It's been a while since the Timeless Metagame had a good shakeup, and for good reason: essentially, everything that enters Magic Arena—main sets, special slots, Horizons sets, Alchemy—is legal in the format without any intervention or card changes through rebalancing. Since its inception, there have only been three restricted cards in the format: Channel, Demonic Tutor, and Tibalt's Trickery.
Timeless is a funny format. Its metagame is simultaneously miserable and fun. Its card pool makes you look at some things and question how they're legal (Necropotence, restricted even in Vintage, can be played as four copies in the format and isn't even present in a Tier 1 today). In other areas, it's very similar to Modern when we look at the format's main decks—Energy, Dimir/Esper Frog, Belcher, All Spells—while adding cards like Show and Tell into the mix, creating an unwritten agreement between the format and the player.
By accepting to play this format, you're accepting all the costs, checks and balances, and the very nature of its card pool. Not unlike Legacy, you know that unfair things can happen, that someone can suddenly beat you, and that "anti-play" is part of its nature: first because there are combos that are difficult to interact with in an environment without Force of Will, and whose Force of Negation was denied to us with the release of Final Fantasy, and now because the main resource a Magic player needs can be denied without restriction from the first turn.
Strip Mine hasn't been legal as four copies in a format since January 1998, when it was restricted in Vintage, and for good reason—it's the most powerful mana-disrupting effect in the game's history.
This is probably the most important card the format has received since Modern Horizons 3, or since Show and Tell. Yes, we've had cards like Chrome Mox that have changed the metagame and the way certain decks are built, but none of them can change the entire format like Strip Mine, and now, one of the biggest questions Timeless players may have is "how to play around it?"
Strip Mine on Timeless: How to Play Around It
Strip Mine has been restricted since 1998, ten years before I started playing Magic: The Gathering, so I don't have perfect answers on how to play around the card from direct experience with it, but I've learned a lot about how to deal with this type of effect from another well-known card that doesn't exist in Timeless… yet.
If you play Legacy, you're familiar with Wasteland, one of the pillars that maintains the mana base balance and prevents players from simply going for four- or five-color stacks with the format's best cards. Playing around Wasteland is a deckbuilding necessity, and if your list can't handle it, you need a good reason, like playing All Spells or some combo that doesn't mind losing a land because it can generate mana in other ways.
Otherwise, you need a basic land, maybe two, to avoid a "lock" that leaves you without mana for many turns. There's an interesting math, at least in Legacy blue decks, between wanting to reduce the number of lands due to the abundance of efficient cantrips available, combined with the need to play Wasteland, or having enough resources to accept the risk of losing a land or two to it during the game.
Strip Mine circumvents this logic of having a few extra basics to avoid a lock: if you don't have enough land drops, you won't play the game, so for this exercise, let's assume I made the mistake of not running basic lands in my list.
The Keep: What if they have it?
Playing against Strip Mine / Wasteland means making some extra decisions in the opening hand. Timeless is already accustomed to the concept of considering "what if they have X or play Y?" early in the game due to the inherent nature of combos and non-interactive decks in the Metagame, but now this line also involves your resources.
Always keep in mind: your opponent has four Strip Mine, you have X lands. Obviously, this means you have a better chance of drawing more lands than your opponent has of playing more than one Mine during the game, but it's also important to consider how consistently you access your lands.
Most Timeless decks play around 18 to 23 lands, depending on how much you need to cast high-mana drops. Lists like Mardu Energy can operate with a small mana base because everything in the deck costs one or two mana except for Lurrus of the Dream-Den, and it can technically get away with it even if it loses a land early in the game because everything requires little mana to play, but it can also be severely punished by the difficulty it has finding more lands.
To take another example, Dimir Frog plays around 20 and 22 lands counting MDFCs, but could get away with 19 or 18 if it reduced its mana costs a bit more. In a direct comparison, Dimir Frog would have a much easier time than Mardu Energy maintaining two-land hands even with the same number of lands in its list because it has easier access to more lands due to the various cheap draw effects it has, such as Brainstorm and Psychic Frog — you can, yes, take a Strip Mine in the first two turns, but you can recover much better from them.
So, a basic rule of thumb for keeping from now on is to consider how much a Strip Mine on the first turn disrupts your starting hand and how easy/likely you are to find another land or mana source on the top with your spells. The safer the answer to these two questions is, the better your keep is to play around this card.
Preserve your Fetch Lands
Fetch Lands are technically immune to Strip Mine and Wasteland. The opponent can target them, but this offers a negative resource tradeoff for them, where we give away the LD because sacrificing them to fetch a land is enough to make the ability lose its target.
Most of my experience with Legacy comes from playing Delver of Secrets decks. In these, it's common to keep Fetch Lands on the board for a dozen reasons, ranging from protecting against Wasteland to capitalizing on Brainstorm, Ponder, or even Delver's own ability to get rid of a bad top card.
Knowing that Strip Mine exists in the format, it's important to address the need to pop your Fetch Lands, remembering that they can only become a Lotus Petal that costs you one life and one mana in the medium term. Using mana to play the right cards at the right time becomes even more important in this environment; after all, you may no longer have three lands in play the following turn—worst-case scenario, you'll only have one.
Stifle is your greatest friend and foe
Stifle is now the format's worst best friend: it's on the side of those who want to deprive their opponent of their mana and those who want to protect their lands.
Using the example above, players will now be more likely to avoid cracking fetch lands unnecessarily in the first few turns for fear of permanently losing their mana and being left without a more impactful sequence in the following turns. This opens up more space for Stifle to do what it does best: counter Fetch Lands and function as a one-mana LD.
However, the spell also works for the opposite purpose and counters Strip Mine's ability for just one mana without being a specific answer to only this scenario: there are several triggers that Stifle can respond to in the format, some of which can even win games, and like it or not, the format will now demand even more mana efficiency.
Consider alternative mana sources
In the past, I've argued that fast mana sources should be restricted in Timeless, with Chrome Mox and Dark Ritual being the main targets because the metagame seemed unable to keep up, and this gave too much consistency to unfair decks without appropriate answers for the rest of the format.
While I still believe we need better answers—and Strip Mine is an "answer"—its existence changes the way we need to view these sources in the format: they stop being just something for degenerate turns and start having a counterbalance to ensure that games actually happen.
The best choices in the format today are probably Chrome Mox and Deathrite Shaman, especially the latter.
Chrome Mox is much more played today and is a free mana source that enables some of the format's key unfair plays, but it still requires an extra card from your hand in the process and creates worse topdecks as the match progresses. It excels in the early turns, where Strip Mine matters most, but it's just a mana source.
Deathrite Shaman, on the other hand, does a bit of everything: it gains life, is a creature, a cheap drop to play even when facing a potential lock, handles other mana denial we'll have involving Blood Moon effects and Ancient Tomb, turns into graveyard hate, and is a tool that works equally well for Aggro, Midrange, and Tempo. It has the drawbacks of costing mana and dying to removals, but it solves the "what if the opponent has an LD" dilemma more easily and with fewer resources than Chrome Mox.
Adjust your deck accordingly
If Timeless was already a very mana-efficient format, it becomes even more so now. The days of high-mana cards that aren't essential to your game plan are over, and even pieces like Phlage, Titan of Fire's Fury become a bit dangerous due to their high color requirements and costs to function, which don't fit in a Metagame that's more restricted in the ability to play lands unhindered.
Value mana on each of your turns, be aware that you might not have it for the next turn, and consider, when building your list, whether it's really necessary to use that card given the prevalence of Strip Mine and other LD effects in the Metagame.
Strip Mine on Timeless: How to Play It
Have a Proactive Playstyle
Strip Mine also denies your resources. You're losing a land this turn to take one from your opponent, and that means we need to extract something from it besides slowing down the opponent because we're slowing ourselves down as well.
Mana Drain and Strip Mine don't mix… not much. Even if there's eventually a Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth for Islands in the future, lands like Wasteland or Strip Mine need to be accompanied by enough Tempo loss to throw the opponent off balance for a few turns.
Consider the most modernly classic example from Legacy of this situation: my first turn involves Fetch Land to Steam Vents to Delver of Secrets. My opponent plays their first turn and passes, my Delver transforms, I play a Strip Mine, target their land, and attack for three with Flying—now, my opponent is one mana behind and probably also behind on the clock if they don't accumulate more resources, and the Tempo is in my favor even if neither of us draws any more lands for the rest of the game.
The same applies to the opposite case: if my first turn was a Delver of Secrets and the opponent spends their turn destroying my land, if my Delver transforms, the Tempo remains in my favor for a few more turns if it isn't answered, and if I have one more land and a random Spell Pierce, that Delver might just carry me to victory. After all, if my opponent plays another Strip Mine, they've wasted two resources and two turns trying to take away my mana while a 3/2 with Flying will continue to attack them.
In other words, you need something to make the Strip Mine you used worthwhile. This could be beforehand with cards like Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer, Dragon's Rage Channeler, or even Deathrite Shaman, or later with cards that impact the game in other ways, like a Magus of the Moon on the second turn with Chrome Mox and Ancient Tomb, or even a random one-drop that your opponent will now have a harder time responding to.
Playing and activating a free LD just because it's strong won't lead you to victory if your follow-up is a Fatal Push or Mana Drain on most occasions, especially on the play. Proactivity is necessary, even if it means digging deeper with cantrips to find the threat that will win you the game while your opponent fumbles for their mana—which brings us to the next point.
Just because you can doesn't mean you should
Your first turn was a Fetch Land. Your opponent plays Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer and passes. You pop your Fetch Land, search for an Undercity Sewers, and find an Orcish Bowmasters with Surveil. Your second land drop is a Strip Mine. Is it better to pop your opponent's land or cast Bowmasters to deal with Ragavan? The answer is obvious: Ragavan generates more value in the long run, and your opponent can find the mana they need even if they don't have a second land in hand.
Consider, then, a less obvious case: your opponent's one-drop was a Dragon's Rage Channeler. If you play Strip Mine, your opponent has a 1/1 on the board, and you'll need to deal with it later. If they have another land in hand, you risk the possibility of Channeler becoming a 3/3 and getting out of Bowmasters' reach the next turn.
In this case, the risks are: playing Bowmasters, dealing with Channeler, and perhaps needing to resolve something bigger later, or dealing with the land, having Channeler on the board for another turn with the potential to trigger Delirium if your opponent draws a Mishra's Bauble or similar with their cantrips, which will also punish the decision not to play Bowmasters that turn.
I'd go with Bowmasters. Not only will I be dealing with my opponent's Channeler, but if their turn two land is a Strip Mine, they'll have to decide between starving me of mana or trying to play another spell. If that spell doesn't deal with Bowmasters and the token, the Tempo is still positive for me.
A similar situation could occur with Thalia, Guardian of Thraben. Assuming your opponent's deck is a combo based on non-creature spells or a Tempo deck heavily reliant on cheap Cantrips, is it more beneficial, in Games 2 and 3, to play Thalia on the second turn, or to pop a Strip Mine on the opponent's land?
The two main possibilities we can consider if we opt for Strip Mine on the second turn are:
In the other case, if we play Thalia, the opponent has some problems: unless they have a Flare of Denial or a Fury, we lock down a potential first-turn interaction against her, hinder lines with Chrome Mox or Dark Ritual, and essentially gain an "extra turn" to deal with the impending problem, where Strip Mine gains more value due to the mana denial that Thalia also offers.
Consider how to get the most value from mana denial
As tempting or sadistically fun as it may seem to pop a Strip Mine on the first or second turn to deny your opponent mana and, who knows, win the game for free, you'll lose many games if you don't treat this land as a resource as precious as your opponent's mana. It's still your land drop, it's still one less mana that you also have, so always consider how to get the most value out of it.
Will it be by popping a land drop early in the game? Or will it be by saving the card on a key play like Shifting Woodland, Phyrexian Tower, or Arena of Glory? Will you be able to deny your opponent access to a color by playing it against a dual land? Or will another Fetch ensure they still have three colors to use the next turn? How much does your opponent's game plan really suffer against Strip Mine?
How much does your deck capitalize on this card's effect? Is the follow-up worth cracking it this turn? Will what I have on the board win the game if I lock down my opponent, or is what I can do next turn better if I deprive them of their resources now?
The answer will depend on each deck and matchup. I can imagine different situations where it's preferable to use Strip Mine on an Arena of Glory on turn four than on the Sacred Foundry my opponent used for Guide of Souls on turn one, and also situations where responding to an Ancient Tomb to, for example, avoid a Sowing Mycospawn that will search for a Strip Mine and permanently remove two of your mana is equally relevant.
I also imagine that in circumstances where dealing with the opponent's second or first-turn land drop is essential to what we're proposing, especially if our plan involves playing the game's Tempo to our advantage. Removing any mana source, anticipating that the opponent might play something more impactful than you can on the following turn, is also essential, and these measures will only be properly utilized and studied as the Metagame adapts to the new rules imposed on Timeless by the new, old card.
Wrapping Up
Strip Mine is one of the most powerful cards in Magic: The Gathering, and for the first time in 27 years, it will be unrestricted in a constructed format, bringing changes that will certainly affect the way Timeless decks are built.
In addition, cards like Ancient Tomb, Eldrazi Temple, and Magus of the Moon are also in Edge of Eternities' special slots, paving the way for the rise of another Legacy/Vintage macro-archetype to Magic Arena: the "Lock Stompy," whether alongside Chrome Mox and Blood Moon or with Thought-Knot Seer and Sowing Mycospawn.
With the stigma Timeless has received over the past year of having an uninteresting and static metagame based on non-interactive matchups and combos that don't allow you to play more "fair" decks—partly exaggerated, partly half-true—the coming months after the new set's release will be very interesting times for the format.
Thanks for reading!
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