Welcome back to Going Blind. If you haven’t already read my original *article*, I suggest starting there and working your way forward. Each article builds off of the information in earlier articles, and you may be confused if you don’t start from the beginning.

Also, in case you haven't already realized from the last article (and if you haven't read it yet and are continuing to read here, then try that *link* again), this article series is going to highlight specific cards and strategies and discuss decks that use those cards and strategies. If you see ways to improve on the lists I've provided for you, be sure to make a comment in the forums.

As a brief recap of last time, we were discussing lands that are good / see play in XCB. We looked at decklists that utilized those lands, and this week will be more of the same, but with a twist. This time, we'll be looking at lands that do multiple things. Some make more than 1 mana every time you tap them, some bounce legends, some stop attacking creatures dead in their tracks, and some even attack!

Like I mentioned last week, XCB is a game that focuses on getting the most bang out of your card choices. This next set of lands is going to help you do that in ways that the first set of lands I talked about cannot. That being said, let’s hop right into the thick of things and flail around a bit, and see what happens.

POWER LANDS (MISHRA’S WORKSHOP / CITY OF TRAITORS / ANCIENT TOMB)

These three lands do a large majority of the brunt work of XCB. Not many lands can efficiently produce more than one mana per tap, but being that these do, they are powerful indeed – especially with the restrictions of XCB. They're so integral to the game that, to be honest, I should have probably had them in my initial article. But that was then and this is now, so let's talk a little bit about the Power lands.

Mishra’s Workshop is undeniably one of the best mana producers in any XCB format, mostly due to the fact that it is the best mana producer in the game (it gets to stick around when Black Lotus doesn't.) The main problem with Mishra's Workshop is that its mana can only be used to make artifacts - boo specified mana. Boo. On the bright side, artifacts are some of the strongest cards in the format, so the drawback isn't that severe. Take a look at these decks and see what I'm talking about.

SAMPLE 3CB and 4CB DECKLISTS #1

AND

The first deck runs Wheel of Torture, which can be a dangerous card in any XCB, not only for your opponent, but for you, the player, as well.

Not sure what I mean? Take a look at the card again.

Going back to our 3CB sample deck, the inclusion of the Steel Golem is what makes the deck really tick. You get a powerful artifact creature that backs up the Wheel, so that even if your opponent protects him or herself from the Wheel (by not playing cards), they'll still lose to the Golem.

The second deck takes advantage of the powers of the all-mighty Smokestack. Smokestack is interesting in that it allows you to pick whether or not you want to add counters to it. That makes it perfect with Gods' Eye, Gate to the Reikai. You can play the Eye first, then Smokestack, then set up a loop with 1 counter on Smokestack, sacrificing the land and then replaying it in the same turn with Crucible of Worlds to make infinite 1/1 spirit tokens. Silly silly silly.

According to the oh-so-trusty Wikipedia, Reikai means "Spirit World." Wizards Creative Team must have decided to go with the one word version because "Spirit World" would have pushed the title down into the card margins. (One OMRSTPLRLCNSWMTCTHTALCNE Elemental is enough, right?)

City of Traitors and Ancient Tomb are both similar to each other, and are inferior to Mishra’s Workshop in almost all ways. If it wasn't for one minor detail, these lands wouldn't be played all that much. That detail is rather important, however - these lands create mana that can be spent on any type of card. City of Traitors, because of this reason, sees tremendous amounts of 3CB, 4CB, and 5CB play.

Ancient Tomb has the same ability as City of Traitors, but it comes with a more severe drawback – you have to take two damage every time you tap the Tomb. Normally, the two damage is enough to keep players from playing the Tomb, but some decks need to have two mana available on turn one, and have a second land turn two – Ancient Tomb is a necessary evil in that case.

Take a look at the power of two-mana land in the decklists below:

SAMPLE 3CB and 5CB DECKLISTS #2

AND

The first deck is a 3CB staple. It uses City of Traitors to power out the deadly Isochron Scepter with Imprinted Lightning Helix to deal three damage and gain three life every turn. While Helix doesn’t seem that it would be as good as other cards, the 3 life gain nullifies most damage that other decks can do to you. In a format where there isn’t much artifact hate and where bounce doesn’t see much play, this deck reigns supreme.

The second deck is an interesting choice, and depending on what cards are being played in your metagame, it can be very powerful. It works by shutting down most disruption and damage until Darksteel Reactor wins you the game. Soldevi Digger prevents counterspells, destruction, and hand disruption from ruining your game plan, and Crumbling Sanctuary keeps damage at bay until you can get 20 counters on your Reactor.

We've talked about the extra mana “Power” lands, whose brute strength can win games on its own, so now it's time to tap into a deeper, more subtle power – controlling lands. First up in this category is the group of protective/preventative lands.

CONTROL LANDS (THE TABERNACLE AT PENDRELL VALE / MAZE OF ITH / GLACIAL CHASM)

Control lands are lands that serve as a large part of your game plan; as their name suggests, they act as the control portion of certain decks. They, in some way or form, control what your opponent will be able to do. These lands are terribly powerful because unlike spells, most playable discard (Duress, Ostracize) will not be able to touch them, and they can't be removed in most cases. In addition, they are lands, so they can't be countered. Let's go over each land and see what I'm talking about.

The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale is a very interesting card. It is powerful against decks that don't have permanent mana sources; decks that use, among other things, Black Lotus as their only source of mana. The Tabernacle is great against the following decks:

SAMPLE 3CB and 4CB DECKLISTS #3
(DECKS THAT LOSE TO THE TABERNACLE)

AND

Both of these decks are extremely powerful, taking advantage of the power of Black Lotus. However, The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale alone can wreck these entire strategies, since these two decks can't pay the upkeep for their amazing creatures. The Tabernacle is extremely powerful, so much so that it's flirted with the Banned List in certain 4CB and 5CB formats.

The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale has spawned many decks, but none can outshine the classic TET.dec:

This deck has a three-pronged attack – The Tabernacle’s upkeep cost, Eladamri’s Vineyard’s mana, and the Village itself. Some decks can't pay the upkeep cost of The Tabernacle, and most are unable to deal with two mana in their main phase; this means that it can possibly deal two points of mana burn for each turn the opponent plays (while this deck uses the mana to turn its Treetop Village into 3/3 trampling creature (we'll discuss man lands a little later in the article)), and finally, it limits the amount of creatures the opponent can use. TET.dec is unfortunately extremely susceptible to disruption, since it takes 2 turns to get the Vineyard online (Treetop Village comes into play tapped).

Maze of Ith is an interesting card choice. It doesn't provide mana in any way, just like The Tabernacle, but it prevents one creature from attacking. The downside of this prevention is that it untaps the creature that was attacking, which makes it harder to push your own creatures through it. However, some decks manage to find ways to abuse it, such as the following decklist:

SAMPLE 3CB DECKLIST #4

While Mox Ruby may not be the best choice for the deck because of your current metagame, this deck works well because Roc Hatchling can fly over the opposing creature's head and win the game. I've played this deck before in Vanishing 3CB, and it can really work wonders against a creature-heavy field.

While this land doesn't seem all that great, it actually is one of the only lands on the current 3CB banned list (besides the land destruction lands). This is because of a deck that's been circulating 3CB since 3CB was played at MTGNews. FadeBlue (A user from MTGSalvation and MTGNews) is the first recorded player of the following deck:

It seems rather harmless at first glance, because you have to pay life to keep Glacial Chasm around, but an uncontested Jinxed Choker along with Glacial Chasm stops an opponent dead in their tracks. Jinxed Choker does an absurd amount of damage over the course of a few turns, and with Chasm preventing that damage on your side of the board, the only way to truly win is to deal 12 damage to the Choker/Chasm deck in the first or second turn, make them discard a piece of the deck, or destroy the Choker - that means dedicated hate needs to be in your deck just to beat Jinx!.dec. Like Raffinity of the days of yore, the deck had to be axed.

CREATURE KILLERS (QUICKSAND / DESERT)

Also controlling lands, these are more direct, though not as powerful, as the last three. There are a multitude of creature killing lands, but let's focus on the pair that see the most play in XCB - Quicksand and Desert.

Quicksand is useful for lists that need creature destruction, but are facing heavy use of counter spells and hand disruption. A lot of the disruption that's viable in 3CB can't touch lands, which makes Quicksand a lot more viable. It can take down an X/2, but the biggest problem with Quicksand is that you have to sacrifice it - you don't have a way to deal with more than one creature. Desert can deal 1 damage over and over again, but it can only deal with X/1 creatures. The main problem with both of these cards, however, is that they can only deal with attacking creatures. This leads to quite a few ties since your opponent will hold back to block and you won't be able to push through damage. Be careful when using these two cards.

That’s all for controlling lands, so now let’s look at some more aggressive non-basics (though actually, they aren’t used very aggressively):

MAN LANDS (MISHRA'S FACTORY / TREETOP VILLAGE / BLINKMOTH NEXUS)

Man lands are exactly what they sound like: Lands that can turn into a man. The bonuses of having lands that can also attack goes back to the Golden Rule of XCB - squeeze all the power you can out of every pick. Man lands allow you to play a no-cost mana producer / creature combo. Not bad if you ask me. Man lands are also nice because they dodge some extremely powerful creature removal, such as Mana Chains, Drop of Honey, and The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale. They're a powerful solution to certain metagame problems.

There are three major man lands that get played in XCB: Treetop Village, Mishra's Factory, and Blinkmoth Nexus. While Mishra's Factory is the most powerful of all the man lands, the other two see significant play depending on the metagame and what the deck wants to accomplish. Check out the following lists:

SAMPLE 3CB DECKLISTS #5

AND

AND

The first deck is pretty self-explanatory. You use Putrefy to (hopefully) destroy the opponent's main threat / combo piece, and then ride the Factory to victory. Not very exciting, but it gets the job done.

Deck number two is a little more interesting because it's a variation on the classic TET.dec design (Tabernacle + Eladamri’s Vineyard + Treetop Village, described above). I'm a huge fan of how versatile TET.dec can be, and I'm always interested in the variations that pop up from time to time. It's a deck that the XCB player should come to know, whether to love or hate. The fact that it wins so many matches is a testament to its strength as an archetype.

Pithy-Lands.dec is an interesting deck because it runs both of the colorless man lands in order to get the most optimal use from them. If your opponent is stalling out the ground, you can get around them with the Nexus. Otherwise, you can quicker on the ground with the Factory. Pithing Needle is a great card for a slower format, especially one where Storage Lands reign supreme. It also stops other man-lands, and our next (and final) type of non-basics:

SUPER BASICS (PENDELHAVEN, URBORG, KARAKAS)

This subset of non-basic lands is the set that I like to call the "super basics”, because they're like basic lands – they all produce mana just like normal basics, and there aren’t any drawbacks to playing them (besides the fact they are non-basic) – but they do more than basic lands can do. The three major "super basics" that are played in 3CB are Pendelhaven, Karakas, and Urborg. They provide amazing support for some decks, and some decks have been specifically built around the abilities of these cards. While the lands of the previous sets have been significantly different, these lands all work in relatively the same fashion, so instead of looking at each one individually, let's just take a look at some decks that use these cards.

SAMPLE 3CB and 4CB DECKLISTS #6

AND

AND

The 3CB deck runs Leyline of Singularity. The Leylines are all really nice since they're always free spells, but the problem is that not many are all that useful. In fact, most of them are terrible in XCB. Leyline of Singularity is the major exception. Its ability to turn everything into legends allows you to use Karakas' legend-bouncing ability on your opponent’s creatures as well as your own 2/2 legend. From there, you keep opposing things off the table while you take the 10 turns you need to whittle away their life total.

The first 4CB deck is a personal favorite of mine. You begin by playing Black Lotus, Urborg, and Duress, taking away any creature kill or targeting spells the opponent may have in their hand. Then, you use up your Black Lotus and Urborg to make Horobi. Not only does Horobi fly, it also can kill other creatures, provided you have something that targets those creatures. Urborg does the targeting here, making creatures lose their first strike or swampwalk. Even if the creature doesn't have those abilities, it still dies since Urborg targeted it. Sneaky, huh? The sad thing is, decks with Horobi are the only ones that use Urborg, but this deck seems to poke its head up more often than not, so Urborg still sees plenty of use.

The final deck runs Pendelhaven primarily to help your Thallid deal with 2/2s and decrease the time it takes to kill your opponent while using Disrupting Shoal with Evermind to take care of 0 cost cards (such as Moxen and Black Lotus).

All of these can be very useful lands, though their abilities are much more specified, and as such, not as widely used. However, they are still better than the plain basic lands, and like the power lands, controlling lands, and man lands, are a vital part to the awesome game that is X Card Blind – where packing the most punch in every card is key to victory.

Well, that’s it for this time. Next time around, we'll be switching focus to a different aspect of the game - deconstructing the metagame to help decide what deck to build. It's sure to be a good time, so if you're ready to learn a little about how XCB works in actual play, and about the process of metagaming in general, then make sure you catch my next article.

Get blind.

~Death_By_Beebles

Death_By_Beebles is a writer for Magic Deck Vortex, an avid fan of three, four, and five card blind, and a generally fun guy. He likes penguins, squirrels and kittens. You can find the latest rounds of three and four card blind in the MDV Forums under Humor & Games.

You can discuss this article in the MDV forums here.
Find other articles by this author here.
Find other articles from this series here.

[ Back ] [ Home ] [ Up ] [ Next ]

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.