Hippo Genocide 1 – Where the Hippos Died
August 7, 2011
There are four types of basic land in Magic: Old border, New border, White border and Full art. Each of these lands has a character to them, when you see someone playing them it brings forth an emotional reaction. I’ve found it is usually along these lines.
- Old border is cool, it’s now been long enough that it became non-standard that the novelty is there and if you get ones with good art people really dig them.
- New border. It’s the standard, no one’s impressed unless it’s a promo one.
- White border. Cheap and nasty. Why would you ever use these things?
- Full art. Most people consider these the greatest of all lands, since Zendikar we see everybody using them. In my opinion using full art lands at this point is less impressive than just a new bordered one. It’s so over done it’s like saying WASSSSUP or quoting Austin Powers a few years back.
The left pile is more organized and like your deck is better planned. If you’re still looking for some helpful tips to becoming a better magic player and winning more then here is the closest you will get. If you take the time to put all the same art on your lands in a deck you seem more professional and dedicated, it’s not much but it could be a slight edge on being intimating to a newer player, on the other hand using disorganized land in a high level event could give the rogue deck an edge as you may come across as just some lucky scrub. But if you’re going to put that much effort into metagaming, you may as well just put the time into playing more games and getting more familiar with your deck.
Below you can see 3 different Blue generals, with a matching land. Wydwen has a very soft pallet of blues and purples, so the Shadowmoor island fits nicely with her, Wrexial has prominent colours similar to the Time Spiral land and in Isperia’s case the sky is similar in tone but also the feel of the Sphinx suits a classic border more than a new one. Older Generals tend to suit classic bordered land as well, it just feels right.
Adding matching lands can make the deck feel more unified in this way. Instead of just your random islands or those “cool” full art lands you always play, why not consider how much better it would be to have your entire deck themed around your general instead of just your spells? At the Zendikar pre-release I opened my sealed pool and was in Esper, so when I went to the land box I picked out my land all with Esper art, it didn’t make my deck any better or make me play any better, but it was a minor novelty that I found made the deck more memorable to me. Whenever I see an Esper land I always think of that pre-release and that deck, this is part of the fun having one land art can have for you, they start to become characterful in their own right. Maybe you won’t use that Bant Forest any more because whenever you do you have bad luck, or maybe that Lorwyn swamp brings you luck. A lot of people have suspicions or rituals with dice, part of the fun of meeting other gamers is exchanging these stories. Why not build such stories among your friends with lands as well?
At this point there may be some people thinking I’m a complete idiot (and hey I am, who else would be writing articles for CommanderCast?) but if you’ve ever drafted Scars on MTGO I’m sure you’ve noticed Scars uses Zendikar lands and it makes it feel a little less special than it would be with the correct ones.
Obviously non-basics are fixed and unless you have the artistic skill or money to get them edited they won’t fit with your general but that can’t be helped and maybe you would even consider that because you just want to pimp your deck that much more. So they’re just being ignored for this because who in EDH isn’t going to run at least a Reliquary Tower?
That’s all for this week, hopefully you will have found something interesting here in my rambling and will consider how your lands look on the table and how they influence the feel of your deck. If you have any feedback or thoughts send it to hippogenocide(at)gmail(dot)com or drop me a line on MTGO where my username is Astray_Penguin. I hope to hear from all three of you soon.