This was originally published on 6/9/06.  ~Streetz

It would take a fairly ill informed Magic player to not realize the importance of lands. But basic lands are a given, and to a point, so are lands that give more then one kind of mana. What about lands that have other abilities all together? What about lands that deal damage, lands that prevent damage, and even the ‘man-lands’ that turn into creatures either temporarily or even permanently?

Another key factor in the popularity of ‘special’ lands is the fact that lands cannot be countered. So the appeal of a land that can transform into a creature is especially huge for decks that lack answers to a ‘wall o’ counterspell’ style defense.

There is a drawback though. Lands in general, and non-basics in particular, are often the targets of some very nasty ‘hate’ cards. From the stinging nastiness of Price of Progress and the annoying lockdown of Back to Basics, Non-basic lands tend to draw a lot of fire. You want to know what one of the most popular cards in the Legacy format is? Believe it or not, in a format almost as broken as good old Vintage, the key card in Legacy is a land. Specifically, Wasteland.

Lets take a mechanic-by-mechanic stroll through the lands that do just more then “add a mana to your mana pool”. This week it will be a look at the odd lands in Magic that let you deal damage, either to your opponent, his creatures, or even both.

Dealing damage with lands is a very powerful idea/mechanic since lands avoid all color based protection. It doesn’t matter if it’s a White Knight, Black Knight, or even the mighty Iridescent Angel, a land can still deal them damage. And as far as I know, there is no creature with ‘protection from lands’ in Vintage legal magic.

Cannot be the target, however, is another fish entirely. Except for the hard to find old school land Arena, I am pretty sure every other damage dealing land that can affect creatures has to target the creature. Arena might target as well, as the original text says targeting, but the oracle/corrected text does not! But in general, ‘cannot be the target of spells or abilities’ is protection against land based direct damage cards.

Except for one special exception, giving yourself ‘cannot be the target’ through such cards as Ivory Mask and Solitary Confinement protects you from land based direct damage as well. As with both yourself and creatures however, ‘man-lands’ are another story!

Lets get down to the specifics, shall we?

Desert: It’s a shame that this was never reprinted, because its actually a pretty decent land, especially for its age! Any experienced Magic player will tell you there are two things above all others that make a non-basic land playable: Not coming into play tapped, and having the ability to at least tap for at least colorless mana, as well as any special non-mana ability it has. One of the first damage dealing lands did both! Probably entirely by accident, sadly.

Balduvian Trading post: The old school damage dealing land. It only affects attacking creatures as well. The single point of damage, plus the inability to attack your opponent, along with the ‘sacrifice a untapped mountain’ part of its coming into play cost, combine to make this a card that never saw a great deal of play. It’s a fun idea, but it needed to do it better.

Shivan Gorge: Starting off a string of legendary lands, the Shivan Gorge was an interesting, but not particularly powerful card. Though it can tap for colorless and comes into play untapped, it cannot affect creatures. It might have some use in multi-player, but I’d tend to think after a handful of activations, your ‘friends’ at the table would start aiming for you! However, there’s a key thing to note here. Shivan gorge does not target. That and the fact its land based damage means there’s very, very few ways to stop it.

Rath’s Edge: Ouch, the cost on this ability! Plus the land is also a Legend! Why would anyone use it? Well, in its own block (Mercadian Masques), there were a pair of white creatures that flew, one with Protection from red, and the other with Protection from black… and they both had only one toughness. It wasn’t the greatest answer, but for some decks, it was close to being the ONLY answer!

Keldon Necropolis: This was a real leap up for people that were used to the painfully costed Rath’s Edge. Yes it was expensive to use and still a Legend, but at least you had to sacrifice a creature, rather then a dwindling supply of land and it dealt twice the damage as well. A single term made this even more useful of a card. “After damage is on the stack, I’ll sacrifice…” Definitely a step forward for land based damage.

Barbarian Ring : And I thought Rath’s Edge was hard to use! Barbarian ring comes into play untapped, and doesn’t tap for colorless. It taps for red! This is great until you read the fact that every mana you get from it deals you one damage. Ouch! But once you get into threshold range, suddenly this card turns into a Shock. Not bad. It’s tricky to use but in an aggressive deck that’s less concerned with its life total, the ‘drawback’ is probably acceptable.

Contested Cliffs : Now here was an interesting card. Although it only really worked with a single deck type (Green/Red Beast.dec), when it worked, it really worked well. I was a huge fan of this card as it fit the colors I loved to play, and the strategy as well. More then once, I caught an opponent with his pants down when he dropped his ‘free’ creature off my Hunted Wumpus, only to have me drop my Contested Cliffs and smack his new creature for six points. A serious point to remember: Although this card does not tap the creature you use, do not forget that the damage dealt by the opposing creature is still in affect on your creature until the end of turn. So if you swing with the same creature you used for cliff’s, its now much easier to kill.

Arena: This is a odd one. Only available as a special promotional card, Arena basically does what Contested Cliffs does, but differently. You get to choose any of your creatures to set off the affect, but your opponent gets to choose which of his faces off with it. Since this process doesn't actually target, you are free to choose a creature you normally can't be affected by abilities, such as a Jolrael's Centaur. Both creatures tap, and do their power in damage to each other.

Some interesting side notes for a moment. By the errata on the card, the creature’s power upon resolution, is used. So it would seem you could lure your opponent in by using a weak creature, and then hit it with a Giant Growth or such before the ability resolves.

And now, because this article is too darn short, lets give you all a deck list to chew on for a while. I fully admit that from here on out, this article has less to do with “damaging lands” and more with a cool deck idea that’s hopefully low cost and fun to play.

I’ve tried to pack as much low cost synergy as I can into this deck. As I mentioned above, Contested Cliffs and Hunted Wumpus are pretty much a match made in heaven. Cliffs does a lot to take away the drawback of the big green guy, negating its drawback against all but the most problematic of creatures. Once it’s down, the 6/6 body will make short work of anything in your way.

The elves are very needed here, as the “Beast” tribe has very few real members under three mana. The elves accelerate you into your big cards, as well as fix mana and hopefully swing for a few points of damage when your opponent isn’t paying too much attention. The exception here is the Savage; she’s just there to draw you more cards if the game drags out.

Stampeding Serow has a lot of synergy with the entire deck concept. It will return other beasts to your hand to recast. This will set up drawing additional cards (via Wirewood Savage), as well as dealing your opponent and his creatures damage directly (via Aether Charge and Contested Cliffs respectively). Also having trample is just icing for the cake as well.

Since this deck thrives so much on creature interaction, Weird Harvest is a given, letting you suck lots of creatures out of your deck and into your hand where they belong. Yes, your opponent also gains creatures, but most decks won’t be running a creature that Cliffs plus a fat Beast cannot take right back out of play.

Weird Harvest also helps to get the tandem of ‘one of’ creatures in Weathered Wayfarer and Eternal Witness. Once you get that set up, Wayfarer can go find the Cliffs and your single Barbarian Ring. Serow plus your Witness and Ring mean you can Shock your opponent every turn for four mana, or just recur cards that he manage to kill in the early game. Just be careful not to recur too many cards, as you need threshold to stay up so ring can do its job.

Don’t have Witness and don’t want to break down and pay as much as a useable rare for an uncommon? Never fear. Though it won’t do a thing for the rest of your deck, there is a card that can help you keep the land in play where they belong, and pull off similar tricks with land in the graveyard as witness does. Best thing, its even the same converted mana cost. What am I talking about? Try looking up Cartographer.

Yes, Cartographer. Not just for old school Astral Slide decks anymore. And being much cheaper then Witness (money wise), as well as being reprinted once, it should be pretty easy to find a few copies.

Want to cut white out of the deck? It does put a strain on the manabase, I admit. But it allows so many fun sideboard options as well. Sylvan Scrying can do everything Wayfarer does, and its also green. It just does it only once per copy, instead of Wayfarer’s hoped for several times.

The decks rounded out by Laccolith Whelp, trying in vain to drag the curve down, as well as Wild Colos (haste) and Hystrodon (give your opponent a bit to think about game one with the morph). If you draw Llanowar, Hystrodon, and two green sources, it can be active and swinging on turn three!

Some other deck ideas...

While Serow is a fun card to mess around with, it could be so much more then what I use it for in this deck. Except for the somewhat ‘clunky’ Savage/recasting Beasts ‘combo’ this deck has, and the Cartographer, there’s just not a whole lot the Serow does here. It’s even more amazing, in a deck with LOTS of come-into-play abilities going off and resetting constantly. If you want to go this route, it’d be a good idea to get some Stampeding Wildebeests as well. As you probably noticed, this card is a exact copy of Serow (or rather, Serow is a copy of it!), with all the same abilities and ‘drawbacks’. So essentially, you can have eight ‘Serow’ in the deck and use their ‘drawback’ to very good effect.

Being really intrigued with the whole green 'self bounce' idea, I'll hope you humor me as I go off on a bit of a tangent exploring it.

A quick Gatherer search shows 131 creatures that are green and have some form of ‘comes into play’ ability. That is, if you set it for Vintage legal. Even discarding the ones who’s abilities are really just part of their rules texts, and cards that are multi-colored nightmares to cast, that’s still a lot of fun cards to mess with!

Ironshell Beetle: Cheap to cast, cheap to own, and can put a +1/+1 counter on anything you control every turn. Sounds good to me.

Wall of Blossoms: This and Stampeding Wildebeests was the core of the first ever “Green control” deck. Believe it or not!

Civic Wayfinder: Land search and deck thinning every turn.

Fierce Empath: Want to play with some BIG creatures, and make sure you’ll draw them? Try this guy. Every time he hits the board, you can search a converted mana cost six or higher creature out of your deck and put it into your hand. What will you do with all these huge monsters? Well, you could cast them, but better yet is to search for Krosan Tusker copies and cycle them for even more deck thinning at only three mana apiece.

Thornscape Battlemage: Fun with ‘kicker’ cards. If you spend five mana total (GRW2) when you cast this, you deal two damage to any target AND kill a target artifact. The great thing is, you don’t have to do either, so no danger in accidentally triggering a non-optional ability that your opponent can do some tricks to turn against you.

Centaur Chieftain: If you can get Threshold reliably, look into this card. Four mana for a mini-Overrun every turn isn’t a bad thing. Plus he’s one of the VERY rare green creatures with haste, so he can join in on his own ability every turn as a four mana 4/4 trampler himself!

Pygmy Kavu: Have a friend that loves to play Black creature decks? Stick this in your ‘Bouncing Beast” deck and watch him break down and cry. Just watch out and don’t accidentally deck yourself while doing it.

Ulasht, the Hate Seed: It’s a type 2 rare so usually I wouldn’t pay that much attention, but it just struck me how GOOD this guy is with a Serow in play! Since his number of counters ability says ‘creature’ and not ‘non-token creature’ his own Saproling tokens count for his come into play ability. So bouncing him with Serow after you pull a few 1/1’s off will eventually result in him coming back down even bigger and stronger. Few turns of this, and maybe some graft creatures thrown in, and you could have a really, really, gigantic Hate Seed in play.

Anyhow, My time here is done. I hope that this article gives a new ideas about Land cards that can do more then just add various forms of mana to your pool. I also hope that the deck list and ideas I provided above can give you a fun casual deck to beat your friends around with. I tried to build the deck so it can survive the early game to firmly establish itself in the middle and late game with larger creatures, creature removal and damage dealt directly to the opponent. The longer the game goes on, the more advantage you should be able to dig up in the form of Witness Recursions, Weird Harvest tutoring, and using Cliffs to assassinate opposing creatures.

And now, the bonus last moment deck list!

Okay, and yes before you start commenting, it’s a Kamigawa block deck. But it also happens to be a great example of how to use land based or land manipulating cards to get you serious advantage. Most of the cards in the deck are relatively cheap to cast, so the extra land you’ll draw with Elder Pine means your hand size should stay nice and plump. And as long as it does, you have a great weapon in Spiraling Embers, as it will be aiming at your choice of target for upwards of eight damage on a good turn.

Inner calm, Outer Strength has much the same affect, but can also save your creatures from damage and toughness reducing affects. Kodama’s Might has much the same use, as well as providing a very cheap Arcane card to splice with, giving you more and more triggers for your spirits in the long run.

Late in the game, your two copies of Strength of Cedars pose a huge threat to your opponent; any creature that he doesn’t block could easily become a +7/+7 or more wrecking ball. Also, Hana Kami lets you set up chains of Arcane spells more easily and more often, as well as returning a Spiraling ember’s for another seven or more points of burn when the time is right.

Remember, while Loam Dweller’s ability is optional, the other cards are not. You always have to show cards with Elder Pine and turn a land into a 3/3 with Soilshaper. This might occasionally be a bad idea if your forced to cast a arcane spell during your opponents turn when his sorcery speed removal will suddenly get a shot at one or more of your lands.

As always, have fun, learn, and play hard!

Jason Standlea

You can discuss this article in the MDV forums here.

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