Learning about the lands deck

Recently I played this deck list in an 8 man event. While I have been on the receiving end of this deck numerous times I have never actually got round to doing one myself. I heavily underestimated how hard it was to play, to my detriment. I threw games with poor Bazaar of Baghdad and Maze of Ith timings which is frankly a little embarrassing! I also threw more games simply by miss-building the deck which is far more unlike me. While there was a points restriction on cards in the event that I played that wasn't anything to do with my miss-build. That was all down to me not having played the deck before and not understanding the kinds of thing it needs. It wasn't even really the spell side of things that let me down so much but my choices on the lands and how they would interact with the spells, many of which are seemingly subtle. It wasn't even the colours that were an issue, I got that bit fairly comfortably. It was simply the blend of utility lands and how I tried to use them. I had too many powerful draw effects and not enough specific utility.



My List

9 spells

Mana Bond

Fastbond 

Trade Routes

Mulch

Life from the Loam

Treasure Hunt

Time Twister 

Seismic Assault 

Wheel of Fortune 

31 Lands

Dust Bowl

Glacial Chasm

The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale

Bazaar of Baghdad

Maze of Ith

Kessig Wolf-Run 

Inkmoth Nexus 

Springjack Pasture

Westvale Abbey 

Mistveil Plains

Forgotten Cave

Lonely Sandbar

Tranquil Thicket

Orzhov Guildgate

Dimir  Guildgate

Rakdos  Guildgate

Gruul  Guildgate

Boros  Guildgate

Golgari  Guildgate

Simic  Guildgate

Izzet  Guildgate

Azorius  Guildgate

Selesnya  Guildgate

Maze's End

Cascade Bluffs 

Fire-lit Thicket 

Mossfire Valley

Izzet Boilerworks

Copperline Gorge 

Yavimaya Coast

Crumbling Vestige

I should have played Gamble simply for another Life from the Loam. I likely should also have played Exploration. Making two lands a turn would have been much more relevant than I initially gave it credit for. I figured I needed such a serious amount to do anything useful that I would die before I got anywhere making lands two at a time. In reality two lands a turn is exactly what this kind of deck wants. Lots of the time I was using Fastbond I was holding back and would have been better off with Exploration. Mostly my revisions to the deck make it look more like the vintage list, not a shocker really!

I managed to win some games with goats, that was fun. I managed to win more than one (yes, two) with Maze's End combo as well! It is great to have a hard to disrupt way of winning pretty much regardless built into your deck but given it also takes up over 25% of the slots I could probably have done a little better. It meant the majority of my coloured sources were coming into play tapped and as such I was at least a turn slower than I could have been. My original plan was simply to use a load of man land cards as my backup win condition but I figured with was easily beatable and not playing to my strengths of being a deck that is hard to interact with. Although Springjack Pasture and Westvale Abbey did do some good things it was not the intended things. I would not still play the pasture without the Mistveil plan. 

The Thespain Stage and Dark Depths combo was something I was stupid not to add. It is a far less onerous win condition than most and fairly effective. If going that route things like Crop Rotation are really worth playing and you look even more like a combo deck than you did before.

Zuran Orb and Splendid Reclaimation would have been a great combo had Eldritch Moon been available when we started this event. Boseiju starts to have some utility then but likely not worth it still. Splendid Reclaimation is a way to get huge value and a huge influx of lands at once. You need to set it up a bit but when you do it is all the things you want in your deck rolled up into one neat package. Bazaar, Trade Routes, sac and cycle land, Zuran Orb, Gamble, Crop Rotation, Cephalid Coluseum and I am sure many more cards that are decent in this kind of deck already support the Reclamation nicely. When you have a deck with Fastbond and Zuran Orb in it it is really hard not to want to play Crucible of Worlds too. At this point you have quite a different looking suite of spells and likely a rather different take on the deck. I shall try and give a list for what mine should have been and what you could do with a Reclamation build.

Obviously Wastelands and Stripmine are both nutty good in this kind of deck, as indeed was the Dustbowl. They are far better still with the Crucible of Worlds option. I have used that combo plenty before and know it is good. For the even in question I didn't have the points spare to invest in them nor the urge to bore people with things I have done before. The best build of this would include as many of such cards you can get your hands on.


I had included a Mistveil Plains and some ways to produce white tokens so as to activate it. The idea being that I could win the long game and survive having key components of my deck put into the graveyard such as Siesmic Assault. In reality this was magical cloud land thinking. Usually I didn't have that sort of time and if I did I could more likely just win another way. Certainly with the slots instead of those cards I could easily include the Thespian Stage Dark Depths combo and have better options.

The card that I missed most was Urborg, Tomb of Yawmoth. Whenever I had one of my non-mana producing lands as an early lay I was really sad I couldn't draw into the Tomb and solve that problem. The deck has a huge number of lands that produce no mana and it was a huge blunder. I figured I had so much land and so little use for black that it wasn't worth a slot but I was very wrong. Another thing I really missed was Deserted Temple. It would have won be several games that I lost for a variety of different reasons. I lost once to lockdown on my fatal Inkmoth Nexus from a Frost Titan that I could have solved with the Temple. In another game I would have been able to win in time with Maze's End combo being speed up double. In a deck where all your things come from lands and you have one of each then the ability to double up on things is pretty huge. Vesuva has some application there too but doesn't seem quite worth it.

Between Maze of Ith, Tabernacle, Glacial Chasm and goat tokens I managed to hold off way more aggression than expected. There were occasions I wished I had included Ice Floes and Island of Wak-Wak as well though! In reality space is too tight in my silly Maze list but if you didn't replace that with man land and token producers then you may well have room for some more luxury protection lands like these. They certainly are better if you have Urborg...

There were a couple of other cards I considered briefly. Arcane Sanctum was a possibility if I was facing any sort of Solitary Confinement prison deck or some kind of naughty hexproof card I needed to tie up in the Maze of Ith. Rogues Passage was an option for getting in with Inkmoth Nexus but it is removal rather than blockers that pose a problem for that route and as it costs so much to use it rather negates the use of Wolf Run. All told the Passage seems one of the least useful cards I considered.


Bojuka Bog is a great disruption tool but not one needed in the meta I was playing the deck in. Fine to run main if you have a bit of spare space as it will still disrupt most decks a little bit but generally more of a sideboard thing in cube. Nomad Stadium is literally one of the worst magic cards of all time and I strongly considered it for the deck. It is easily the best life gain land for this list with all the others being far too slow or relying on having creatures. Like the Bog it is so narrow I would tend to prefer it as a sideboard card for the red matchups. If you really need the life then Zuran Orb is clearly a more potent card for the task too. Overall I suspect Khalni Garden saves more life on average than the Stadium as lands go but that itsn't really the point. 

Lastly for the quirky lands I was considering Tolaria West as a tutor tool. In my list it is fairly slow and weak however when you have more in the way of land based combo such as Dark Depths the card starts to look a whole lot more appealing. 

So, here we have my revised lists now that I have some actual play experience with the archetype. This first one is just what my deck should have been. The latter is likely just a better cube version of the deck but having not tested its different style out I cannot swear to that as yet! Neither are perfect but both are far closer to the mark than anything on this archetype I have done or posted before.

10 Spells


Exploration
Fastbond
Manabond
Crop Rotation
Gamble

Life from the Loam
Trade Routes
Treasure Cruise

Seismic Assault
Wheel of Fortune

30 Lands

Dust Bowl
Deserted Temple

Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

Glacial Chasm

The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale

Bazaar of Baghdad

Maze of Ith

Kessig Wolf-Run 

Inkmoth Nexus 

Dark Depths
Thespian Stage

Forgotten Cave

Tranquil Thicket

Orzhov Guildgate

Dimir  Guildgate

Rakdos  Guildgate

Gruul  Guildgate

Boros  Guildgate

Golgari  Guildgate

Simic  Guildgate

Izzet  Guildgate

Azorius  Guildgate

Selesnya  Guildgate

Maze's End

Cascade Bluffs 

Fire-lit Thicket 

Mossfire Valley

Copperline Gorge 

Yavimaya Coast

Taiga

This is the Crucible Zuran Orb version without the Maze's End combo. 

10 Spells


Zuran Orb

Crop Rotation
Gamble
Exploration
Fastbond

Life from the Loam
Trade Routes

Crucible of Worlds
Seismic Assault

Splendid Reclamation

30 Lands

Deserted Temple

Wastelands
Westvale Abbey

Creeping Tar Pit
Khalni Garden
Tolaria West
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

Glacial Chasm

The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale

Bazaar of Baghdad

Maze of Ith

Kessig Wolf-Run 

Inkmoth Nexus 

Thespian Stage
Dark Depths

Forgotten Cave

Lonely Sandbar

Tranquil Thicket
Barren Moor

Cascade Bluffs 

Fire-lit Thicket 

Mossfire Valley

Izzet Boilerworks

Copperline Gorge 

Yavimaya Coast
Misty Rainforest

Crumbling Vestige
Forest
Graven Cairns 
Shadowblood Ridge

Looking at these two lists now I actually suspect the best deck is somewhere between the two. Losing the Maze's End combo from the first to allow for more of the useful lands in the second list but forgoing the Splendid Reclaimation efforts in favour of more consistency.