Welcome to the results of the Thematic Landscaping Deckbuilding Contest from January. Within this wrap-up, I will present the top five decklists as well as show you a plethora of honorable mentions. To find out which deck places first, you’ll have to keep reading!

Well, it’s been almost two months since the deadline, and I know some of you are anxious to see the results. There were over 40 entries in the contest and it took me several hours to review them all. There were good entries. There were bad. There were boring. There were even those that apparently read the rules. Speaking of which, here is a quick recap of the contest rules and guidelines:

One of my favorite lines from any of the deck descriptions is the following one:

“This is a Land Theme deck because, well, land is what makes it run.”
-Patrick B.

The funny thing here is that every deck is run by lands. Without lands, nothing in the deck will make it onto the table. True, every deck has its combo pieces and win conditions that make it truly work, but without land they mean nothing.

What truly makes a land theme deck are the cards that compliment the lands. While my true version of a land theme deck would contain 40 lands, many people went other routes. For referential amusement, here’s a list of some of the cards that were seen or should have been seen in the decks along with the number of occurrences for each card across all of the submissions.

Gaea's Liege
Lifegift
Rowen
Aggravated Assault
Zuran Orb
Earth Surge
Manabond
Natural Affinity
Natural Emergence
New Frontiers
Terramorphic Expanse
Allosaurus Rider
Horn of Greed
Jolrael, Empress of Beasts
Kamahl, Fist of Krosa
Rude Awakening
Vinelasher Kudzu
Treetop Village
Maze of Ith
Exploration
Wasteland
Life from Loam
Crucible of Worlds
Azusa, Lost but Seeking

I was very surprised to see not so many people used cards like Lifegift, Rowen, Zuran Orb, Earth Surge and even our hefty land legends Jolrael and Kamahl. I wasn’t surprised to see so many using Azusa, Crucible of Worlds and Life from Loam. Take this as you will, but know there was still quite a bit of variety among the decks.

Fifth Place.

Starting off with the top five decklists, we have a deck Natural Assault. While it’s not the most original name, it is a great deck with some beautiful card synergies. That and it’s over half land.

This deck is taking a boring land-theme deck using typical land animators and makes it something of a powerhouse exciting deck. Extra land droppers include Clear the Land and Exploration, which when combined with the symmetrical Horn of Greed, make for lots of land and lots of card drawing. Not to mention it breaks the symmetry of Horn of Greed in half.

What really shines in the deck is the inclusion of Aggravated Assault. Together with either Rude Awakening or Natural Emergence (both of which animate your lands), all you need is six lands and you can achieve infinite mana and/or infinite damage via your creatures (really lands) attacking over and over again.

Minijeebus submitted a similar deck using the Aggravated Assault infinite combo except he used Life/Death to animate his lands. He also included Kher Keep to make infinite creatures along with Rowen. In fact, he was the only person to include Rowen in his decklist. That was a shock to me that more people didn't use it.

Fourth Place.

Our next place deck uses Vesuva, but doesn’t use Cloudpost. It also uses a card from Alpha that no one else in the contest included in his or her decklist. Let’s take a looksee.

Despite the inclusion of Traumatize in the above decklist, this isn’t a mill deck. I let Ward tell what it does do:

I was looking through my trade folder at all of the junk rares and noticed Ankh of Mishra and Planar Birth, just a few pages away from one another, cards I'd had for years and never did anything with. Looking at their synergy, I figured that would be a good place to start building a deck that focused on land.

The deck focuses on Traumatizing half your opponent's deck and then casting Planar Birth with the Ankh in play, or destroying all lands in play and then it only takes two mana to play the Ankh and then two the next turn to play Planar Birth.

None of your lands are basic, so the Ankh won't hurt you when the Planar Birth kicks in. Failing that, you can also destroy all creatures and use your land-creatures to whittle your opponent down to zero. It's not going to win any tournaments, it's kind of slow, and you have to hope your opponent is playing some basic land somewhere in his/her deck, but I thought it was an interesting build.

That it is. While it’s more of a combo deck than a theme deck, it sure makes the point about the lands being the center of the deck. The inclusion of the self-animating lands and planar birth, even without the combo, made this deck ripe for the top five.

Third Place.

A theme deck doesn’t always have to be nice. It’s okay to make a mean theme deck, especially one especially mean against similar theme decks. What I’m talking about is land destruction but not the normal Stone Rain / Boom//Bust type of land destruction. What I’m talking about it land destruction in the form of Kudzu and Steam Vines.

Both Steam Vines and Kudzu destroy lands but they also bounce back and forth from player to player destroying lands until there aren’t any left. By including Crucible of Worlds, suddenly the lands either card destroys aren’t a big deal because you can just play them again from your graveyard. Note that Crucible of Worlds also makes a very cruel combo with Wasteland.

Yezz includes Natural Emergence in the deck as a land animator, Exploration as a quick land dropper and Ghostly Prison as means to protect himself from enemy swarm tactics. There are two nifty things about Natural Emergence in the deck. Number one is that you can bounce a Kudzu or Steam Vines on your own land when it comes into play. Second, it interacts nicely with Darksteel Citadel, making it an indestructible 2/2 first-striking creature.

I would quote his description of the deck, but that would add two pages to this article. Instead I’ll just say this. His deck is extremely creative, cohesive, has some great card combinations and is definitely a land theme deck. While it’s also a Land Destruction deck, the card choices heavily lean towards a land theme.

Second Place.

There were quite a few fun names among the many entries. Scream Vines, for instance, was a great play on words. Eat Dirt was another name that was creative and yet amusing. But one of my absolute favorites in “Flying Forests.” There’s something funny about a forest that flies.

The deck name isn’t what placed this deck in second, but know that I do enjoy creative deck names.

While Mrraow didn’t go crazy and make more than half the deck lands, he did provide a few touches to the deck that gave it second place in this contest. Here’s what he had to say about his decklist:

The plan is to play lots of lands through Azusa, Lost but Seeking and Gaea's Touch, draw lots of cards through Horn of Greed, turn all those lands into creatures with Natural Emergence, beat down with your flying, double striking, and vigilant lands using Concerted Effort, and the supporting cast of forest creatures.

Note that Scryb Ranger not only gives your creatures flying and protection from blue; but it bounces your forests (preferably with damage on the stack); and in this deck, a bounced land can mean card draw, acceleration, and quite possibly mana fixing as well.

Well said, Mrraow. The inclusion of Concerted Effort is really what makes this deck shine. He could have just splashed blue and thrown in Levitation. Instead he added a select few creatures with great abilities like Pro: Blue, flying, double-strike and vigilance to the mix. That and he even included Earth Surge for some added punch.

First Place.

As I mentioned earlier, I would have preferred to see more decks with more lands in them. I know I’ve tried putting a deck together of ALL lands but I can’t say that deck worked out too well. And thus, I understand you are going to need some back up and assist cards in the deck that aren’t lands.

Our first place deck has a whopping 43 lands within. And it doesn’t have a single enchantment or instant spell that animates lands. All of the land’s creatures are actually self-animating lands.

With so many lands in the deck, a first turn Manabond can mean six lands in play on the first turn. With excellent self-animating lands like Treetop Village, Nantuko Monastery and Mishra’s Factory, you have the potential for a large creature swarm on turn two.

Other great lands in the deck include Rishadan Port, Quicksand, Wasteland and Ghost Quarters. Each of these lands has the possibility to disable opponent’s lands, creatures and overall manabase. Then there’s Maze of Ith to prevent early, mid and late game creatures from doing any damage against your deck.

Further creature control is provided by The Tabernacle of Pendrell Vale. Since your deck doesn’t have any permanent creatures in the deck, the Tabernacle doesn’t affect you.

Life from the Loam and Mulch further enable you to put more lands on the table earlier than any opponent would anticipate. Overall, this is a great casual theme deck that is fully deserving of first place. While I would love to see a copy or two of Crucible of Worlds in the deck, and maybe a few less Exploration, it is still well crafted.

Congratulations to AKIO for the win(FTW)!

Honorable Mentions.

There were many other decks that were cool, innovative and/or cleverly designed. Unfortunately, many of them were lacking some of the basic requirements of the contest such as having two different legendary cards within the deck, having a deck name and providing a description.

Below you will find some of the honorable mentions. Many of these decks had some great card interactions, but were lacking a real Land Theme to them.

YWN would have placed well had he not forgotten to include two different Legendary cards in the deck.  I liked the Wrath and Akroma's Vengeance in the deck that holds down the fort until you can drop a New Frontiers followed up by a next turn Rude Awakening for the kill.

Land's Edge and Life from the Loam make a beatiful combo.  Throwing in Lodestone Bauble is also a nice touch.  Even Uyo helps to fill your hand with potentially devastating land cards.

This is a nifty combo deck that pulls out lands from your deck to pay the activation of Freed from the Real to tap your Avenging Druid to deal more damage.  Make sense?  It's a shame there are so many cards involved in the combo.

Am I the only casual player that doesn't use a sideboard in casual play? There were a lot of decks that included sideboards.  Of course, some of them included Living Wish (which I forget could also fetch a land), but what about the others.  Anyway, the above deck was an interesting concept.  A very involved concept that involves a LOT of cards, but a neat one nonetheless.

This was another creative deck name.  The win condition in the deck is Urza's Factory.  Everything else was just part of the control.

I really liked the Planar Birth - Goblin Bombardment interaction of the above deck...

Ooooh -- You have to love Land Destruction Decks.

Many thanks to everyone that entered the Thematic Landscaping contest. I hope everyone that participated enjoyed building decks and I hope every that read through this enjoyed their decks. Overall, I enjoyed the variety of deck lists and I look forward to having another contest sometime in the future.

Thanks for visiting Magic Deck Vortex! Let me know what you thought of this contest in the forum.

John Streetz

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Articles Spotlights from 2007:
Lorwyn Theme Week Intro & Schedule of Events
Blink And Bounce: Timing is Key
Going Blind: XCB Metagaming - A Prolonged Conclusion.
The Science of Magic: Genetic Engineering, Part Two.
Shifting Lineaments: Casual Metagaming (Pt. 2).
The Dungeon Of Malefict: Pure Evil!
Land Week Introduction & Schedule.
Combofusion: Legends Timeshifted.
One Card to Rule Them All: Coastal Piracy
Irrational Love: Chimeras. The Lego's of Magic.