Basic Lands Obsession: and then there was one...

A few years ago I went through and definitively, scientifically really, selected the swaths of basic lands to use in draft decks. I committed to a chronological order of my Magic experience: Unlimited, Ice Age, Mirage, Tempest, and Urza's Saga. Thus both a connection to the past and a gateway to the future as well as limiting the data set so I didn't have to agonize over whether or not the cup island in the future I covet.

So very sweet, so very confusing

But I have since been informed by LSV that my careful balance of *all* the different art from each set is not proper magic etiquette. I need to commit to a single piece of art for each type of land. This actually makes sense, especially for the older sets, where thematic coherence wasn't yet fully developed. I think you could get black, blue, green and maybe even white out of any given swamp from Mirage.

 
 

So lush! Anyway it's time to go back and pick the best SINGLE piece of art from each land for each set.

Plains

As before, plains is locked into Unlimited. It remains my first crush and to this day any time I get to draft white I feel like I already won in my heart.

  

Just... timeless really. Of the three I think the two finalists are the storm (A) and dotted trees (C). I went with the storm, it just has a little more oomph. And god knows that white needs the help to get there sometimes.

Forest

This post is mostly designed for well-deserved and long-delayed acknowledgement for Brent. He was right then, and he is right now. I will never doubt him again.

Mic drop

Island

Previous we had the extremely sweet set of 'progressive storm' from Urza's Saga.
   

So very cool, solid work by Mr. Giancola. However, like a good team, each one needs its teammates to really shine. Without that, they start to falter behind a major dark horse candidate.



SO COOL. I still remember when this came out. Any land with nostalgic memory that powerful is a strong strong front runner. Wait, there is another...



There's a DRAGON in your island. Mind. Blown. Well let's see how the rest of the set shakes out as we need to maximize overall EV. This is the first major fork in the road.

Mountain

Here's where we start reaching. Sadly, we lose access to the strong set of Tempest mountains due to the overwhelming force of the stand-alone forest. Worth noting.
   

(the correct choice above would be C, the arch, fyi)

Ice Age has some game...

  

I like the first one, nice landscape feel. Let's take a look at Urza's Saga

   

Jesus Rothko (that was an art joke), ease up on the palette choices there. I've looked at these several times now and I still can't tell them apart.

Swamp

Again we slip down to a slapfight between Urza's Saga and Ice Age.
   

versus this collection

  

Ugh, veritable who's who of who cares. I guess I'd go with the purple swamp (4) and the moonlit path (3) of Ice Age.

There's also another dark horse, the 'moonlit swamp' from Mirage which I think is pretty cool.

So let's put it to the voter (or even voters if I get more than one response)

Slate A:
  
  

Slate B
  
 

Slate C
  
 

A little more unorthodox, dropping the Tempest forest for mountain would give us something like:
 
 

I think that's a little too steep of a dropoff on forest for the mountain gain.

LANDS ARE SERIOUS BUSINESS