Same mana on turn 4, but you can actually use 3 mana on turn 3. In the bounceland example, you get a maximum of 2 mana on turn 3. Bouncelands are only any sort of advantage if you can untap them after using them for mana. If you have no way to untap a land, bouncelands are actually worse than either basic, and significantly worse than even a core set dual.
Also, there's apparently a problem of definition. Card advantage is having the ability to play more cards than your opponent. Drawing more is card advantage. Using cards from your graveyard is card advantage. Producing tokens can be card advantage. Making them discard can be card advantage. Removing the ability for your opponent to play certain cards in their deck can be card advantage. Having the same amount of mana available the turn after you play a bounceland is not card advantage. It is tempo loss for possible color consistency.
Because a hand containing three islands is probably unkeepable or at least a risky keep, as is a hand containing three plains; but a hand containing two islands and a dual land is a perfectly fine keep most of the time. If you can't cast half the spells in your deck, half your draws are automatically dead. The importance of having every color available early cannot be understated.
... is at least an acceptable keep if you drop the fountain, pay 2 life, and Ponder into something good or drop a Delver and Ponder next turn looking for another Island (and setting up your Delver), then drop the Geist on turn three.
Neither of those hands is any better than say.... 2 Plains and a Island. Congrats, you have everything you need and you save yourself 2 life.
I understand why people like Shocklands, they're decent, but honestly highly highly over rated. Even more so in a format without the various fetches.
Neither of those hands is any better than say.... 2 Plains and a Island. Congrats, you have everything you need and you save yourself 2 life.
I understand why people like Shocklands, they're decent, but honestly highly highly over rated. Even more so in a format without the various fetches.
Yes, but you're less likely to get the colors you need when all of your lands only produce one color. The more lands you have that make multiple colors, the more likely you are to have the right colors at the right time.
Obviously shock lands are far less powerful in a format without fetches than in a format with them. But they're still multicolor lands, which are some of the most important cards in a standard format. It doesn't hurt that they have excellent synergy with the other multicolor lands in the format (Glacial Fortress and friends) and they are a strictly better option than the gates. Not that you can't use both.
That said, if the shock lands and the M10/INN duals were both printed in a vacuum, there is no reason that the shock lands should be much more expensive, if any. But modern means there is a greater demand for shock lands than M10 duals, and the M10 duals have been printed twice as many times. Greater demand + lesser supply = higher price.
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Same mana on turn 4, but you can actually use 3 mana on turn 3. In the bounceland example, you get a maximum of 2 mana on turn 3. Bouncelands are only any sort of advantage if you can untap them after using them for mana. If you have no way to untap a land, bouncelands are actually worse than either basic, and significantly worse than even a core set dual.
Also, there's apparently a problem of definition. Card advantage is having the ability to play more cards than your opponent. Drawing more is card advantage. Using cards from your graveyard is card advantage. Producing tokens can be card advantage. Making them discard can be card advantage. Removing the ability for your opponent to play certain cards in their deck can be card advantage. Having the same amount of mana available the turn after you play a bounceland is not card advantage. It is tempo loss for possible color consistency.
(just an example quote for all these saying 'Karoo lands aren`t card advantage)
Now, lets count:
(a) (I`ll simply assume that I`m on the play; if I`m on the draw, just +1)
drop Basic, play onedrop 5 cards in hand
draw card, play onedrop, drop Karoo bounce Basic, 5 cards in hand
draw, drop Basic, 3-drop, 4 cards
draw, Land, 4drop, 3 cards left
.. until someone decides to Boomerang your Karoo, now that`ll ruin your day, because s/he just 2-for-1`ed you. But, usually that`s what happens, when you`re trying to get an advantage, it will come at an inevitable price, and now we`re getting ontopic again, because if someone bolts you 6 times in three turns (which is perfectly possible when you`re facing burn), you`ll be dead if you played a shockland before, tough luck. However, if you did not, you`d be still alive and the burn player just ran out of gas and went into topdeck mode, giving you time to stabilize and comeback with a vengeance.
In scenario A, I have three lands worth four mana, while in B I have four lands worth four mana.
Continueing your thought on an analogy, three Shocks will net six damage, but so would two Lightning Bolts do, same result with less investment.
That`s what (Virtual) Card Advantage is about; but that`s arguing about definitions.
Fact is, playing a Karoo land over a tap land will net you the same outcome for less investments in most situations (the situation I can imagine where it`s disadvantageous to run a Karoo land would be the onelandhand, bounce, and LD), which is fine, because else it would mean that a Karoo land is strictly superior than a classical tapland.
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Wut? Those two cards create tokens out of nowhere. That's card advantage. Where does a Karoo give you a new card you didn't have previously?
So, according to this statement of yours, a token producer would be 'Card Advantage' to you, but a Karoo land that will make you more mana with a smaller land count is not.
Let me post something else to the readers of this thread. Regardless of how you feel about shock lands (and based on the information here, my opinion is certainly changing) the fact remains that they are quite valuable. Here's what precipitated the opening of this thread in the first place:
One of my LGSes got its RtR boxes last week. This past Tuesday, a friend and I each bought a pack to do a packwar with. We both opened shock lands: Temple Garden and Overgrown Tomb, respectively. On a whim, I went back to the same shop and bought another pack from the same box. Sure enough, there was a Steam Vents inside.
So, is this merely coincidence? Or should I consider going back and buying all the boosters left in that box?
So, is this merely coincidence? Or should I consider going back and buying all the boosters left in that box?
Actually due to the way print runs are, it's best NOT to purchase the remaining boosters in that box. You've already gotten most of the good cards out of the box; at that point, you're very unlikely to open any more shock lands.
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I have a question about shocklands. For the casual/modern player like myself, do I need to run a playset of shocklands in a deck? Or can I run 1-2 shocklands as they really are price prohibitive for me.
I think newbies take one look at a shockland or fetchland and write them off after seeing their price. I think new players will take a sick $15-20 creature or spell over a similarly priced shockland any day of the week. And I don't blame them either as that's what I used to do.
if you play casual, you don't even eed 2. you need nothing, actually. just get evolving wilds, adarkar wastes and co. (painlands), golgari guildgate and the other gates... only if you're trying to make a deck run many 1 cost spells it will be hard to have a budget mana base.
Actually due to the way print runs are, it's best NOT to purchase the remaining boosters in that box. You've already gotten most of the good cards out of the box; at that point, you're very unlikely to open any more shock lands.
Yeah, but I also keep hearing about all kinds of collation errors with RtR packs in this forum. What if every pack in that box got a shock land as it's rare for some reason. I can dream, right?
Why in the world would you play a turn 1 bounce-land? It automatically returns itself to your hand. Dimir Aqueduct is not Sea Drake.
When any of the bouncelands come in on the first turn, their ability then triggers, and looks and see a land, that being the bounceland you just played. It then returns it to your hand.
Sea Drake, when played off of an island or other blue producing land and artifact mana will be played, see that there aren't two lands in play and do nothing. These are not equivalent situations.
I meant turn 2 bounce. it was the only land that was down
Tell me, since I asked earlier: Do you believe Ancient Tomb gives you card advantage because it taps for 2? If not, why not?
They are if you build your deck taking this into account, playing fewer land and more spells, meaning that on average, you will have more spells in hand at every point in the game. The 2 lands + karoo vs 4 lands is an exact illustration of this: in one case, you got 4 spells in hand, in the other 3. When people were build decks in Ravnica limited, they'd play fewer lands when they had karoos. They counted karoos as 1.5 - 2 lands. When evaluating hands, karoos completely change what hands are keepable, because they act as an additional land.
Same for lightning bolt vs. volcanic hammer. If you build a burn deck, having bolts instead of hammers will let you run less land and more burn because each card cost less. For bolt vs. shocks, 2 bolts = 3 shocks. In the case of spells, I agree the definition is blurrier since if you bolt or shock a creature, the result is the same. For lands, the effect is clearly on the side of card advantage, as they almost always act as pure mana sources and almost never produce more than one mana.
Karoos count as two land drops. Except in narrow cases (boomerang, LD), karoos are virtually two cards. Stop counting cardboard.
If you don't think it's card advantage, then spells with flashback are not card advantage. Look! It's only one card!
People will often confuse differences in card quality with card advantage. While a card quality advantage can (and often does) lead to card advantage and/or advantages in other areas of the game, such as board presence or tempo, the very fact that you are playing "better" or bigger cards than your opponent doesn't necessarily mean that you will gain a lasting advantage.
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Yes, some advantages can only situationally be converted to card advantage. For bouncelands, that situation is "tapping for mana" and "drawing a spell instead of a land". Real tough to pull that off.
i read the first few posts and skimmed the rest and didn't see the correct answer to OP's question. the answer isn't WHY shocklands are so much better, etc. the answer is the degrees of tournament playability. more playability = more demand, and the reason there's such a large jump in price is because the demanders of tournament playable cards are much higher than the demand for strong casual cards.
everyone who answered along the lines of why the card was so much stronger was missing the point. if all tournaments in magic suddenly went away but magic still existed as a fun pastime, the price differential would dramatically shrink despite the fact that the power level of shocklands are will exactly the same.
i read the first few posts and skimmed the rest and didn't see the correct answer to OP's question. the answer isn't WHY shocklands are so much better, etc. the answer is the degrees of tournament playability. more playability = more demand, and the reason there's such a large jump in price is because the demanders of tournament playable cards are much higher than the demand for strong casual cards.
everyone who answered along the lines of why the card was so much stronger was missing the point. if all tournaments in magic suddenly went away but magic still existed as a fun pastime, the price differential would dramatically shrink despite the fact that the power level of shocklands are will exactly the same.
I did not talk about tournaments. I talked about how it lets you play things faster. In most games, faster = better. I wasn't factoring price into my points.
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I've always felt that life total is coincidental. Unless you are playing against burn. I am always willing to scrap life for power. That is why shocklands are so great. I can understand why new players are turned off by the idea of losing life for cards but trust me. The edge you get from shocks are well worth the life lose.
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I've always felt that life total is coincidental. Unless you are playing against burn. I am always willing to scrap life for power. That is why shocklands are so great. I can understand why new players are turned off by the idea of losing life for cards but trust me. The edge you get from shocks are well worth the life lose.
life total does matter a whole lot throughout the game. Especially true in standard where most decks nowadays are aggro, mid-range, or tempo, which can very well run out of fuel between dealing 18 damage and dealing 20.
there's a reason why you can't just swap duals for shocks in legacy.
there's a reason why you can't just swap duals for shocks in legacy.
That is because the ABUR Duals are significantly better than even the shocks.
A land that comes into play untapped with no down side, and gives you a choice of two colors of mana, and is retrievable with fetch lands or Land Grant (in the case of Bayou and the other GX duals) is VASTLY superior to a land that comes into play doing all of that but is tapped unless you spend two life.
But, the Shocks are a substitute for the vastly more expensive cards, just not a perfect one, carrying the downside.
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Look at this if you're only playing lands:
t1 - Island U available
t2 - Mountain UR available
t3 - Izzet Boilerworks returning Island R available (and U if you use it before returning it)
t4 - Island UURR available
versus
t1 - Island U available
t2 - Mountain UR available
t3 - Mountain URR available
t4 - Island UURR available
Same mana on turn 4, but you can actually use 3 mana on turn 3. In the bounceland example, you get a maximum of 2 mana on turn 3. Bouncelands are only any sort of advantage if you can untap them after using them for mana. If you have no way to untap a land, bouncelands are actually worse than either basic, and significantly worse than even a core set dual.
Also, there's apparently a problem of definition. Card advantage is having the ability to play more cards than your opponent. Drawing more is card advantage. Using cards from your graveyard is card advantage. Producing tokens can be card advantage. Making them discard can be card advantage. Removing the ability for your opponent to play certain cards in their deck can be card advantage. Having the same amount of mana available the turn after you play a bounceland is not card advantage. It is tempo loss for possible color consistency.
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I understand why people like Shocklands, they're decent, but honestly highly highly over rated. Even more so in a format without the various fetches.
Yes, but you're less likely to get the colors you need when all of your lands only produce one color. The more lands you have that make multiple colors, the more likely you are to have the right colors at the right time.
Obviously shock lands are far less powerful in a format without fetches than in a format with them. But they're still multicolor lands, which are some of the most important cards in a standard format. It doesn't hurt that they have excellent synergy with the other multicolor lands in the format (Glacial Fortress and friends) and they are a strictly better option than the gates. Not that you can't use both.
That said, if the shock lands and the M10/INN duals were both printed in a vacuum, there is no reason that the shock lands should be much more expensive, if any. But modern means there is a greater demand for shock lands than M10 duals, and the M10 duals have been printed twice as many times. Greater demand + lesser supply = higher price.
"I am confident that if anyone actually
penetrates our facades, even the most
perceptive would still be fundamentally
unprepared for the truth of House Dimir."
(just an example quote for all these saying 'Karoo lands aren`t card advantage)
Now, lets count:
(a) (I`ll simply assume that I`m on the play; if I`m on the draw, just +1)
drop Basic, play onedrop 5 cards in hand
draw card, play onedrop, drop Karoo bounce Basic, 5 cards in hand
draw, drop Basic, 3-drop, 4 cards
draw, Land, 4drop, 3 cards left
(b) Land, onedrop, 5 cards
draw, Tapland, onedrop, 4 cards
draw, Land, 3-drop, 3 cards
draw, Land, 4-drop, 2 cards
See the difference? That`s card advantage.
.. until someone decides to Boomerang your Karoo, now that`ll ruin your day, because s/he just 2-for-1`ed you. But, usually that`s what happens, when you`re trying to get an advantage, it will come at an inevitable price, and now we`re getting ontopic again, because if someone bolts you 6 times in three turns (which is perfectly possible when you`re facing burn), you`ll be dead if you played a shockland before, tough luck. However, if you did not, you`d be still alive and the burn player just ran out of gas and went into topdeck mode, giving you time to stabilize and comeback with a vengeance.
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Continueing your thought on an analogy, three Shocks will net six damage, but so would two Lightning Bolts do, same result with less investment.
That`s what (Virtual) Card Advantage is about; but that`s arguing about definitions.
Fact is, playing a Karoo land over a tap land will net you the same outcome for less investments in most situations (the situation I can imagine where it`s disadvantageous to run a Karoo land would be the onelandhand, bounce, and LD), which is fine, because else it would mean that a Karoo land is strictly superior than a classical tapland.
—Neerdiv, fallowsage
So, according to this statement of yours, a token producer would be 'Card Advantage' to you, but a Karoo land that will make you more mana with a smaller land count is not.
But, before we start derailing this Shocklands thread even more, I`d like to invite you, and, mind you, everyone else, to have a little chat about that topic here:
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?p=9172538
—Neerdiv, fallowsage
One of my LGSes got its RtR boxes last week. This past Tuesday, a friend and I each bought a pack to do a packwar with. We both opened shock lands: Temple Garden and Overgrown Tomb, respectively. On a whim, I went back to the same shop and bought another pack from the same box. Sure enough, there was a Steam Vents inside.
So, is this merely coincidence? Or should I consider going back and buying all the boosters left in that box?
Actually due to the way print runs are, it's best NOT to purchase the remaining boosters in that box. You've already gotten most of the good cards out of the box; at that point, you're very unlikely to open any more shock lands.
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if you play casual, you don't even eed 2. you need nothing, actually. just get evolving wilds, adarkar wastes and co. (painlands), golgari guildgate and the other gates... only if you're trying to make a deck run many 1 cost spells it will be hard to have a budget mana base.
Yeah, but I also keep hearing about all kinds of collation errors with RtR packs in this forum. What if every pack in that box got a shock land as it's rare for some reason. I can dream, right?
I meant turn 2 bounce. it was the only land that was down
They are if you build your deck taking this into account, playing fewer land and more spells, meaning that on average, you will have more spells in hand at every point in the game. The 2 lands + karoo vs 4 lands is an exact illustration of this: in one case, you got 4 spells in hand, in the other 3. When people were build decks in Ravnica limited, they'd play fewer lands when they had karoos. They counted karoos as 1.5 - 2 lands. When evaluating hands, karoos completely change what hands are keepable, because they act as an additional land.
Same for lightning bolt vs. volcanic hammer. If you build a burn deck, having bolts instead of hammers will let you run less land and more burn because each card cost less. For bolt vs. shocks, 2 bolts = 3 shocks. In the case of spells, I agree the definition is blurrier since if you bolt or shock a creature, the result is the same. For lands, the effect is clearly on the side of card advantage, as they almost always act as pure mana sources and almost never produce more than one mana.
Karoos count as two land drops. Except in narrow cases (boomerang, LD), karoos are virtually two cards. Stop counting cardboard.
If you don't think it's card advantage, then spells with flashback are not card advantage. Look! It's only one card!
When you play more color-intensive decks, you'll appriciate the fact that you can turn-1 arbor elf into turn 2 geralf's messnger
or turn 1 gravecrawler into turn 2 strangleroot geist into turn 3 geralf's messenger
Flashback = Access to more spells to cast at any given time = card advantage.
Karoo lands = a land that produces more mana than a basic land = card quality.
There IS a difference.
Standard:
WBRG Aggro-Reanimator Humans GRBW
Modern:
UR Twinning RU
G Venus Fly Trap G
U Artifacts Aggro U
Legacy:
B Reanimator B
WU Stoneblade UW
EDH
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Standard:
WBRG Aggro-Reanimator Humans GRBW
Modern:
UR Twinning RU
G Venus Fly Trap G
U Artifacts Aggro U
Legacy:
B Reanimator B
WU Stoneblade UW
EDH
WBGGhave, Guru of SporesGBW
URGRiku of the Two ReflectionsGRU
WUBRGScion of the Ur-DragonGRBUW
Casual
Far too many to list
it performs the role of 2 cards. Just like armada wurm does
Which is the definition of card QUALITY, not advantage.
Standard:
WBRG Aggro-Reanimator Humans GRBW
Modern:
UR Twinning RU
G Venus Fly Trap G
U Artifacts Aggro U
Legacy:
B Reanimator B
WU Stoneblade UW
EDH
WBGGhave, Guru of SporesGBW
URGRiku of the Two ReflectionsGRU
WUBRGScion of the Ur-DragonGRBUW
Casual
Far too many to list
everyone who answered along the lines of why the card was so much stronger was missing the point. if all tournaments in magic suddenly went away but magic still existed as a fun pastime, the price differential would dramatically shrink despite the fact that the power level of shocklands are will exactly the same.
I did not talk about tournaments. I talked about how it lets you play things faster. In most games, faster = better. I wasn't factoring price into my points.
Standard:
WBRG Aggro-Reanimator Humans GRBW
Modern:
UR Twinning RU
G Venus Fly Trap G
U Artifacts Aggro U
Legacy:
B Reanimator B
WU Stoneblade UW
EDH
WBGGhave, Guru of SporesGBW
URGRiku of the Two ReflectionsGRU
WUBRGScion of the Ur-DragonGRBUW
Casual
Far too many to list
life total does matter a whole lot throughout the game. Especially true in standard where most decks nowadays are aggro, mid-range, or tempo, which can very well run out of fuel between dealing 18 damage and dealing 20.
there's a reason why you can't just swap duals for shocks in legacy.
That is because the ABUR Duals are significantly better than even the shocks.
A land that comes into play untapped with no down side, and gives you a choice of two colors of mana, and is retrievable with fetch lands or Land Grant (in the case of Bayou and the other GX duals) is VASTLY superior to a land that comes into play doing all of that but is tapped unless you spend two life.
But, the Shocks are a substitute for the vastly more expensive cards, just not a perfect one, carrying the downside.
Standard:
WBRG Aggro-Reanimator Humans GRBW
Modern:
UR Twinning RU
G Venus Fly Trap G
U Artifacts Aggro U
Legacy:
B Reanimator B
WU Stoneblade UW
EDH
WBGGhave, Guru of SporesGBW
URGRiku of the Two ReflectionsGRU
WUBRGScion of the Ur-DragonGRBUW
Casual
Far too many to list