Let me rephrase my question then - Is there a contemporary constructed format, Vintage, Legacy, or Modern, where a land destruction strategy (focused specifically on lands rather than more broadly) can be both as fast and as consistent as competing strategies that will just end the game instead, or destroy lands as a bonus to a much larger attack against opponent permanents? My limited Modern experience suggests that single target LD is too slow / card disadvantageous to compete, though my Legacy and Vintage knowledge is insufficient to answer.
In large, established tournaments? I mean, it's kind of a high bar to set. I think a lot of perfectly interesting mechanics don't make it into the highest tiers of current tournament gameplay. Still, LD does show up in all three of the formats you named. I agree that it seems slow for Modern, but results indicate that Stone Rain shows up in highly placing Modern decks. These seem to generally follow the Ponza model of "Beat them up with creatures while slowing them down by disrupting their manabase." I mentioned that in Legacy, traditional land destruction runs into problems, as decks have more tools than ever before to get robust mana production in multiple colors. Deathrite Shaman is one of the most popular creatures in Legacy, and lands blown up by Stone Rain can be exiled from the graveyard to produce mana of any color. Even so, Wasteland is ubiquitous, and Ghost Quarter is pretty good too. Decks that are built to comfortably trade a land for another land are common in Legacy. Stuff like Stone Rain? Yeah, too slow. However, Pox is still a viable deck in Legacy, even if it's not very popular. And it runs Smallpox, Liliana of the Veil, and Wasteland, as well as some Pox decks employing Sinkhole and (on rare occasions) the original Pox. Vintage is the format that allows all those pesky 0-drop mana-producing artifacts, so land destruction would be a bit of a hard sell. This is the format where Gorilla Shaman used to be one of the best creatures because you could use it to cheaply blow up Moxen. But Wasteland and Strip Mine are quite popular. After all, Vintage also has Tolarian Academy, Library of Alexandria, and Mishra's Workshop. Balance can also be a powerful play in Vintage. It used to be popular to slow opponents down with "taxing" effects like Sphere of Resistance and then deal with lands using Tangle Wire and Smokestack, but this is relatively rare these days. So land destruction has its competitive niche, even if it's not exactly dominating competitive Magic.
My follow up thought being, "If LD is non-optimal, and also irritates a segment of the player base, then it seems relegated to a marginal place in the game overall."
This gets at something I don't think I've written about here, but which I think is the most important issue surrounding contemporary Magic design. I guess I was planning to eventually write an article about it...
When I hear players talk about their favorite decks ever, when I hear the most celebrated stories from tournaments, and whenever I've seen people really, really excited about a Magic deck, it's involved a deck that was hard control, hyperfocused aggro, or a dedicated combo engine. I've encountered this with casual players, with tournament grinders, with pros, and with WotC employees. It always seems like when people are most passionate about a card game, it involves something that does one of those three things in a potent and interesting way. Whether it's an epic control vs. control grind, a control deck racing to stabilize while aggro is trying to kill it before it can, combo trying to sequence its plays to beat disruption while control tries to maintain enough answers to keep combo from going off, etc., these can lead to some intense, memorable matchups. And of course, there's a corollary to that: when these things are strong, it means someone can be shut out. "I thought I had a good hand but he flooded the board with attackers and killed me before I could do anything." "He countered everything I did." "I didn't find an answer to the combo and died on turn 2." They go hand in hand. You empower aggro and/or control and/or combo enough and you can get more big, flashy plays that are fun, cool, exciting, impressive, etc. But you also get more bad beats stories. You get more games where things went wrong and one person felt powerless. To be clear, I'm not talking about the level of balance in a tournament environment overall. Obviously if one deck is dominant in a format, that's a problem. Setting balance aside and focusing on what the gameplay itself is like in a matchup, strong aggro, control, and combo are fun. They also lead to a higher risk of someone getting completely trounced.
In contrast, stuff that's more middle-of-the-road, decks that apply high offensive power without that all-in rush, decks that are kinda-sorta controlling, decks that have combos but not ones that explosively win the game, well, they're more safe. It's not that I don't like them or that they're bad or anything. They're fine. They can be a part of the game too. But they're not what make things exciting. You'll have more back-and-forth, lots of games where both players felt like they were doing stuff to try to win, fewer games that are one-sided. But to put a damper on the bat beats stories you also have to sacrifice those legendary games, those things that really move people. I don't think you can get the advantage without taking on the drawback. Design that lends itself to getting people fired up in a good way also means they might get fired up in a bad way. And I think that, on this spectrum, Magic has been headed in the wrong direction.
Most complaints about certain types of effects in Magic seem to be along the lines of those bad beats stories. Sometimes the problem is balance, and in those cases I do think we need to look for solutions. But otherwise, I consider polarizing mechanics to be a good thing. They add flavor. Style. A level of interest. I mean, look at what Blake Rasmussen wrote about that old LD deck he liked from Type 2 in 1996, at his fondness for it, at what it means to him as a player. Yeah, someone back then was probably irritated by that deck. But now, over 20 years later, the cool factor still means something. That someone got a little salty over having his lands destroyed? So what?
), getting your toys checked is your loss if you didnt plan accordingly. Both sides are just approaches to a common denominator at variance with one another, and both make sense from their own premises (both fun and competition are inherent parts of understanding the concept game).