Card/Deck Creature lands

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
look, there's this big divide between 'wow, magic culture should be more accessible to outsiders' and 'but no, not in this specific meaningless case, but probably some other ones' that needs to be addressed at a holistic and cultural level

nobody here is responsible for it but it gets duplicated all the time, and the people saying things like "SJW" in a pejorative context are usually really! terrible! people! and even if you feel some of the same things they do they've gone and ruined it for everyone. You can't be a reasonable person if you use the term (especially that way), it just doesn't work. People will take you less seriously and like you less as well. If only it had all been about ethics in video game journalism, eh?

Yes, there are bad people in the social justice sphere, just like there are outside it. That doesn't invalidate a movement; holding it to its worst examples while allowing patriarchy its best is pretty messed up and super apparent if it's happened to you before!

i am also not offended, like lucre. but it's more important, a lot more important in a not-at-all-theoretical-way-actually, to be progressive than it is to be perceived as "pretty progressive" and beefing, slackjawing, buffaloing, or cutting the wind about why not-men can't have a thing (of course all "creatures" are "dudes"? i mean i also use "dude" indiscriminately but it doesn't follow that they're also men) just doesn't get there

Ok, I touched a nerve here, so I'm going to be honest. I fucked up. English is not my native language, and my habitat on the internet is really small. I've never been the victim of social inequality either. I didn't realize SJW was a hot iron, I simply copied it from Lucre's post as it seemed like the correct term to use. Obviously it wasn't. This isn't the first time a post by Lucre trips me up either, his language is a bit quirky and sometimes hard to interpret for me. So, sorry for that. I won't use the word again (and I'll strike White Knight from my repertoire as well).

For what it's worth, I didn't understand much of your last paragraph either. I don't know the words beefing, slackjawing, buffaloing and cutting the wind, and the word progressive can mean so many things. I think I agree with you though in sofar that I personally think it's important to be tolerant of and kind toward others, regardless of who that other is (okay, maybe not if that other is trying to knife you). I'ld like to think that I act that way in my personal life as well.

Also, I'm interested in seeing any cycles of creature duals people made. I was thinking about having two full sets in a custom cube because I like them a little too much. :rolleyes:

I am currently running these three, alongside Creeping Tar Pit and Stirring Wildwood.

Boulder Alley.jpg Floating Vein.jpg Undying Soil.jpg

The red ones have been especially cool.
 

James Stevenson

Steamflogger Boss
Staff member
Wow I only just read this thread... I never thought this kind of discussion would come to riptidelab. There is an unbelievable amount of serious shit going on in the world, and the internet always seems to be arguing over some petty little language thing.. like a nickname for a small subset of cards in magic the gathering. Like... I can't deny any of the arguments that this damaging, but surely there are bigger things we could be pretending to affect by posting on a forum.

I kinda just hope I don't post anything at all, but here goes. *click*
 
Never change riptide lab. Never change. And just to be clear before I vomit text on the off-offtopic topic and probably make things even more heated, I'd like to state that my current favorite position on the offtopic topic is the name Fogliolands. As far as making things clearer slang though, I think wakelands is better.

The thing is, using gender neutral words does create progress and does build towards solving the larger issues at hand. You can't just magically go right from where we are today to having things that we all agree are issues (worker/human rights etc) being solved in one magical unicorn-farting-over-a-rainbow leap. If anything, people are realizing that solving large overarching problems means breaking them up into a large number of very small issues for a large group to collectively address. You don't just pick up an entire quarry and plop down the pyramids of Giza in one fell swoop. You break it up into stones so small that a few people can put them into place. Hell, if you look into things like how apartheid and women being property ended, it was millions of people each doing things so small you could argue it was pointless and nobody had a big enough impact on their own to make any change. Clearly a bunch of hopeless "SJWs" who can't make change. ;)

I'm not sure how "maybe it doesn't matter that this thing has this name" is equivalent to "small things don't matter so clearly people should never try". I also think it's a valid question as to what should be prioritized, what efforts build upon each other, which counter each other, etc. Also call me cynical, but I think it's more complicated than that if the language is less gendered, somehow greater equality will follow (I realize you are not saying something so simple, you are talking about multiple efforts but these efforts don't all necessarily have to be packaged together); people can easily discriminate against each other while using ungendered language.

Allow me to diverge from the topic at hand even further. The university I'm at is very into this sort of careful policing of word choice and opinion (like most U.S. universities) and at that point the particular trappings of liberalism or progressivism or social justice or whatever is adhered to starts to matter, and as far as I can tell it's more of a distraction here than a help. This town has a significant amount of de-facto segregation which the university doesn't do shit about, but it will craft e-mails denouncing racism and saying how the campus has to be welcoming etc. if somebody does something racist and despicable on Facebook. And obviously racism is bad and all else equal it's better for people to feel welcome on campus than unwelcome; however people are being despicable and racist on Facebook all the time and you shouldn't give them free attention. But for the shit that actually matters which they could actually do something about (because they almost are the city) they don't say shit and they don't do shit because that would involve actually getting in a real battle with possible money and prestige on the line. And it's infuriating and bizarre to watch happen, because I am afraid they are actually sincere and don't realize they missed the forest even though they saw the trees. I think it's rare for people to manage to take this too far, and most people are reasonable. Yet somehow in a few very particular bubbles (like certain distant corners of the internet or most U.S. university campuses) it's easy to find the all the trappings yet little of the substance.

Safra said:
nobody here is responsible for it but it gets duplicated all the time, and the people saying things like "SJW" in a pejorative context are usually really! terrible! people! and even if you feel some of the same things they do they've gone and ruined it for everyone. You can't be a reasonable person if you use the term (especially that way), it just doesn't work. People will take you less seriously and like you less as well.

I think this is an extreme exaggeration to the point of falsity. Some crazy sexists or racists like barbecue and star wars too, but that doesn't ruin barbecue or star wars (sidenote: the new star wars movie's success was extra delicious given the whining from a few corners of the internet about how stormtroopers can't be black or something). Crazy postmodernist academics can't make civil rights law less great (regardless of what some people on the far right may claim) and if I criticize something that sexists or racists also criticize that has no bearing on the validity of my criticism except so far as my criticism is logically similar to theirs. That they are personally sexist has no direct bearing on the validity of their criticism either; if their criticism was wrong, it'd still be wrong if they weren't sexist. Sometimes you gotta take shortcuts when judging stuff so you don't waste an hour reading some stupid rehash of stormfront bullshit, but I think people tend to take this shortcut more than is warranted.
 

CML

Contributor
Ok, I touched a nerve here, so I'm going to be honest. I fucked up. English is not my native language, and my habitat on the internet is really small. I've never been the victim of social inequality either. I didn't realize SJW was a hot iron, I simply copied it from Lucre's post as it seemed like the correct term to use. Obviously it wasn't. This isn't the first time a post by Lucre trips me up either, his language is a bit quirky and sometimes hard to interpret for me. So, sorry for that. I won't use the word again (and I'll strike White Knight from my repertoire as well).

For what it's worth, I didn't understand much of your last paragraph either. I don't know the words beefing, slackjawing, buffaloing and cutting the wind, and the word progressive can mean so many things. I think I agree with you though in sofar that I personally think it's important to be tolerant of and kind toward others, regardless of who that other is (okay, maybe not if that other is trying to knife you). I'ld like to think that I act that way in my personal life as well.



I am currently running these three, alongside Creeping Tar Pit and Stirring Wildwood.

View attachment 627 View attachment 628 View attachment 629

The red ones have been especially cool.


that blue and red one is way too good
 

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
that blue and red one is way too good

You're absolutely right on a theoretical level, but it has never dominated a game like I've seen Celestial Colonnade do. One player did get to copy a Prophetic Bolt with it in the very late game, which was pretty epic! So far I would say it's not been overwhelming and definitely fun to play. I have to assume it would be way too powerful in a cube with more low-cmc spells though, so the composition of my cube is definitely a factor in it not owning the house. Still, maybe I should change it just because I like to use custom cards that could actually see print without breaking the game in half.

I have been thinking about the power level of these factories though, and wondered what the power level of the creatures would be.

Celestial Colonnade = Serra Angel
Creeping Tar Pit > Latch Seeker (+1 toughness)
Lavaclaw Reaches = Fiery Hellhound
Raging Ravine =~ Rubblebelt Raiders (always exactly 1 counter)
Stirring Wildwood > Cloudcrown Oak (-1 mana)

Shambling Vent >~ Child of Night (+1 mana for +2 toughness)
Wandering Fumarole > Turtleshell Changeling (no activation cost for the switching)
Hissing Quagmire = Daggerback Basilisk
Needle Spires = Ridgetop Raptor
Lumbering Falls = Primal Huntbeast

Forbidding Watchtower > Loxodon Wayfarer (-1 mana)
Faerie Conclave > Welkin Tern (can block)
Spawning Pool = Drudge Skeletons
Ghitu Encampment > Viashino Spearhunter (-1 mana)
Treetop Village >> Argothian Swine (-2 mana!)

You can see why Lavaclaw Reaches feels out of place, it's the only card that has been pretty much straight up printed as a common creature in the old lineup. Raging Ravine's closed comparison is a rare, and Serra Angel was a rare until fairly recently. It's still a bomb uncommon. The new factories are all based off commons or mediocre uncommons. Basically they brought down the power level of all factories to the power level of Lavaclaw Reaches. Also, Treetop Village offers a ridiculous bargain on its stats compared to the other four Urza's (Legacy) factories.

Anyway, if we want to create new factory duals, and we can agree that the new ones are underwhelming compared to the old ones, but still playable, we should probably aim for them to animate into strong commons or average uncommons. We also should probably limit their size if they've got evasion, because putting Serra Angel onto a factory has been proven a smidge too strong.
 
There is an unbelievable amount of serious shit going on in the world, and the internet always seems to be arguing over some petty little language thing.. like a nickname for a small subset of cards in magic the gathering. Like... I can't deny any of the arguments that this damaging, but surely there are bigger things we could be pretending to affect by posting on a forum.

If you're argument is that there are more serious problems, therefore we have to keep using manlands and not have a discussion on it, then you shouldn't get to participate in the other discussions in this forum debating how to break singleton and what counterspells to play because there are bigger issues to debate. :p I wasn't even trying to make this a big thing, I just mentioned that it would be nice to use a nongendered term and people managed to escalate it from there. I thought this would just be another debate over an aspect as cube building (yeah, nicknames count) like any other thread.


The university I'm at is very into this sort of careful policing of word choice and opinion (like most U.S. universities) and at that point the particular trappings of liberalism or progressivism or social justice or whatever is adhered to starts to matter, and as far as I can tell it's more of a distraction here than a help.

What they're doing does matter and does help, you just can't see it. You're unlikely to ever understand what being misgendered and gender policed is like, but universities in the states used to be extremely toxic places for trans people before they switched over to a model of being gender inclusive, which generally also includes stuff like LGBT housing, etc. They're clearly doing something to help that they can afford to do. As far as not dealing with larger more apparent issues like racism, it would cost them a lot of money that a school would rather invest in educating students. When an issue is too big for a school's resources to handle, they do what they can, even if its small things.

On Topic:
Would Lavaclaw be too good at 1 less mana to activate? Also, I like how Serra Angel feels like such a busted uncommon right now.
 
Would Lavaclaw be too good at 1 less mana to activate?

How often and how big of a difference is that from making it a base 3/2? I personally think keeping all of their activations at 3-cmc or above is part of the tectonic edge charm. Lavaclaw just feels flawed because its 'flexible' scaling power is of little practical consequence compared to its miserable toughness- sucker practically always trades in combat where the others get chumped at worst. I think part of the problem is just {R}{B}'s identity- it's pretty shallow.
Also, I like how Serra Angel feels like such a busted uncommon right now.
The miserable removal suites we've had to deal with over the years really did a number on my magic mentality, that's for sure.
 

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
It's probably impossible to understand what being misgendered and gender policed is like unless you've been there or been close to someone who had to deal with that shit. This whole discourse is reminding me about the discussion about Zwarte Piet (link) (Black Peter) in the Netherlands. I have been defending those in favor of changing the image of Zwarte Piet, but an overwhelming majority of Dutch people don't see the problem. It's been this way for generations, no one ever made a problem of it, children enjoy it and don't associate the figure with discrimination. Why is it that a well-loved tradition has to change because someone, and these are not my words, "chooses to feel offended". I can imagine that if you've ever been discriminated against that is about the worst possible way to put it. Now, even though I don't necessarily agree that they need to be connected, I can accept that the image of Zwarte Piet harbours elements that can be viewed as racist, especially by Americans, who, unlike the Dutch, have a troubled history of racial segregation. Even though the Netherlands, sadly, have been in the business of slave trading abroad, the concept of slavery and racial segregation is foreign to the Netherlands itself. This doesn't mean that we should just ignore a minority that feels discriminated against though.

Anyway, the connection between the word manland and gender inequality is much more difficult for me to grasp. If multiple people are saying there is a connection though, apparently it is a problem. Time to get with the program. Please don't think I think any less of women though if I say manland out of habit!

Bonus:

Roaming Ash Cloud
Land
~ enters the battlefield tapped.
{T}: Add {B} or {R} to your mana pool.
{3}{B}{R}: ~ becomes a 4/4 black and red Elemental creature with menace until end of turn. It's still a land.
 
Sorry to keep this going, but I am genuinely curious. Is the term mankind under scrutiny in the same way? Not trying to be subversive, just asking. For the following definitions of man:

www.thefreedictionary.com
man

(măn)
n. pl. men (mĕn)
1. An adult male human.
2. A human regardless of sex or age; a person.
3. A human or an adult male human belonging to a specific occupation, group, nationality, orother category. Often used in combination: a milkman; a congressman; a freeman.
4. The human race; mankind: man's quest for peace.
5. A male human endowed with qualities, such as strength, considered characteristic ofmanhood.
6. Informal
a. A husband.
b. A male lover or sweetheart.
7. men
a. Workers.
b. Enlisted personnel of the armed forces: officers and men.
8. A male representative, as of a country or company: our man in Tokyo.
9. A male servant or subordinate.
10. Informal Used as a familiar form of address for a man: See here, my good man!
11. One who swore allegiance to a lord in the Middle Ages; a vassal.
12. Games Any of the pieces used in a board game, such as chess or checkers.
13. Nautical A ship. Often used in combination: a merchantman; a man-of-war.
14. oftenManSlangApersonorgroupfelttobeinapositionofpowerorauthority.Used withthe:"Their writing mainly concerns the street life—the pimp, the junky, the forces of drug addiction, exploitation at the hands of 'the man'"(Black World).
I've always coded the term manland in my brain under version #4, the idea of man as "a conscious entity," with the reasoning A. for the purpose of differentiating it from other lands that are not conscious entities and B. named as such because the consonance sounds elegant. This discussion is the first time I've thought of Assembly Workers as having any sort of gender, or for that matter, being any kind of "person" at all.
 

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Sorry to keep this going, but I am genuinely curious. Is the term mankind under scrutiny in the same way? Not trying to be subversive, just asking. For the following definitions of man:
From RhymeZone.com:
noun: all of the inhabitants of the earth
Example: "She always used `humankind' because `mankind' seemed to slight the women"

I think there's your answer. I've always had the same associations as you though, which is why I'm struggling to see the problem.
 
I will add that I realize my perspective of the word isn't everyone's, and perhaps others have thought of Assembly Workers as actual male humans (though within my group of friends we've always said "it's attacking," not "he's attacking" when referring to something like Mishra's Factory).

Lavaclaw Reaches:

Since I don't do customs, this is one of the biggest reasons that I will not be including the entire cycle of fixing creature lands. Not only is it terrible, but it really doesn't synergize very well with what its color pair usually wants to be doing. Although BR is a good support to control, my initial thought is "aggressive," which probably isn't pleased about an ETB tapped fixing land.
 
Oh, I agree that men is used to mean people in certain contexts like "mankind", but the word itself becomes a lot different for people who have gone through a lot of being harassed (and worse) for not being enough of a man, being called a man when you aren't, sometimes alongside threats of violence. Eventually it starts feeling cruddy when men is equated to people because other people keep calling you a man and giving you shit for not living up to their manly men standards. Eventually being called a man feels disgusting. Its not that people are being a problem by using terms like this but the use of the word man as people is being made distasteful by countless people, the same way a lot of words have been made awful over the last few centuries. We have a huge list of slurs and other shitty words because of shitty things the majority has done. Its not queer folk who are making these terms shitty though, its non-queer people causing this. We're just getting blamed for making gendered terms out to be bad because we bring the issues to non-queer people's attention.
 
The main sticking point for me on "manlands" is there's a nice little internal rhyme structure within the word. Man-lan-ds.
But anyway i'm a huge fan of your undying GB land custom! Goes great with a lot of stuff and encourages you to be more gutsy with your early activations.
 
The more I see decks with 3+ colors split between cards with 1-2cmc, the less I like cards like the WWK creature-land cycle. It's not that I mind bolstering the creature slot through lands to be offensive; it's what the mana-fixing of these cards (combined with other mana-fixing) does to a format. I've always assumed that drafting decks with 3, 4 or 5 colors should be a feat and not a happy accident; in most Riptide cubes, the innate power of the multi-colored creature-lands (with a plethora of mana fixing) probably pushes a drafter beyond a color pair.

Whenever my WWK creature-lands are cubed (thank you Invasion Block obsession for the compulsion to buy them before Modern took off), they over perform. Granted, I don't play 1cmc-heavy formats like some of you do (my formats tend to be of much lower average card quality), but from my experience with these lands in the MTGO cube (mostly the RDW/goodstuff era near its inception), they seem to also overperform in slower style control decks through enabling an off-color bomb or two as well as giving the deck a "free" threat. Maybe 5ish Wastelands in 360 (I cannot believe I just typed that) would police them to a point I didn't find toxic (secondhand mana-fixing), but at this point, Mutavault (and to a lesser extent Mishra's Factory) appeal to me much more than the color-pair creature-lands that once enamored me.

RE: the offtopic discussion here. I have no qualms with whatever these lands are called. I grew up with manlands, and I've never found it offensive (but I am not attuned to issues of labeling). Also, I find language tending toward concise, descriptive shortcuts to be very appealing. Creature-lands is equally descriptive as manlands, describing a class of cards; this is fine but not as concise as the proper nouns attached with the cards. As we've seen in this thread, creature-lands are of varying quality and cannot be discussed in detail equally as an all-encompassing class; it's probably just best to type out the specific cards in many instances (or at least narrow down the card pool being referenced with additional attributes such as set or quality of mana produced).

It's interesting to think how the common-usage meaning and perception of words change over time, but something tells me that we are best just talking about how good Celestial Colonnade is at ruining a fine game of Magic: the Gathering. Now my mind is spinning thinking about how little I understand the complex systems of Magic draft cardpools and human language... thanks Riptide for keeping my work productivity at a respectable American rate!
 
I'm sorry to hear that, Tzenmoroth. :( People really can be awful.

I dunno. It just doesn't seem right to me that a few shitty people can cause commonly used words to be eliminated from our language, words that have so many other meanings, and are used in an non-offensive way by 99% of the population, 99% of the time.
 
I dunno. It just doesn't seem right to me that a few shitty people can cause commonly used words to be eliminated from our language, words that have so many other meanings, and are used in an non-offensive way by 99% of the population, 99% of the time.

There's hardly a town/city on Earth right now in which queer people can just be out and not prone to hate. That's actually a terrifyingly large number of toxic people. But yeah, people don't usually use common words with harmful intentions, I don't mean to say they are. Perfectly good words becoming shitty isn't new though, there's thousands of examples. English is already flooded with them. Even faggot used to be a perfectly harmless word used to describe awkward to carry objects. I don't know if unnecessarily gendered language is going down that road, but historically universities have been the first group to take out words as they start going there, and society has always followed their led, so the fact that academia is moving away from them is certainly a sign. Anyway, I'm not going to like make a point to call people out for using manland but I'm not going to use it myself and I will argue against it in a discussion on naming them although I probably wouldn't even bother starting a discussion. But seriously though, if you don't like having parts of English slowly slip into the abyss, at least blame the haters.
 
I really like Factories. It's short, easy and fluid to say, and harks back to the creature land.

Regarding lands: Floating Vein does seem wicked good, most likely too good. I know there's some set up, but the ceiling is too damn high. It could put a cost reduction on the next instant/sorcery maybe?
Like, the high end is bonkers.... swing, hit -> Dig through time twice. how about swing, hit -> Fiery confluence to the face twice for 14 total damage that turn. Talk about 0 to 100.
 
I actually really like the idea of getting huge value out of attacking with a land then casting an instant/sorcery. I would probably tweak it a little, first of all, removing the flying, so you at least have to try to get the trigger. I would probably make it 2RU for a 3/2 (or 2/1) so it can be a clock on its own and require a little more mana to get value off of its trigger but in the same (floating) vein as Fumarole, its fragile vs blockers and burn so you need to use some burn/counters to protect it upfront. Abusing it becomes a challenge and the reward gets to be on the high end. Also, don't put it in the same cube as legacy banworthy horseshit. :p
 
I kind of get why, and how gendered language is all "wrong". I used to be a believer in pc or feminism, whatever you want to call it, but it messed too much with some of my basic moral imperatives (nothing traditional or sexist). And I kind of felt like I was losing my soul every time I held my tongue, and that's not what I want the world or my life to be. I'm still steeped in a pc-environment most days. So from my point of view I am in a weird cluster of minorities that are perceived as an oppressive majority.

In the case of manlands, it's a really small thing that I think is kind of funny. I don't see it as overly offensive like using gay as a negative term or making a kitchen joke. But it is a mini-celebration of a larger sort of playfulness that is increasingly being villified as viciousness. (manly trigger warning)
Humour like this might not be the biggest cultural loss for some people, but I very much enjoy some of the cruder and dumber parts of comedy. I also like my women, women and my men, men, and I can see how other people might have different preferences. And we should all be able to celebrate our preferences. I certainly wouldn't be offended if whatever demography had an equivalent to that song, or the term manland, good for them. I probably wouldn't enjoy it as much as I could have but there are so many other things that I can enjoy so it isn't really a problem that I don't get it that one time.

Although I understand Tzenmoroth's position on this subject I'm on the opposite side. I would argue for manlands in a discussion, but I wouldn't take away people's right to call them whatever they want. I also realise that my opinion on this is extremely unpopular in most parts of the internet and real life today. It just goes to show that if you have your ears open most of the internet is probably represented somewhere on this site.
 
Top