MTG Salvation

October 30, 2015

In the beginning….

Hi everybody! This is my first attempt at writing a Magic article, so I hope you’ll bear with me through this process and hopefully we’ll learn some new things together.

Let me start by telling you a little bit about myself.

I first got into Magic at the start of 2006. I had a passing interest in Magic for some time before that, seeing the precons and boosters for sale, and thinking to myself that I’d look into buying some eventually. I first picked up the 9^th Edition starter set that came with the Magic Online CD and was hooked from there. Why do I remember it so distinctly? I have absolutely no idea. It just resonated with a part of me like no game had before.

That’s enough about me. What I want to talk about today is something all players think about, albeit in different ways: lands.

Lay of the Land

Regardless of whether you are a Timmy/Johnny/Spike/Vorthos, one of the most fundamental components of your deck is going to be your mana base. From the Magic Worlds Championships, to little Petey’s kitchen table, how your mana base is constructed will directly affect your ability to play your spells.

Currently, a popular topic of debate in Standard has to do with the price point of entry to play. The three main pillars of standard right now can be considered to be Jeskai (black or otherwise), G/W Megamorph/Abzan (both decks share a majority of cards), and Atarka Red. These decks will cost approximately between $400-$800 dollars to buy, with a majority of the cost taken up by the mana bases, Jace aside. For many players right now those decks are simply unattainable. You can buy into Modern for around the same prices, and that’s what many players seem to be deciding to do.

Mark Rosewater is often quoted saying that “restriction breeds creativity”. And in many instances I totally agree. In regards to deck building though, I feel that only is correct if all players have the same restrictions. When a segment of players is limited as to what they can build in a format because of cost while a segment is not, that is an unbalanced situation. It’d be like showing up at a Legacy tournament playing Standard Abzan; sure you CAN play, but the odds of you doing well are not in your favor.

When someone just starting out goes to their first FNM and is pounded round after round because they could only get an Intro Deck or built their deck with commons and uncommons they pulled from packs it can be a highly discouraging experience. How many people have quit playing because of times like that? How many of us currently have walked away from the game for a while because we simply couldn’t afford to put together reasonably competitive deck?

Land Tax

Now, I realize the controversy this topic usually causes. There are plenty of players who say “well if you can’t afford the cards you shouldn’t play competitively”, or “Magic is an expensive game. Get used to it”. I feel these opinions, while perfectly valid, go against what Magic was designed for as a game and where it needs to go to continue growing.

At its most basic definition, Magic is a game. A game needs players to exist. The more people that buy the game, the better the chance of the game continuing. In order for more people to buy and play the game it has to be affordable. Magic, in general, can be played on the cheap. Competitively, however, it cannot.

I’ll use a concept familiar to a large amount of Magic players; card advantage. Simply put, card advantage means the person who sees more of their spells and is able to use them in the most efficient manner will generally end up winning. I’d like to expand on that concept with what I call “Land Advantage”. It’s a familiar theory to many of us; the person who consistently hits their land drops, both in frequency and color requirements, generally has access to more of their spells, thereby granting them card advantage.

How does that pertain to the cost of mana bases? If player A has a suboptimal mana base due to budget constraints while player B has an ideal mana base, player B already has virtual card advantage before the game is even played. Player B will have a higher percentage ability to meet their deck’s mana requirements, allowing them to more efficiently play their spells. Player A has a higher percentage of either land or color screw, causing them card disadvantage. Player A’s deck may have answers for what Player B’s deck is trying to accomplish, but it’s all for naught if they are unable to play their spells in an effective manner. So how can we address this issue in a way that’s fair to all players?

Land Aid ‘15

Simpy put, I don’t know. It can be a slippery slope (unintentional pun intended) to mess with something as sacred to Magic as lands. The simplest solution would be to eliminate lands at Rare, but you’d have an easier time getting Brainstorm banned in Legacy than that. People like rare lands. The advantages they can potentially provide are what drive a lot of people to play certain decks (if you’ve never watched Lands or 12-Post in Legacy before you are missing out in my opinion). Lands are easily some of the most iconic cards in the game, as much for their artwork as their playability. That being said, I recently had a few ideas that I’ll share with you, and debate them as you will. After all, without debate change is slow to happen.

Restore Balance

• Create a new sub-format/rules level for Standard. It sounds confusing, I know, but hear me out. We have Regular and Professional (Competitive) REL’s, so why not create a special one for events like FNM called Standard Casual REL? In Standard Casual REL all standard cards are legal, except for the rare lands. This would drastically alter the way decks are constructed, true, but could allow for deck types that are currently not that playable because of the mana fixing the rare lands provide. It doesn’t even have to be every FNM. Let shops decide how many Standard Casual REL FNMs they want to host a month. It would give newer player a chance to be on more equal ground and actually get to play Magic. And isn’t anything that encourages people to pick up the game and play worth considering?
  
  
• Create a fetch cycle at uncommon. Think of the Panoramas from the Shards block. They could tap for 1 colorless or you could pay 1 and sacrifice them to search for one of three basic lands. What if Wizards made something on a similar idea, something like this:

[Unnamed Land]

Tap: add 1 colorless to your mana pool.

Tap and sacrifice: search your library for a basic island (the basic type would differ on each one of course) and put it into play.

By searching for a basic only you are limiting how broken the card could be while giving players who can’t afford all the fetches to still get some decent mana fixing.

• Here’s the least likely idea, but still worth mentioning at least: print the fetches at uncommon. I know, I know, “but Adam, that will tank the value of all the other fetchlands!”. Would that really be such a bad thing though? I know there are players who invest a lot of time and money into acquiring all the best rares/cards, but ultimately Magic is a game. A trading card game. These cards are meant to be traded and played, and by keeping some of the better cards more expensive isn’t the secondary market just limiting that?

Lands are easily one of the most important parts of the game and greatly contribute to the competitive playability of just about any given deck. I think it’s a great disservice to this game we all love to have the price of such a critical component be as big a barrier to competitive play as they have become. My hope is that this will at least get people talking about the issue. After all, Lao Tzu once said, “the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”.