (if not only) for turn 3 (hopefully with the dorks) and in case of opponent stuck on colors or lands, but the turn 3 play is why we are talking about it now and not in the past season.

IMHO, the card is nowhere near what Moss was in its time. Origins era Duels was very slow, so ramping yourself T4 while setting your opp back was a very big deal. It was also a time when our card pool was small enough that running 3 colors was more important than it is now.

These days, 2 color decks run perfectly fine, and the format is so much faster you could be looking at lethal next turn by T4. Sure you can ramp it out T3, but RDW/Vamps prob shrug that off and kill you soon anyways.

LD is annoying to face, but many would say the same about counterspells (or just in general; tappy-bounce-counter-milly-Takes20TurnsToDrawWincon-aholes). Annoying isn't necessarily reason to ban something, and I don't see Mold in the same position for dominance Moss was in during its time.

The problem with testing this is you can't get verifiable statistics unless you also know what your opponent has in hand. So the testing conditions here would need to be you playing against a buddy who can take note of his/her hand starting from when you first cast Mould to see how often the LD is relevant.

You'd need to keep track of;
* Number of times you LD a land and it prevents opponent from casting a spell that's not merely convenient or on curve, but might have swung the game for them (sweeper, removal for one of your key critters, etc.)
* Number of times you LD a land but it never really slows them down - sure, they might be a land behind curve, but they can still play relevant threats and/or answer yours. This will come up a LOT when opponent went first.
* Number of times you LD early and opponent never gives you any cause to regret it.
* Number of times you LD early and opponent plays a better target (more annoying land, more swingy artefact/enchantment) before you draw another copy of Mould (and number of times you have a second copy ready.)
* Number of times Mould is effectively blank (opponent sees no art/enc cards and plays either no annoying nonbasics or is never short a colour)
* Number of times Mould is the decisive card in your victory (which will overlap some with point one.)
* Number of times you use a card to recur Mould that could not recur Sage, or number of times you could have recurred Sage if your Mould-recurring card had been Grapple or another card that returns permanents from graveyard to hand (or a bounce effect if the deck you're testing runs any.)
* Number of times you use Mould in a situation where Sage would have worked, as well as number of times you used Mould for an art/enc and Sage's body would have been relevant for any reason later (chumping, piloting a vehicle, any effect that counts the number of creatures you have like Nissa's -2, etc.)

I think when all is said and done you'll find that yes, Mould will have a few situations in which it either does something Sage couldn't, does it better, or otherwise has an advantage, but I think you'll find Sage's benefits outweigh Mould's most of the time - unless you specifically include other LD effects in which case the cumulative LD effect may be more overwhelming/relevant.

Alright, this farce has gone on long enough, time for Bounce to weigh in...

If I, yes Mr "MOSS BROKEN OMGBAN2016!", have no issue with Creeping Mold being a card that exists, that should tell you all you need to know about it's powerlevel. If it can't even trigger PTSD in me, it ain't no Moss, and it ain't no mistake. If you want to run a dedicated deck around that sort of thing (because you're more heartless than a Control mage...) then have at it!

Mold would be a threat if another LD card arrives besides Into the Maw of Hell (which no one uses) arrives. Also think LD should be returned in the next set or two. We have a healthy set of cards unlike before so the meta can deal with the threat.