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By referencing back to my previous Memories article, The Balancing Effect, you’ll get a basic feel of what it was like playing in a time where some of the more powerful cards that were still in print, like Mind Twist and Channel, were not restricted or banned. In the time of the first Standard Environment, Type II at the time, there was no Restricted List established yet. Cards like Strip Mine and Black Vice were wrecking everyone. It was a time where every deck would play a Strip Mine and pass the turn, only to see their Strip Mine stripped out the following turn by their opponent’s first turn Strip Mine; obviously it was a fairly boring time. However, once the Restricted List was put into place, and those powerful cards were put into their proper place, other cards got to shine in the light of day. Around that time, Alliances hit the shelves, and it introduced eight Non-Basic Lands. Had those lands been released before the Restricted List came into being, they would never have seen a playing sleeve. Even while restricted to one a deck, Strip Mine made these new lands nearly unplayable. In Alliances, each of the five colors were given a Non-Basic Land that produced appropriately colored mana, and had a special effect. Each of those five lands were rare, and of the other three, School of the Unseen was the only non-rare. Keep in mind that in those days, there were not any vendors or internet markets to buy up all the rares, and so a rare truly was very hard to get.
The Outpost was truly a blessing in those days. Remember that this time period was known as the Black Summer. Necropotence decks were on a rampage, and was clearly unrivaled by any deck. The most feared part of the deck was the instant reset button that the Nevinyrral’s Disk provided when a deck would start to catch the deck and try to stabilize. While the Outpost Tokens could not block the Pump Knights, a few well timed Wrath of Gods and A Wall of Air would put Necro at least at a standstill. The endless supply of tokens would at least give you a chance against the tenacious deck. Thankfully, when the Disk did come and pop the board clear, your land was safe from its devastating effect. Once the Necro deck lost Hymn to Tourach, Mind Twist, and Hypnotic Specter when Revised left the Standard scene, the counter part of CounterPost was not discarded on the first turn, and it was able to counter the Disk coming into play, and Necro’s days were numbered.
Having said that, I must remind you that not only the Lake gave Black an unfair mana edge. It still had Dark Ritual in print then, so the second turn six mana turned into either eight or ten for a Ritual or two. I can remember one of my friends, Jason, playing his mono-Black deck in those days. It was bad first because he could pretty routinely get a Sengir Vampire on either turn one or two, and have me pretty dead if I didn’t have a Swords to Plowshares. However, his older brother, my ole’ buddy Patrick, tweaked the deck, and it was sick fierce. By adding two Lakes, suddenly his two Dark Rituals became ten mana on turn two, and when Homelands gave him a six mana, Protection from White Ishan’s Shade, and a four casting cost Feast of the Unicorn, suddenly I found myself on the receiving end of a 9/5, Protection from Swords to Plowshares creature on the second turn. Remember what I said earlier about not having venders? I didn’t have a easy access guy to sell me a Wrath of God or two then. So I was left with the old school chump block theory. In case you have never heard the theory, it goes something like this:
I always had the same problem with the Lake of the Dead that I had with the Orcish Lumberjacks. I never seemed to have Swamps or Forests in play for very long. I would be sitting there, and my board would be completely empty, save for a single Lake of the dead. All of my resources were squandered: my hand was empty, my Swamps were all dead, and my creatures were usually placed neatly next to my Swamps in the graveyard. Same thing with the Lumberjacks. I’d have a fist full or Mountains in play, one Lumberjack sitting there squeezing the trigger on the chainsaw, and a fist full of Green spells in hand. “Why does my deck suck so bad?!” Tsk, Tsk… see, everyone starts off as a newbie. Some people, like myself still try hard not to be a newbie. But I can guarantee you one thing. If you gave me a Lake or a Lumberjack, I would still waste my hand and get board wiped to this day.
The Trading Post could not be destroyed by a Nevinyrral’s Disk, and Necropotence dominated Land Destruction decks, so the Trading Post would have sat in play selling bad water to traveling Knights all day. Then again, the Trading Post would have just added Icequake to Necro’s sideboard, but since The Outpost didn’t do that, then the Trading Post surely would not do it either. See how basic our metagaming was at that time? Seriously think about it. How good, today, would a colorless source of damage to a single attacking creature be? In that day, your attacking creatures were:
Yet, we never played and utilized the Trading Post. It could tap for 1R mana or to deal one damage to an attacking creature before combat damage, and we never used it.
The Excavations never really did live up to expectations. The most probable reason for this is the huge success of both Necro and Counterpost. This is not to forget about Stasis and The Prison. These later two decks made the Excavations too slow and inefficient. The Necro deck was simply too fast for it to even be usable, and why would a Blue Mage even consider playing the Excavations where it was busy learning about its new friend, White’s land, the Outpost. The land did have a fairly good ability. It would have been more used in any other era of Magic, but in reality, there was just too much going on for a library manipulating land to be used, believe it or not. How happy would you be today if instead of your boring bounce lands, you were given a land that said, ‘When this comes into play, sacrifice an untapped Island. T: add 1U to your mana pool. T: Look at the top card of your library, you may put it on the bottom of your library.’ Yet we could not use it. Why? Most likely because we were ignorant to the workings of Magic. We didn’t understand that the land produced an extra mana, so we didn’t lose any speed. We didn’t understand that I could put that Plains on the bottom of my library and hope to draw something better instead. The game was still in its infancy, and we were learning. Saying that is also saying that we, as players, completely struck out on two great cards in its time.
Having said that, in my opinion, the bottom feeder of the Alliance color lands is the Heart of Yavimaya. Why am I down on a land that tapped to give a creature +1/+1? Because the sacrificing of a Forest destroys the main advantage Green has, which is mana acceleration. Not to mention that it was printed in the same time in which Green was overly flooded with creature pump. At this time, Green had access to Giant Growth, Bounty of the Hunt, Fanatical Fever, and Surge of Strength. This is excluding global effects like Kaysa and Juniper Order Advocates. I think that had they made the land pump somehow other than +1/+1, I would not have had a problem with it. I would have offered perhaps, ‘G2, T: Target creature gets +2/+2 until end of turn.’ Its practically the same thing, but makes the land stand out as not another Pendelhaven.
The Glacier had a strange influence on the game that we came to grasp earlier when we developed the dominant Ernie-geddon decks and figured out, and broke, Land Tax. By grabbing handfuls of lands from our deck, we minimize the number of dead draws we have. For example, if on my first turn, I produce a White mana, and play Land Tax, the next turn I get to fish out three lands from my deck. A few turns of this and I have zero lands in my library, and from then on, I am only drawing spells, and never have to worry about dead draws again. While Land Tax was a little wasteful, as we ended up discarding about 40% of the land we got from it, Thawing Glaciers put every land directly into play, albeit tapped. The Glaciers would return itself to your hand at the end of the turn, and you’d toss it back out the following turn. I earlier said the second Glacier was a winner because once you had two at your disposal, you played your first Glacier (tapped) and passed turn. The next turn you play your second Glacier, tapped, then tap the first, and essentially get a land from your library every turn, instead of every other turn. This highly fueled the Counterpost deck for years. The Glacier went on to find its way to the Ice Age Block Constructed format banned list. Something that Necropotence and Jester’s Cap could not do.
Well, what’s to be said about the School of the Unseen? Well, it converts mana for two mana and it is a land, so it is free, making it better than Celestial Prism. So that is goo… well alright. Then it produces mana on its own, which makes it a ton better than Celestial Prism. Right, well let’s face it. The Homelands cycle of Non-Basics suck, and this one is not as good as those five, so this card is sub-par. It also is an uncommon, so when opening a pack of Alliances, this card slot could have been a Force of Will, Contagion, Elvish Spirit Guide, Inheritance, Pillage, Pyrokinesis, Reprisal, Shield Sphere, Surge of Strength, Yavimaya Ants, or possibly even a Spiny Starfish. But it was a School of the Unseen. Congratulations.
Instead, some decks would simply use the Valley as their first land drop, and use it to cast an Ivory Tower. They would ride the life gain of the Tower and Valley for a few turns, and stopping the land drops at three, gaining four life a turn, and having enough counter back up to hold themselves at bay. This theory, of course, relied on a few things. First that you drew an Ivory Tower in your opening hand. Next, you prayed that your opponent was not playing Necro, which we all prayed before each game anyways – so nothing ground breaking here, and finally, you hoped that your opponent was not playing Stasis or the Prison, in which case they didn’t care about your life total anyways, they were going to deck you. The Valley did see a smattering of play time in Necro decks playing Lake of the Dead. As I mentioned in my mini-rant, Lake of the Dead is not a big fan of Swamps. As a matter of fact, Swamps hate the Lake as much as I hate Heart of Yavimaya. So what people tried for about a minute was to play Sheltered Valley in the deck, as the actual in play lands would most likely be a single Lake and a Sheltered Valley. So Necro player would gain one life a turn, which would be turned into the one draw per turn. This only became effective if the game stalled out and they ran out of fuel, in which point, Necro player was most likely on the verge of death anyways. So like anything else that tends to look like too little, too late, it was abandoned for a couple more Swamps to be sacrificed to the Lake. At this time, I’d like to present you with a special challenge. I’d like to prompt you with a Memories of an Old Magic Player contest challenge.
Thanks for taking time to read my latest and greatest article. I hope you have had fun walking down memory lane with me, and have fun with my little challenge. How will you get three Valleys in play? ‘Perhaps we are asking the wrong questions?’ A quote from my favorite movie of all time, for a bonus point, can you name it? [I know! ~Streetz~] Chris Newton
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Lands,
the necessary evil of Magic: We all need them. As powerful as a deck can
possibly be, it can go nowhere without a few lands.
Probably
the best card of the bunch was the Kjeldoran Outpost. The Outpost, commonly
called the ‘Dude Ranch’, was a common card in the tournament settings. This card
produced the deck type name ‘Counter Post’. There are very few other lands that
have came into play and made more people groan, inwardly or outwardly, than the
Kjeldoran Outpost. The Outpost created a blocker every turn, or became a point
of damage a turn. The most common thing heard during the tournaments was, “At
the end of your turn, I’ll make a token.”
While
White was given the ability to make endless blockers, Black was given the nasty
Lake of the Dead and its nuclear charge of mana. It was particularly deadly in
those days, as there was a strange rules fluke that allowed a player to produce
six Black mana on turn two from just two lands. The player would play his Swamp
as normal on turn one, then on turn two, he would tap his Swamp for Black mana,
play the Lake of the Dead, and instead of sacrificing the Swamp because the Lake
says so, he would tap the Lake and sacrifice the Swamp for five Black mana, and
then allow the Lake to destroy itself since there were no Swamps in play to
sacrifice. This would give Necro player more than enough mana to debilitate the
opponent and buy him a few turns to draw into a few Swamps. Once this rule was
changed, the Lake of the Dead became fairly fair, and lost popularity.
Due
to our lack of metagaming skills in this day, we neglected to see the potential
in the Balduvian Trading Post. For a single point of mana, this land could kill
a Pump Knight (Order of the Ebon Hand and Knight of Stromgald), which was the
kill condition of the Necro Deck. We spent countless hours whining about Dark
Rituals and Pump Knights and don’t forget Hymn to Tourach, that we completely
over looked a solution to our troubles.
Wizards
must have seen the strength of the Trading Post that we never saw, as they added
a stipulation to the two strongest (in their opinion) lands, where the
sacrificed land must be untapped. This stipulation was set on the Balduvian
Trading Post and Blue’s Soldevi Excavations. These two lands also were given an
extra colorless mana when tapped for mana. (Which makes me wonder even more why
we didn’t use the Trading Post.)
Then
there was the Green land, Heart of Yavimaya. Now, those of you who are familiar
at all with my work may have a misconception about me. You may think that I
don’t like Green, since I am very critical of it when I am writing. My retort to
that is that Wizards didn’t like Green more than I do (honestly, I love Green).
They consistently gave Green the shaft in the olden days. What? Was Regrowth so
good that you should punish Green with Dystopia and Gargantuan Gorilla, not to
mention Tarpan and Hungry Mist. Heck, if it wasn’t for Blue, Green wouldn’t even
have been a part of Blue Green Madness, which was Green’s main claim to fame.
Then, Wizards had to give Green Ball Lightning and Thundermare to make it good
in Planar Chaos. So before anyone starts saying that I don’t like Green, look at
Wizards and how well they like Green, and then you might understand why I am
critical of it.
Stepping
away from the colored mana lands, we get to potentially the most poplar land
ever created, outside the Stripe Mine family, Thawing Glaciers. In this time,
every deck ran three Glaciers. Literally, we figured who ever got to their
second Glacier first won the game.
Next
in the list of Alliance lands, was one I had forgotten about. To give you a feel
of about how much use this card saw, I will tell you a quick story. When I was
reading through the cardlist of Coldsnap, I came across a card called Survivor
of the Unseen. I wondered to myself… the Unseen, that is a cool concept, why
didn’t they ever utilize that in the Ice Age block? After doing my research of
the Alliance lands I said, “Oh! They did, it is even a land!” Must be the
senile-ness setting in, but still don’t call me old!!
The
final land, was one of speculation for years. There was always something
intriguing about Sheltered Valley. So long as you had three or less lands in
play, you gain one life. The intriguing part of the card was that it was
additionally restricted by the first sentence. ‘When Sheltered Valley comes into
play, sacrifice all other Sheltered Valleys you control. I can remember people
brainstorming ways to get multiple Valleys into play without sacrificing one.
However, common consensus was that there was no real efficient way to go about
doing it then.