I’ve written about my Magic The Gathering basic land collection before, and now seems like a good time to revisit it. Today I’ll talk about some of my favourites amongst the thousands of land cards I own.
I store each type in its own box these days, and have five like the one shown above. Each box can allegedly store 800 sleeved cards, and currently there’s roughly 770 of each basic land, of which I have maybe 750 of them, so I’ve got space yet.
If you’re wondering, the omissions are either due to excessive cost (a set of the five ‘Guru’ lands costs thousands these days) or extreme rarity (the FBB and Salvat foreign-only lands).
I’m quite a fan of this collection, and for the vast majority of new sets it only cost me a few dollars (including shipping) to get all the new basics so it’s a very inexpensive way to keep my toe in magic 🙂
With so many cards it was tough to isolate favourites, but I tried hard for this post. Each land is divided into three types otherwise the results would have been very full-art heavy, and my choices were based exclusively on the art. Since the cards are glossy and sleeved photography was a challenge, and all of these look more vibrant in real life.
Plains
Plains cards generate white mana, and often depict fields or wide open skies. As the game has matured artists have begun to take liberties, as you can see in some of the full-art examples below.
The above are my favourite normal frame Plains cards. The leftmost is the APAC land featuring Uluru, which may be my favourite magic card of all time. I like the middle (from the 2013 basic set) because it’s instantly recognizable as a white mana card and is unique due to its vantage, and the right is one of the Doctor Who basics, all of which I love (and more you’ll see here).
Moving onto full-arts we have one of the Kamigawa lands (which were printed in Japanese in all regions), the best of the ‘space lands’ from Unfinity and a Japanese version of an evocative not-a-mountain from the recent Ixalan set. As with most cards shown today they usually look better in foil and the space plains shown here is particularly dazzling in its ‘cosmic foil’ treatment, where the foil effect includes tiny stars in the pattern!
I’m treating Secret Lair cards as a separate category since these are available only in special sets sold directly via a website. In researching this post I was surprised at the overall quality of plains cards in secret lairs, and the above list wasn’t easy. From left to right we have a plains version of Shibuya in Tokyo (from The Tokyo Lands), a lovely bright plains by Kozindan featuring two beast riders, and yet another Japanese-themed plains from the Ukuyo-e Lands set.
Island
Island land arts are interesting. For years they were extremely literal (a plain painting of an island, usually rising from an empty ocean) but in recent years artists have interpreted ‘island’ as ‘area with lots of water’ which allows greater variety.
The three normal-frame versions I’ve chosen are mostly from recent years and from left are the ‘squirrel island’ from Unsanctioned, a near-photorealistic painting of a ruined bridge from one of the D&D sets and yet another Doctor Who land 🙂
My favourite full-arts are a looking mountainous island from Unstable, a ‘stained glass land’ from Dominaria Unleased and an isometric – and very busy – blue cityscape from Murders at Karlov Manor. The lands from this last set weren’t popular with many players due to their similarities, but I liked them quite a lot.
The secret lair lands I’ve chosen include one depicting a serpent by Kozindan, a snow-covered island (is that cheating?) from Meditations on Nature and yet another card from the Ukiyo-e secret lair.
Swamp
For me, it’s important that lands are recognizable at a glance and I tend to prefer those with color identities very similar to their mana. No blue mountains or red forests for instance. In the case of swamp this means black, and lots of it.
From the normal frames, the leftmost is the ‘Phyrexian’ text card from Jumpstart, the middle is an eerie swamp scene from Kamigawa and the rightmost an ominous depiction of two robotic craft patrolling a noxious swamp from the Warhammer 40k set. This last one looks extra-good in the ‘surge foil’ treatment that debuted in that set.
Continuing the mostly-black theme, the full arts all display dark and unwelcoming swamps. From left we have Unhinged, then one of the dramatic black-and-white lands from Crimson Vow and lastly a full art from Wilds of Eldraine. The black and white lands were available in every colour and while I love all of them I think there’s no question they work best for swamps. The Wilds of Eldraine lands are all photographs of detailed papercraft, so well done they look like paintings.
As for secret lair swamps we have a bonus card from the Seb McKimmon artist set, one of the Brutalist lands and one of the Dracula lands. There’s a lot of good secret lair swamps and this was a difficult category to only choose three from.
Mountain
Mountains generate red mana, usually associated with fire and direct damage. Early mountains were just literal painting of mountain ranges, but I prefer the more volcanic or aflame cards.
From left we have another APAC card, in this case Fuji itself. In the middle is another Jumpstart card depicting unusual burning pyramids, and at right we almost combine the two in another Kamigawa card showing a Fuji-like mountain with a fire spirit in the foreground. Many of the basics in Kamigawa were exceptional.
For the full-art mountains, I think the mountain is the best of the ‘zodiac/Pokémon’ mountains from Theros Beyond Death (this set of lands seems to be the most popular of all the full arts amongst players). The middle one from New Capenna – a city based expansion – takes an unusual choice to depict a skyscraper as a mountain and I think it works well. And on the right we have the best of the Jurassic Park lands, depicting T-Rex himself!
As for secret lair mountains, we see another from the Tokyo Lands set (depicting Fuji once again), one of the ‘vapor wave’ lands from the Shades Not Included set and what I think is the best of twelve exceptional mountains in the Mountain Goats secret lair (which is also the only borderless card in this post).
Forest
Forest cards remain the most literal: trees and greenery. I feel that green mana as a whole hasn’t shifted much since Magic began 30+ years ago, and much more so than any colour art for the basic forests from that time doesn’t look unusual compared to recent versions.
The leftmost art – which debuted in Invasion back in 2000, has been reprinted in many sets. I’m showing the original above, but probably prefer a reprint where they increased the saturation to make it a brighter green. In addition we have another Kamigawa card and probably my favourite of the Doctor Who arts. This was another trio hard to pin down, because there’s a lot of beautiful near-photorealistic forest scenes (mostly painted by John Avon) that could have equally made this list.
My favourite full art forests include the iconic John Avon example from Unhinged, what I consider to be one of the few Lord Of The Rings full art map lands that ‘works’, and a very clever piece from the recent Thunder Junction set: can you see the green mana symbol hidden in the art?
My favourite lands in general may be forests, but I felt that in the category of secret lairs there are fewer outstanding ones than other lands. And yet the above – a work by popular artist Magali V, one of the Transformers lands and a cat-themed land from the Raining Cats And Dogs deck – are all exceptional. It’s worth mentioning that most of these aren’t particularly green 🙂
Lastly I’ll add that the above are only cards I own. There’s a small few I don’t that I think are wonderful, and maybe if I ever get my hands on them (unlikely, due to price!) I may feature them here one day.