Fyi heres some primer vids that add to my explanation below
https://youtu.be/ONRIRL7n0pU
https://youtu.be/o0wldr152i4
Hello again, everyone. Welcome back to another one of my deck techs - this time focusing on a very unique strategy called lands. Before I begin this primer I would like to say that I am not the creator of this archetype, and since it's so uncommon, I want to give credit directly to two players. First, this deck is an exact copy of Lucien Longlais' build that he played at GP Richmond this year so I would like to credit him for the list. Second, I would like to credit Jarvis Yu, who is probably the most successful Lands player we've seen to date, having won a GP in 2016 (I think).
Moving on, we are examining the archetype Lands from the Legacy format. As mentioned, this deck is unique. Very unique. The objective is to use your manabase as the main source of resources for the entire deck. The deck plays as a control deck with the main elements of control coming in the forms of mana denial and limiting the opponent's ability to attack or deal damage. It then seeks to win the game by using one of two combos that I will explain shortly. This deck is made efficient by spells that help the deck find the components it needs and to create a recursion engine using the graveyard. I will explain in more details below after a quick description of each card:
The main combos:
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Dark Depths + Thespian's Stage - this is the main win condition - create a 20/20 indestructible flyer that completely just merks opponents.... Pretty straight forward. This can be done as early as turn 2 - yes, turn 2. Basically, in order to pull off the combo all we need is 2 mana to activate Thespian's Stage's 2nd ability which targets Dark Depths to copy it. Once the Thespian's Stage copy is made, we have two Legendary Lands, so we choose the Thespian copy because it has no counters by virtue of not fulfilling the ETB trigger criterion and effectively sac the original Dark Depths, allowing the Thespian copy to fulfill the 'when no counters remain' criterion, exiling and re-entering as a Marit Lage 20/20 flying token. Simple.
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Punishing Fire + Grove of the Burnwillows - this combo is very grindy and slow but will allow us to win regardless. Basically, whenever an opponent gains life we can return Punishing Fire from graveyard to hand, thus we use Grove of the Burnwillows to trigger this ability in order to create and endless loop. This combo is dually useful for winning games and controlling the board from planeswalkers and creatures, specifically small ones like Delver. Lastly, I'd like to point out (since Death's Shadow is so popular right now) that you have a major advantage over Death's Shadow decks playing with Grove of the Burnwillows since it makes them gainlife and slows down their strategy, buying you more time to search for resources.
Now, moving on.... Let's look at the engine of the deck:
Life from the Loam - this deck is quarterbacked by Life from the Loam. For those of you who can't see how this works at face value, think of this. We want to have Life from the Loam in our graveyard each draw step so we can activate the Dredge ability to mill ourselves for 3 cards. Since we are running such a high proportion of lands, and since we sacrifice our lands to destroy opponent's lands, we will cast Life from the Loam to pick what we need from the graveyard. When we pair Life from the Loam with something like Exploration or Manabond we can effectively select 3 cards per turn (via loam) to put to our hand, then lay additional lands in order to give ourselves the control or combo we need to win.
Next let's look at mana denial:
Wasteland and Ghost Quarter blow shit up. In legacy, very few basics are run since there's dual lands, so basically everything is a target for both Wasteland and Ghost Quarter. Now, think of being able to destroy lands, then dig them back up with Life from the Loam, play additional lands with Exploration and then blow up more. Essentially with the mana denial element of this deck we can completely destroy the opponent's entire mana base then bring back and play more Wastelands so that the next time an opponent plays a new land we immediately blow that up to.
A second element of mana denial comes from Rishadan Port, which taps the opponents stuff. This is done during upkeep so they cannot use the lands they need to cast spells. LOL!
Next on the bill, let's talk about some of the other control lands so that we can talk about how important searching is after and what cards we have to employ these utilities. Here's a brief showcase of other utility lands we have to help us in various ways:
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The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale - probably one of the strongest lands in the entire game, and definitely the most expensive card in this deck. Tabernacle essentially stonewalls opponents games by making them use their remaining mana to keep stuff alive. To give you an example of how potent this is, I was watching a Lands matchup against Elves where Tabernacle was played. The opponent had to play to keep each elf alive, leaving no additional mana to play spells aside from the one they were dropping each turn.
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Maze of Ith - removes creatures from combat so that IF opponents are successful at getting something threatening out to attack with we can just shrug it off and remove it from combat.
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Glacial Chasm - prevents damage against us in exchange for a small payment of life. This is great for us against aggro decks where we need an extra 1-2 turns sometimes to set up.
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Horizon Canopy - gives us a draw ability, which in turn can also be used as an additional Dredge trigger with Life from the Loam, then dug back up and played again over and over.
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Sheltered Thicket and Tranquil Thicket are cycling lands, giving us another draw trigger that benefits us in the same way as Horizon Canopy.
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Barbarian Ring - acts similar to Punishing Fire in that we can activate the ability to deal damage and then recurse it to hand via Life from the Loam.
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Bojuka Bog - removes the graveyard from our opponents, which is very useful against decks like control or Delver where things are either being exiled to pay for Delve costs or being re-cast with Snapcaster Mage.
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Karakas - helps us bounce our Marit Lage to hand IF we ever need to, which is EXTREMELY rate (usually just to avoid a Swords to Plowshares if we're going for a risky, game-winning attack). More common, it's just used to bounce opponent's creatures, such as Thalia.
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Riftstone Portal - makes our stuff produce colors when it's in the grave, ultimately making our manabase more flexible and efficient in casting spells or activating abilities (since some of our lands do not tap for any mana at all).
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other lands like Fetch, Dual, Basic. Nothing special here.
Now, if you've noticed, most of the lands in this deck are only 1 COPY! This is important because, as you can tell, most of the lands above have special circumstances where they would be useful and others where they would be completely useless. How do we run 1 copy of so many things and make it work you ask? Well, we have search cards. These ensure that we can get the stuff we need when we need it. It's the difference between getting a much needed The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale or Glacial Chasm and having nothing at all. Here's our search cards:
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Crop Rotation - basically a 1-for-1 with a land we have on the battlefield. It helps us get something at instant speed. Furthermore, the lands we sac are often brought back by Life from the Loam, making it overall not a huge opportunity cost for a MASSIVE upside. Say hello to utility!
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Gamble - the name says it all. Search for some thing - ANYTHING. You may lose it and you may not. Often times, however, the loss isn't that bad because we can get it back from the graveyard, since this is a Loam deck at the basis. Gamble is good enough for us to go to war with, so have faith!
Lastly, let's just look at our mana accelerants - i.e. the cards that allow us to be explosive and aggressive.
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Manabond - LOL is all I can say. Watch some pro tour or GP videos of this card being played. Turn 1, whole hand is on the battlefield. Turn 2, with a Loam, you have 9 permanents on the battlefield. It's crazy.
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Exploration - more of a moderated card. Still great for ramp. Does the trick. :)
Anyway guys, from a high level overview, we have here a control deck that is extremely taxing and oppressive to opponents. Often, because of the way this deck is built, opponents don't have answers in their deck for our plays. Certain elements of our deck like mana denial give us a strict advantage over other, more popular legacy decks such as Delver and Death's Shadow since they run almost no basics and only about 17 lands in total.
This strategy is unique, potent and really, really cool and crazy. It's an advanced deck so I recommend either watching pro's play it on youtube first or getting to know the deck very well so that you can handle it.
Thanks very much for stopping by to read about the Lands deck - once again credit goes to the pros that have had success with this deck - Lucien Longlais, Jarvis Yu and even LSV, who has played this before and had success.
If you like the deck please leave a +1 so the deck is more likely to get viewed by others :)
