Land ho!

There have been many conversations with my ever patience girlfriend, Lauren, and I have told her that Magic can be viewed as a art form. Of course, this is met with a series of eye rolls. But I submit to you this counter argument Ms. Eye Roller, I think that the way that you decide to construct a deck and the basic lands you decide to use in it speaks volumes about the way you want your deck to feel. Do you put in all of your foil lands? Do you use extended art Zendikar lands? Do you run something different every time so it doesn't get repetitive?  Or do you just go old school and put in revised lands?

I've had many conversations with my play group about lands and which feel good basis a deck feel around and snow covered lands come up quite a bit. Yes there is the strategy to run Extraplanar Lens and really benefit the whole playing in the snow theme, but there are also a lot of different ways into building your deck. But this is about the art of it, the finished product. Not what tools were used in shaping it.

I have been watching some of the Star City Games open tournaments and seeing what kinds of land each player used. There was one player playing High Tide   (a deck that revolves around High Tide, Candelabra of Tawnos, and rapping your opponent with Blue Suns Zenith) all his lands were the same and they were all from Portal. Yes. No Zendikar lands, no Unhinged lands, just regular Portal Islands. I thought that was very interesting. There are also players who play foil lands no matter what the picture is because...hey...shiny mana is quite better than regular mana.

What is pretty intriguing is the fact that it is pretty hard to find two players. Both playing the same deck, card for card (which happens a lot in higher up tournament scenes), but often finding that their choice of art for their lands is never really the same. Just a concept in Magic that happens to be glazed over is just the fine choices of picking lands.