Card/Deck Creature lands

James Stevenson

James Stevenson

Steamflogger Boss
Staff member
sigh said:
Sad about the Monastery test results. Kinda makes me want to record how many times a deck with G and W gets threshold in my cube though.... (or just try it myself because science)

While I'm hanging around looking at creature lands on Gatherer and all this discussion on GB stuff is happenin, how about another one? Anyone tested this beaut?:
Click to expand...
We should just sharpie the mana cost down, then it would be pretty cool.
 
Meltyman

Meltyman

I have 0 manlands.

I took off wastelands also because i dislike the non-games they can generate.

I don't think manlands are that interesting picks to be honest, you pick them if there aren't anything interesting in your colors other than the manland.
You pick them because they fix your mana, not because it has great synergy with your deck, i don't see the big deal about them.
Haven't missed them at all since i took them out.
 
RavebornMuse

RavebornMuse

I've also cut all of our radlands because we really didn't care about them. All I've got now is Faerie Conclave in the ULD, and I may one day add Treetop Village as well. Per Meltyman's complaint, we didn't like how they didn't really provide much synergy value; since I'm only running 4 cycles of fixing in my list (which btw I think is perfect for a cube centered around 2-3 players), I don't have room for them, as they felt inferior to temples, fetches, and shocklands for us.
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
I like creature lands for now because they are great against and with wraths, which adds a little layer to their play value for me that's hard to find in other (playable) permanents. I have thought about cutting them in the past though, so I can't really fault you for that.
 
japahn

japahn



Five years later, how do you feel creature lands (particularly the cycle of duals)? These were great as mana sinks early in my cube, but a bit too
uninteractive sometimes - looking at you, Creeping Tar Pit. I haven't run them in four years, but I miss them.
 
alvoi

alvoi

I like them, they are my 4th cycle of duals after og, fetch and shock and they never disappoint me. I consider them more as a guildgate with upside than a multicolored card, so I take them mostly for fixing but if it happens they can activate and be great. Colonnade and Tar Pit are really powerful, but that’s okay in my environment that is a 8.5 on the strix scale
 
Dom Harvey

Dom Harvey

Contributor
I love the cycle. There's much more competition for CIPT lands now (and more reason to avoid them entirely - see the Fight Club discussion) but I still like playing with them. My ranking of them:

Staple:
Celestial Colonnade - Top-tier in the abstract and WU in most Cubes skews controlling with fewer win conditions so it's a perfect environment for Colonnade

Creeping Tar Pit - The actual best in the abstract I think but UB isn't well suited for that effect unless you go out of your way to support a tempo deck in those colours

Very good:
Needle Spires - A proactive WR deck can suffer more from taking a turn off to play this but having 4 damage on the table ready to go after a sweeper is so valuable and these colours are more likely to have pump effects that can exploit double strike

Wandering Fumarole - Perfect in a UR deck that isn't looking to flood the board early but wants to play a proactive game before suddenly turning the corner with haste or flash threats. The choice of being a 1/4 or 4/1 makes it relevant for both of those subgames

Raging Ravine - Just gets so big so fast, we've all seen this do good work by now

Like them:
Stirring Wildwood - Only knocked down here because I've found WG decks tend to have a lot of uses for spare mana and more competition for specific land slots

Shambling Vent - The lifegain helps to mitigate any self-damage in black but the mana to damage ratio is a little weak by comparison

Lumbering Falls - Perfectly fine but you rarely see the more extreme games you had in Constructed where Falls would KO a control deck by itself while they sat with a hand of dead removal; most decks in Cube have to play to the board in some capacity and UG isn't great at clearing the way for a random beater to connect

Whatever:
Lavaclaw Reaches
Hissing Quagmire
 
Brad

Brad

I run them, but I have more room for fun lands. I can remember a game where a giant Lavaclaw ended it in a swing or two after a long battle. Quagmire is a cool 'removal spell.' Vent is decent attacking or blocking, but a little weak. I don't own Tar Pit, as it was kind of expensive for a while, but it's unblockable. Not much to think about there, it'll do its job.

I think if you can afford to run some taplands, they're a solid consideration alongside Temples. That's probably the other set of taplands that are worthwhile. The Temples are solid to smooth stuff out, but I think the manlands are way more interesting, so I went with those. I'd probably add something untapped before I went for Temples, honestly.

If I were running a 10 pair format, I'd be hesitant to include 10 taplands unless I were pretty low-mid powered, I think. There's so many good untapped lands now, even if you're budget.
 
shamizy

shamizy

All solid aside from Lavaclaw which is usually a turd. I only run it because R/B land cycles are mostly bad and nothing quite fits what I need. If I had an MH1 Horizon Land variant I would make the swap in a heartbeat. I currently run the following:



And I would have most of the rest of the cycle, but the Horizon Lands are just better for what I'm trying to do in enemy colors like {R/W} and {U/R} and the green ones are especially good for synergizing with cards like The Gitrog Monster and cards that can recur them like Wrenn and Six, Ramunap Excavator and Renegade Rallier.
 
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SirFunchalot

SirFunchalot

japahn said:


Five years later, how do you feel creature lands (particularly the cycle of duals)? These were great as mana sinks early in my cube, but a bit too
uninteractive sometimes - looking at you, Creeping Tar Pit. I haven't run them in four years, but I miss them.
Click to expand...

Don’t love them anymore, etb tapped has become too harsh a downside in my format and the activation costs too steep for the reward. Magic card design has also trended more and more towards very powerful and cheap value generation which decreases the necessity to have mana sinks in one’s mana base as you can simply do it through more proactive means like playing both halves of an adventure creature, escape threats, walkers drawing you cards, etc.
 
ravnic

ravnic

Flash forward five years to 2031 and I'm happily running Svogthos in Ravnica's 9th District for over a decade now :D

If your power level is dimilar to retail limited it is a C+ in the right deck I'd say.

Just felt like I had to say sonething nice about my boy Svogthos.
 
inscho

inscho

I still like wildwood and ravine, but I’ve supported heavy land recursion themes in gruul and selesnya for a while now and it adds some late game reach that I like. The blue ones never really interested me or suited my needs, but it’s more a thematic issue than anything.

I’m down to just treetop and mishra’s factory now, and that works for my needs. I like factory, because it can help a deck squeeze in another artifact to sacrifice to a welder, or it’s slots into a wrath based control deck with little fuss. I also still really like Faerie Conclave, but I have other blue utility lands that interest me more
 
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ravnic

ravnic

inscho said:
I’m down to just treetop and mishra’s factory now, and that works for my needs. I like factory, because it can help a deck squeeze in another artifact to sacrifice to a welder, or it’s slots into a wrath based control deck with little fuss. I also still really like Faerie Conclave, but I have other blue utility lands that interest me more
Click to expand...
exactly where I am
 
sigh

sigh

I'm currently running

The hostile desert plays really well with lands themes (and honestly with fetchlands in general), and the barrens in +1/+1 themes or with any deck that can build it up over time (EOT activations for a control deck or something). And both because they are color non-specific, which is really nice.
 
sigh

sigh

inscho said:
But if my beautiful lands are exiled from my graveyard however will I recur them, sac them, recur them, sac them, and recur them?
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#Tension :p

For real though. I get how a loam player wouldn't want to exile all their lands away, but it is another outlet for them, and most of the time I've seen it pop up in decks with 'lands' as a sub-theme, like GB self-mill (that isn't focused on a land recursion loop). Also seen it run in URx where you are looting away extra lands.
 
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