Land Ho!

I hope you all enjoyed my little April Fools joke. I know Jeff did. Allow me to be the first to say, Ha Ha, the joke’s on me for being terrible at Vintage Magic.

At least I’m good enough to know when a deck doesn’t stand a chance in a tournament, and the deck presented on Saturday definitely fell into that category. I’m pretty sure that Null Rod, Gorilla Shaman, or any other form of artifact hate would absolutely wreck that monstrosity, as would mana denial, creature removal of almost any type, and counterspells.

Thanks for playing along, though.

So, on Saturday, I didn’t go to a tournament, and I certainly didn’t win one. Instead, Justin and Anthony and I went out to the Hero Zone after work and were totally flummoxed by its being closed. Of course, there were people in there, and it’s probably our own fault for not pounding on the door, but what the heck? It’s just too depressing when all the lights are off.

Plus, nerds get kind of creepy in the dark.

In our haze of depression, we went to Diana’s restaurant on Rte. 250, which, despite being rumored to serve poopcake (ask Dave), actually has pretty good food at really good prices. That’s a pro-player meal right there, and I recommend it heartily. Just, um, don’t eat the cake. You know, as a precautionary measure.

After filling our bellies on fish, soup, salad, rolls, and fries for only $6.25, we went back to my house to throw some cards around. First, we played some Type 4 (which I’ll probably have to write about some other time) Unglued-Unhinged games. Justin won the first one by putting The Cheese Stands Alone into play on his first turn. Anthony won the second one by putting Mine, Mine, Mine into play (which we decided would make all of us be able to play cards directly out of the deck whenever we wanted) then discarding his hand (i.e. the deck) to Farewell to Arms and making Justin and me lose on our next draw phases.

I actually lost a turn sooner than that by playing Double Deal for the third time that night, which me draw a total of 12 extra cards against my opponents.

Unfortunately for Type 4 (of which more later) the stack of Unglued-Unhinged cards I had nowhere near enough instants, so games came down to “creature stall with laughs” usually, and the goal was to get someone to drop his hand of cards so you could put Deadhead back into play so it could switch controllers after your next attack phase because of Burning Cinder Fury of Crimson Chaos Fire. Also, not having any actual counterspells was a problem. Next time we know better.

But, after those few games, we collectively made the best deck ever.

Ever!

5x Mountains per player
5x Islands per player
5x Forests per player
5x Plains per player
5x Swamps per player

It’s the land game!

And it’s awesome!

And really you just need to have equal amounts of enough lands that everyone can share. There won’t be any graveyard recursion, so if you run out, just shuffle up the graveyard. We all shared one deck, but everyone can have his own as long as they’re all equal.

I first read about it at StarCity and had been dying to try it for a few months.

How it works is this, each card works as three different thematically appropriate cards, based on the rules at the end of the StarCity article:

Mountain
2/2 Creature with Haste
Shock
Earthquake for 3

Island
2/2 Creature with Flying
Muddle the Mixture
Opt

Forest
3/3 Creature
Half Symbiosis (two target creatures each get +1/+1)
Giant Growth

Plains
2/2 Creature with First Strike
Chastise
Healing Salve

Swamp
2/2 Creature with “Pay 3 life: This creature gets +1/+1 until end of turn”
Dark Banishing (destroy target non-Swamp creature)
Draw two cards, then lose life equal to the number of cards in your hand

All spells are free. You can play one creature per turn, but as many spells as you want. All other rules are exactly the same as Magic. Anything else you need to know, just go ahead and make up when you come to it. That’s what we did and it seemed to work okay.

It took us a little while to get into the game, but once we did it was awesome. There are just so many options and answers available as long as you hold any card in your hand. By itself, Mountain can kill any creature on the board, depending on how you use it. Plains and Swamp are a huge combo as one will refill your life while the other refills your hand.

Plus, there are so many new things to consider. Figuring that Justin, Anthony and me share a skill level in regular Magic that involves, you know, waiting until after combat to cast spells, holding lands after we have enough on the board, not throwing a Lightning Bolt at someone’s head first turn, etc., we had to discover the Land Game pretty much from scratch.

In the first game, for example, on my first turn I played a hasty 2/2 Mountain and swung at Justin’s board (which currently included only a tapped Mountain). He tried to Chastise my Mountain, but I countered; he countered, I countered, he Shocked, I countered, and Anthony wisely stayed on his side of the board, out of the way. My Mountain gets through, and I Giant Growth it for a quick five. Counter-battles are quick, deadly, and oh-so-easy in the Land Game, and Justin and I are left with practically empty hands.

In games two and three we were a lot more careful with our hands, always trying to save a counter for Whispers or to collect multiple Whispers to get past opponents’ counters.

The most popular creatures went from being Mountains in the first game to Forests in the second to Islands and Swamps in the third as we discovered the power of Earthquake for 3.

Thanks to the ability to play cards so quickly, we also quickly realized the power of the Night’s Whispers variant, Draw two cards, then lose life equal to the number of cards in your hand. I eventually won game one by stringing together at series of Swamps to draw six or eight cards and refill my hand, while burning off the excess by Shocking my opponents.

Life is at once a lot more precious and a lot more expendable in the Land Game. Nobody dared play a Swamp as a creature until game three, for example, thinking that 3 life was a lot to pay just to pump it once, especially when someone could easily string together a series of Whispers, Shocks, Salves, Opts and Growths to deal a lot of damage to your head at a blistering pace.

Doing some goldfishing with the Land deck later on, I discovered a few other interesting things:

First turn wins are totally possible if your opponent doesn’t have any counters. It’s usually something like Mountain, Whispers, Opt, Opt, Whispers, Salve, Whispers, Opt, Growth, Growth, Growth, Growth, Growth, Whispers, Whispers, Salve, Opt, Whispers, Shock, Shock. Unfortunately, it’s really easy to fizzle on that one and usually everyone starts with a free Muddle the Mixture or two.

The Land deck beats any other actual deck hands down. There are just too many answers that come out too fast. The closest I came to winning was with my UB Fish deck that managed to go first turn Mox, Chalice for zero (which I decided would only stop creatures since everything else was a spell with an actual cost), Tolarian Academy, Arcane Laboratory. The land deck has just too many answers to attacking creatures, so really the game just ended up taking a really long time.

Also, the Land deck would be really cool if you added in more interesting lands. I mean, you probably don’t have any extra dual lands just lying around to go into a deck that doesn’t even deserve sleeves, but you might have some Ice Age depletion lands that could serve just as well. Veldt could be a six-answer card for example: 2/2 First Strike, 3/3, Chastise, Healing Salve, Half Symbiosis, Giant Growth. Likewise, you could change the whole game around by changing the ratio of lands in the deck.

Opt, which we never used in the three games that Justin, Anthony and I played, was underrated. It definitely carries some serious power, considering that you can usually string it into the appropriate answer for your situation, another Opt, or Whispers if it’s during your turn.

The problem with the Whispers card isn’t that it’s overpowered, it’s just overpowered if you get to play more than one per turn for free. Actually, stringing a lot of the cards together for free is tough. My suggestion now is that you can play as many instants (Plains, Island, Forest, Shock, Dark Banishing) as you want per turn so you can still have counter-battles and combat tricks galore, but that sorceries (Whispers and Earthquake) are limited to one per your turn.

Because of this it might also be worthwhile to develop sorcery halves for the other three lands. Forest could be “Target creature gets +1/+1 until end of turn. Target creature gets +1/+1 until end of turn,” and “Put a creature card from your hand into play.” The sorcery gives you creature advantage (which could be disadvantage if the next player plays an Earthquake) or gives you most of a Giant Growth effect on one creature or allows you to save creatures from Shock and Earthquake.

Island could be Careful Study (Draw two cards, then discard two card) and Muddle the Mixture because counter-battles are fun. Plains could be Chastise and Warrior’s Honor (Creatures you control get +1/+1 until end of turn), which I think might make the First Strike ability of Plains count more while still leaving enough removal and lifegain.

Obviously, you’re welcome to tinker with the game however you see fit. I didn’t develop it, and I heard it second hand online from a player who didn’t develop it. Based on the article, in fact, I think the Asians have been playing this game for eons and its origins have been since lost to the mists of time.

Try the Land Game, though, and I think you’ll agree that this game has more action than most Magic and is at least as much fun.

Until then, Land Ho!