Choosing Basic Lands for my Cube (Patreon)
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I've been thinking about which basic lands I use in my cube, because that's what psychos like me do late at night. I'm currently using the Rebecca Guay basic lands from Commander 2016. If you don't remember them, here they are:
They're pretty classy looking and not too expensive. The artwork is a little dark though. (Actually, when I was putting together this image, I was reminded that Kev Walker and Mark Poole also did basic lands for Commander 2016, and they look pretty nice!) But the real problem is the frame. If you know anything about me, it's that I prefer the old card frames when possible.
So I set out to choose a set of basic lands using all old frames. A key criterion is that they can't be too expensive--so no APAC lands, as much as I wish I could! Another interesting choice for old frame basic lands is that some have the full rules text and others just have a mana symbol. Obviously I can't mix the two--that would be crazy! So I first tried to put together a set of basic lands that all have the full rules text. This limits me to Mirage, Tempest, and Urza's Saga. (Why not Ice Age you ask? The Ice Age text box is narrower and wouldn't match. I told you I'm a psycho!) Anyway, here's what I came up with:
You probably notice that one land isn't like the rest. All the lands are from Urza's Saga with the exception of the Forest. The problem is that the Urza's Saga Forests aren't that nice. I mean, which of the following would you choose?
So this is why I chose the Mirage Forest instead. But I'm not sure I really like it that much more, and my OCD probably can't take having 1 land out of 5 from a different set.
For these reasons I started thinking about old frame basic lands that use the mana symbol in the text box instead. This actually provides more options, because now I can choose from Mercadian Masques, Invasion, Odyssey, and Onslaught. Soon I realized that I might be able to choose all lands from Rob Alexander. This would be pretty sweet because it would match many of the fetch lands, dual lands, and shock lands all painted by him. After a bunch of searching, here's what I came up with:
There are some other options for the Swamp or Forest to think about, but the Mountain in particular is one of my favorite basic land arts of all time.
So what do you think? Should I go with all Rob Alexander? Should I mix and match the Urza's Saga and Mirage lands? Should I suck it up and go all Urza's Saga? Is there an option I'm not even thinking of? Let me know in the comments.