Australian 7 point Highlander deck. Current points are Strip Mine[++], Wasteland[+], Natural Order[+], Crop Rotation[+], Fastbond[+] and Green Sun's Zenith[+]. BUG variant of the traditionally GBw Australian Highlander Lands deck 'Gardening Australia'.
Why play blue over white?
Great question, purely a different approach to the same kind of strategy. Blue gives access to Leovold, Emissary of Trest and Tatyova, Benthic Druid, which are powerful enough to make blue worth exploring. Being blue instead of white does lose access to Knight of the Reliquary, as well as many powerful sideboard options.
Why such a bad manabase?
Purely budget concerns. I'm not in a position to buy any ABUR dual lands, or a The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale. A player with a beefier collection than mine would have a much more consistent set of lands and fetches to get them.
Why this points spread?
The points spread is, as usual, rather flexible. Strip Mine and Wasteland are big reasons to play the deck, allowing us to punish players for sketchy keeps, greedy fetching decisions, and manabases even more shoddy than our own. With those 3 points tied up, we're left with 4 to play with. Green Sun's Zenith is a 1 point card which enables a lot of our strategies, searching up any creature in our deck. Crop Rotation is one of the most powerful cards in any lands or cradle strategy, which makes it an easy 1 point inclusion. Fastbond is an amazingly powerful card in a lands strategy, enabling Zuran Orb + Crucible of Worlds combos, and is one of my personal favourite cards to play, which makes it well worth the 1 point to include in our 60. This takes us up to 6, which means we have one definite flex slot. At the moment, I'm trialing Gifts Ungiven in this spot. Admittedly, somewhat biased, considering gifts is my favourite card, but the potential to use it as an instant speed entomb for Life from the Loam and any land, Eternal Witness piles using Petrified Field, and many many more. Other considerations for this flex slot are Jace, the Mind Sculptor, which can be ramped out early to take over a game. Sensei's Divining Top, which gives nice card selection and another wincon for your fastbond combo. Force of Will, if a more counter-control variant of the list is necessary for the metagame. There are plenty of cards which could make the cut here, ultimately I believe it's down to preference. Natural Order has also tested well, and will be given a fair go instead of Gifts Ungiven in metagames where muldrotha is less likely to be immediately removed, making them a nice Natural Order target.
What are these combos you mentioned?
Fastbond lets you play lands at the cost of a life, Zuran Orb lets you sacrifice lands for 2 life, and Crucible of Worlds or Ramunap Excavator let you play the sacrificed land from your graveyard, netting you one life, and one mana if the land enters untapped. Repeat ad nausuem, using the mana and landfall triggers to draw cards using Tireless Tracker, Tatyova, Benthic Druid or Cephalid Coliseum to find Living Wish to search up Walking Ballista.
A far more standard combo to win the game is the traditional Dark Depths + Thespian's Stage
.
Is this a combo deck?
Not entirely, like a lot of lands strategies, it often plays a fair game as a midrange deck. Well, as fair as a Strip Mine deck can be, anyway.
Why these sideboard cards?
Many of the sideboard options are to play into Living Wish, and make it as powerful as possible. Other sideboard inclusions are graveyard hate which isn't symmetrical, to give us game against reanimator strategies without bricking our own graveyard synergies. Arcane Laboratory should come in against storm or bomberman strategies, should you encounter an opponent who sleeved up Black Lotus. Sylvan Safekeeper could easily be in the main, and probably should, if you find a slot in the main to switch him with.
