Card/Deck Creature lands

[Eric Chan]

Now that the two-colour cycle of manlands creature lands is about to be completed, how many are people going to run? A) All ten; B) just the best ones; C) just the good ones but not the best ones; D) none?

In looking at a number of people's lists recently, I was surprised to find that a lot of folks don't even bother with Celestial Colonnade and Creeping Tar Pit, and that got me to thinking about how annoying they tend to be in my own environment. They're great cards, to be sure, and Colonnade is perhaps the best reason to go into UW, but losing to that same 4/4 in the air for the umpteenth time does get old.

Basically, I'm not sure what number between 0 and 10 manlands creature lands I want to run, nor why, and I realized I've never given this much thought beyond throwing all the Worldwake ones in my list back in the day. Halp!

 

[sigh]

My plan is the 5 new enemy lands, partly because I don't have the allied ones, and partly because I think the 5 new ones are much flatter in power level compared to each other, as opposed to the wide gap on some of the allied lands.

 

[ahadabans]

I like manlands. They are hard to deal with threats and they fix mana. What's not to like? I'm running all 10 and fist pumping while I do it.

With that said, Colonnade and Tar Pit in particular are really strong and I can see people not wanting to run them.

 

[safra]

I'll be running all 10 as part of some new land cycle.

 

[Tzenmoroth]

All 10, plus Treetop Village, Mishra's Factory and maybe also Mutavault if I want redundancy there and I think Faerie Conclave is the only other good one. I would run more, like another 5-10 or so easily. I love how much land creatures add to the game. I also run the RUG Genju and they've been great. More land creatures please WotC.

 

[CML]

The question you should be asking is if diamond mana means it's time to put Mishra's Factory and Mutavault in the main draft, I think

 

[shamizy]

Will not run all ten, mostly because Lavaclaw Reaches and Stirring Wildwood aren't all that impressive at all. I don't really care for the RW one either, I like the UR one a lot, and BG just looks solid to me.

 

[CML]

per usual BG is the worst

 

[Onderzeeboot]

per usual BG is the worst

Please do not remind me, I'm actually running Svogthos, the Restless Tomb over that in my ULD...

 

[Mondschwein]

I'm running Treetop Village, Shambling Vent (BW) and the new BG land with deathtouch. The rest is either too strong (UB, UW, WG) or too easily removed (Faerie Conclave, the red Urza's manland). Maybe I'll add Mishra's Factory but I don't like unconditional manlands in my environment.

 

[Eric Chan]

The power level disparity between the best and worst manlands is what bothers me the most. Celestial Colonnade is worth a speculative pick early on in the draft, even if you aren't solidly UW yet, because it offers that much raw power; meanwhile, Lavaclaw Reaches tables so late that sometimes I wonder if I'd be better off just offering Temple of Malice.

I think my new plan will be to run just the sweet ones:



I'll probably a) count these as gold cards, so that there's still slots for sweet BR and UG spells, and b) fill out the rest of the missing fixing cycle with Temples, so that there's still the same number of duals available to everyone. I know, it's weird, but having Reaches side by side with Colonnade bothers me even more than this odd setup.

Mutavault has always been in the main list here - that guy's well worth a draft pick. I just promoted Treetop Village, too!

 

[Lucre]

Has anyone thought of a more pc word for it that isn't as awful and un-genuine as folklands?

 

[Ferritovore]

Well the term manlands is fairly inaccurate snce the lands are often elementals, sometimes fairies, sometimes apes?
Very rarely mans or womans.
Landbeasts? Wakelands? Idol-lands? Anilands? Redlands (because they can go somewhere most lands can't - into the red zone!)

 

[Lucre]

Dorklands?

I think it was around ravnica 1.0 that o started calling all my things in games either dudes animals or idiots maybe it was in some kinda "my man!" kinda sentiment.

Come to think of it I called my creeping tar pit an idiot twice tonight alone. I dunno I guess tar pit or treetop feel like they are my men more than they feel particularly folksy. I assume the Wizards we are pretending to be consider every creature we control some kind of awful conscript levies. Maybe I'll just start gendering them the opposite way and see if that starts upsetting anyone.

Kinda like dorkland though...

"Have you seen the new dorklands I made on cubetutor yet?"
"Animate this dorkland into a dingus, attack for two."

 

[Alfonzo Bonzo]

The zendikar dual lands shouldn't really be compared to things like treetop village as they're duals first and foremost that happen to turn into creatures later on. I have three cycles of duals and then one random slot, so I'm playing the best for that guild and then some otherwise. I can't really fault the approach of just play all of them though, even lavaclaw reaches is solid when you're just looking at it from a dual land perspective.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Has anyone thought of a more pc word for it that isn't as awful and un-genuine as folklands?

I have never even considered if the term manland could be gender-offensive. I think because gender is totally irrelevant in this case, precisely because these things animate into apes, elementals, changelings, and whatnot. If you're going to relabel manland, what about human, mankind, manhandle and... and mangrove?

 

[Diakonov]

My gut tells me that the best thing to do is pick and choose which fixing manlands are best for your environment. Given that, I sort of like the idea of giving asymmetry to the final fixing slot of each guild in general. I'd rather run Horizon Canopy over Stirring Wildwood (though I do like Stirring Wildwood). Since I support a semi-mono-black theme, I'm also tempted to run a couple filter lands.

Side question: what do people think of Punishing Fire, and would it be cool/lame to cube with Grove of the Burnwillows?

If we had to narrow our choices down to 4, which would be the 4 most interesting fixing manlands?

What is each guild's most valuable/interesting non-traditional fixing land?

 

[Chris Taylor]

I have never even considered if the term manland could be gender-offensive. I think because gender is totally irrelevant in this case, precisely because these things animate into apes, elementals, changelings, and whatnot. If you're going to relabel manland, what about human, mankind, manhandle and... and mangrove?

Aren't there actually a lot of arguments against mankind/human though? I can't say I know anyone who uses the term womyn, but they certainly exist
Also...mangrove? I mean I'm no etymologist...

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Aren't there actually a lot of arguments against mankind/human though? I can't say I know anyone who uses the term womyn, but they certainly exist
Also...mangrove? I mean I'm no etymologist...

Yes, that was kinda the point. I think manland isn't the worst offender by far, supposing you choose to be offended by the particle man being used in words that are supposed to be gender-neutral.

Also, mangrove is a cheeky example of why you shouldn't use the sexist card on every word that has the word "man" in it. The grove part actually comes from grove, but the whole word is likely a hash of a foreign word, possibly the Portuguese mangue. The man in mangrove doesn't refer to males at all

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

I have never even considered if the term manland could be gender-offensive. I think because gender is totally irrelevant in this case, precisely because these things animate into apes, elementals, changelings, and whatnot. If you're going to relabel manland, what about human, mankind, manhandle and... and mangrove?

The PC term you're looking for is in here

 

[Onderzeeboot]

The PC term you're looking for is in here

Oh wow.

 

[Dom Harvey]

'creature land' always seemed a bit clunky but I don't know of anything better

I like the Temples a lot in colour pairs that don't traditionally get a lot of card selection, and BR is definitely one of those along with WB/BR. It's tricky though: we tend to shy away from midrange/control decks in those pairs, and the lack of selection/draw is a big reason why, so by including Temple over another appropriate land you might be taking a very small step to support a deck that doesn't exist.

 

[ahadabans]

I treat the dual manlands like fixing, so while I agree there is a large power gap between UW and RB, all are still good enough IMO for the fixing alone.

What's wrong with calling them manlands?

 

[Eric Chan]

Yeah, I get that they're all fixers first and foremost, which is why I still like having ten lands in some form or fashion. To me, though, there's a huge difference in upside between a Coastal Tower and a Celestial Colonnade, and Lavaclaw Reaches is much closer to the former than the latter. I just wish there were an easy way to make up for the power level difference, which I'm attempting to compensate for by allowing the colours without a manland access to more gold cards. I'll be the first to say that this isn't ideal, and that I don't know whether it's better or worse than just jamming the whole cycle.

I completely agree with Lucre on hating the term 'manlands', btw, and wish there was better nomenclature for them.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

I treat the dual manlands like fixing, so while I agree there is a large power gap between UW and RB, all are still good enough IMO for the fixing alone.

What's wrong with calling them manlands?

As far as I'm concerned nothing, but Lucre seems to think it's politically incorrect, presumably because of something something gender equality? I think gender (in)equality is a valid concern in general, but the nickname of a category of Magic cards is not an area it should be applied to. Let's start with wages an job opportunities for example.