Today, I bring you a spoiler from the upcoming Eternal Masters set. It is only fitting that ManaDeprived.com gets to unveil the most efficient single-target land destruction spell of all time:

You know that sinking feeling that you get when you’re playing some expensive blue deck full of dual lands and powerful spells, you mulligan and keep a 1-land hand, and then you find out that your opponent is playing this?

Pox – Reid Duke

[deck]

[Lands]

4 Mishra’s Factory

13 Swamp

4 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

4 Wasteland

[/Lands]

[Spells]

3 Cursed Scroll

4 Dark Ritual

4 Hymn to Tourach

3 Innocent Blood

4 Inquisition of Kozilek

4 Liliana of the Veil

1 Nether Void

1 Pox

4 Sinkhole

4 Smallpox

1 Spinning Darkness

[/Spells]

[Creatures]

2 Nether Spirit

[/Creatures]

[Sideboard]

2 Extirpate

2 Pithing Needle

4 Engineered Plague

2 Perish

2 Leyline of the Void

1 The Abyss

2 Spinning Darkness

[/Sideboard]

[/deck]

I know this feeling all too well. You [card]Force of Will[/card] a [card]Hymn to Tourach[/card] because you might as well choose which two cards you’re about to lose. You cast some cantrips to try to find some more lands, maybe you get Wastelanded and Smallpoxed, but you’re holding on to some small chance of crawling back into the game as you sit there with no cards in hand and one land left in play. Then, BOOM – the last shred of hope that you had left gets hit with a Sinkhole. You consider scooping, which is awkward because you don’t have any permanents left to scoop up.

Sinkhole is a card that harkens back to the days of Magic when spells were powerful and creatures were not. Nowadays, in modern Magic sets, this kind of effect costs you twice as much mana! [card]Stone Rain[/card] isn’t even welcome anymore – it hasn’t been reprinted since 9th Edition, nearly eleven years ago.

Lands are almost always the most important resource in the game of Magic. Just to show how powerful a card like Sinkhole is, players have gone to great lengths to try to replicate such an effect. Cards like [card]Boomerang[/card] and [card]Eye of Nowhere[/card] were played alongside actual land destruction spells in Blue-Red [card]Magnivore[/card] decks. [card]Boom // Bust[/card] has been paired with [card]Flagstones of Trokair[/card] or fetchlands to “build-your-own Sinkhole.”

Spending a card for one of your opponent’s lands is generally an unfavorable trade, especially since you usually don’t have an opportunity to prevent them from using their land at least once. But in Eternal Masters Limited, I expect there to be some powerful nonbasic lands making an appearance. If you aren’t lucky enough to open a [card]Wasteland[/card], and you’re playing black, Sinkhole might be a narrow card that you can use to answer a problematic land in your opponent’s deck. Perhaps we’ll see some creature lands, such as [card]Mishra’s Factory[/card], or even land enchantments, like a Utopia Sprawl-effect.

Sinkhole is coming to claim your land. Nothing is safe. No mana left undeprived. Va-land Morghulis. All lands must die.