Zendikar Previews

[EricBess]

So, out of curiosity, has anyone mentioned how many land cards are in this set? Seems to be quite a few. There are opposite-color fetch lands, friendly-color CIP tapped lands that give 1 life on CIP, at least 2 green-mana producers that come into play tapped and have a minor ability that appear to be a cycle.

There is clearly a "land CIP matters" theme in the set, but basic land is just as good for that, so I don't know why so many land in the set is supposed to continue that theme. Honestly, for a "land CIP matters" theme, I'm surprised that we haven't seen bounce lands return instead of all these lame rares.

Honestly, I think the only reason so many of these lands are rare is that this many land at common would be horrible for limited play. Most of the effects don't really seem to be rare-worthy in general.

 

[Spiderman]

They might help out in the later expansions too, depending on what mechanics and themes there are.

 

[Ransac]

Lotus Cobra = just sick. Evan Erwin discussed third turn Violent Ultimatum.


Ransac, cpa trash man

 

[train]

I noticed the number of lands, and the CIP - but I reminisced on it back to the Urza's block with their number of lands introduced.

I wouldn't have thought about the lands rarity affecting limited play - but I guess that is a good reason to change them to rarer items...

I'm up for good utility through lands, and that definitely is viable with the fetch lands...

 

[Spiderman]

Tim Willoughby's card and Mark Rosewater's card

 

[EricBess]

I'm up for good utility through lands, and that definitely is viable with the fetch lands...

Fetch lands only get lands that have "Forest", "Plains", etc. on their type line. For the most part, that means basic lands (as with Harrow). There have been cards that allow you to fetch non-basic lands and I would expect to see a few of those, but so far, like I said, everything we've seen in Landfall doesn't need to have the non-basic land and the support cards don't get them anyway.

Clearly, we haven't seen the whole set, so maybe the non-basic lands play in somehow, but if there are just a lot of non-basic lands because this set is "land matters", then I think they might have missed the mark a bit. I hope not...

 

[Spiderman]

Kelly Digges's card and a card from Aaron Forsythe's Twitter

 

[Spiderman]

Doug Beyer's card

 

[Spiderman]

Mike Flores's card and four cards from Facebook

 

[Spiderman]

Three cards from Daily MTG Twitter

 

[train]

I'm a fan of the summoning trap - but just the term "trap" makes it feel so much like Yu-Gi-Oh...