Basic Lands: Dragons of Tarkir & Review

And now we come to Dargons of Tarkir with STILL MORE unique basic lands. Wizards really went a little bonkers with the lands on this triple set.

  

Since the set of artists remained the same through all three set, it does get a little... repetitive. I really like Noah Bradley's work but his mountains all sort of look the same. I do think Titus Lunter absolutely KILLED that mountain though. Why, the lava practically yells out red mana!

  

Double Ojutai (not visually clear to me if that is tundra or a rocky outcropping in the ocean) and a sweet sweet Silumgar ruins perched on the waterfall. I do like the small style changes, as the formerly-Jeskai monasteries now have dragon perches and the like.

  


  

Good god, Mr. Lunter brings some more high heat! I think that's actually his finest forest yet. Do I have to choose between the more taiga-esque or the sweet savannah with the volcano in the background?

  

CHAMPIONS OF, uh, TARKIR

          

So to recap what I'm trying to do here, I'm building a curated "land box" for draft night. 8 drafters means 16 color pairs. On average, each color will be used just over 3 times but at least one color will be used four times at the table. So I need five different kinds of each land; maybe six to be safe. Ideally, I want it to be fun (insofar as people think selecting land is "fun") to choose among the land, so they should be as different as possible. Thus, as much as I love the Titus Lunter forests, I really should only pick one. So those that will make it to the next round:

     

Basic Lands: Fate Reforged

Unusually for a 'small set', Fate Reforged got their own lands. Intriguingly they only did two of each basic, rather than the usual three or four.


 


 

 

 

 

Once again the lands are themed to their clans though each only has their opposite pairing. So Abzan has just a plains and a swamp, Jeskai has just island and a mountain. Perhaps a preview of the coming fork in the time stream of Ugin bringing back allied-color dragons? (I'm a little hazy on the lore)

It's a little hard to get super excited to a lot of these pieces as some of them play like "can you spot the five differences between these two pictures"

 

Well, let me walk some of that back. Maybe the small differences are a foreshadowing twilight is coming to Tarkir!



 Titus Lunter kills it again on the magic art. He also did the tundra-ish forests in KTK as well and it's just a cool, evocative piece.






Noah Bradley did "Mardu" and his two pieces look good small but some of the detail work really shines on high-res. Particularly the encampments and the waving banners in each piece, a highly relevant detail that I totally missed earlier.

Basic Lands: Khans block

As we aim to build the best possible 'basic lands box', we are doing a retroview of the basics since I came back to Magic. Our goal is to pick one or two from each set and then see if we can build a good draft box of basics (3-4 of each basic land). Previously done:

Theros

The Lands

   

   

   

   

   

I've never noticed that each clan has one basic land of their own color! For example, the Sultai are rocking these three with their vaguely Angor Wat-ish ruins.

  

where Jeskai have the following remote monasteries
  


That's actually pretty slick! Each artist was assigned to a particular clan (Noah Bradley did Mardu etc.) Interesting how each clan got two of its 'emphasis' color. So there are two plains for Abzan, two islands for Jeskai etc. Very cool!

Highlights

There's a lot of good stuff in here but also a lot that's a little too  'khans specific'. I'm glad that the Abzan are desert wanderers but I don't want giant sand dunes in my plains. 

I don't really care if Florian de Gesincourt does a bunch of digital work/touchups, that's fan-freaking tastic.

This does rather shamelessly violate the rule of "Gosh, I want it to look like the land-type it's supposed to represent" but damn, that's a really cool piece. I love the focal point of the palace with the waterfalls rushing around it. Some really cool detail with the terraced slops as well. Just very neat.

My Wife's Favorite

In what may become a recurring theme, Elisabeth picked the one with the brightest colors and fewest skulls.

If I had to pick a swamp...

Credit where credit is due: this is actually looks like a swamp yet isn't just a pastiche of blacks and grays.