Pattern Recognition #84 - I Love Landfall

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

20 September 2018

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Good afternoon everyone! Well, it's afternoon when this is published, so I'll roll with that. My name is berryjon, TappedOut.net's resident Old Fogey, and this is, as you may have guessed, Pattern Recognition, wherein I, your most gracious of writers, regale you with tales of Magic the Gathering, it's history, it's design, it's ups and it's downs. Or maybe I'm just leading you into a Fog Bank so I can make my getaway. ;)

I'll say it straight up. I love Landfall as a mechanic, and I sorely wish that it was Evergreen, instead of currently sitting at a "3" on Mark Rosewater's Storm Scale.

Initially developed for the Zendikar block, Landfall was part of the theme for those two sets as representative of Exploration of the world of Zendikar. Each new land you played represented New Frontiers you opened up as you travelled the world - even if you went back the way you came.

Now, I'm not completely sold on the theme there. But that's just flavour, and I'm an Old Fogey who still recalls Mana Links for Urza's sake!

As a Mechanic, Landfall is frankly, ridiculously simple. Whenever a land enters the battlefield, perform this action. That's right, play a land, and get a result! It's this absurdly simple trigger that makes it so near and dear to my heart.

Why is that?

To trigger Landfall, you play a land. That's it. The single simplest thing you can do, the one thing you learn when you play the game, and the one thing that you do every turn you want to advance the game. That this mechanic plays off of something so fundamental to the game had made it one of my best teaching tools. With Landfall, you play a land every turn and are subsequently rewarded for it!

Now, on the other side of the trigger's ability, you can have.... well... anything! Here's the thing. Landfall depends upon a land entering into play, but it doesn't depend on already having lands in play! Confused? Well, here's the thing. Landfall, as a mechanic, appears on Artifacts, Creatures, Enchantments and even Instants!

Not Sorceries though. As they are played on your turn only, rather than how Instants can be played on any turn, and thus, could be used on someone else's turn for the non-Landfall effect. Or Planeswalkers, due to how they work.

Actually, that would have been an interesting little thing. Have a Planeswalker that changed what it could do if Landfall was triggered or not. It's too bad that nothing like that got into the Land Matters Commander 2018 decks. Lord Wingdrace.

Anyway, because the trigger is universal, and the cards that invoke it are of almost any type, the results can be anything. Let's start with the most common (literally, it's at Common) cycle of cards. Adventuring Gear, Geyserfield Stalker, Grove Rumbler, Hagra Crocodile, Hedron Rover, Ondu Greathorn, Plated Geopede, Steppe Lynx, Territorial Baloth, Valakut Predator, Wave-Wing Elemental, and Windrider Eel.

These are all creatures that get bigger by +2/+2 when you play a land. This is simple! Ridiculously! Easy!

This reminds players that the first main phase exists, and you can use it! Play land, swing with big(ger) creatures!

And that's just the beginning. Hedron Crab is horrifying to play against in Modern Mill. Mill just by playing a land? You can't stop a land from being played. And being a 0/2 on turn 1 in Blue? Well, they can just play lands to mill you and keep mana open for Counterspells. Or more Hedron Crabs.

Or, say, the Expeditions? A cycle of cards in the original Zendikar that didn't have an immediate effect, but rather, like for example, Ior Ruin Expedition, charged up to draw you cards? Or Soul Stair Expedition which can allow you to recover creatures after a couple of turns?

What about Commander favorite, Omnath, Locus of Rage? He makes Elementals when you play a land, putting Nissa, Worldwaker's +1 to shame! Oh, and when they die, they even throw out a Lightning Bolt!

Or the Retreat cycle from Battle for Zendikar? Where the enchantment provides an either/or effect each time!

There is no limit to what you can get, because the whole mechanic is so open ended that you can get anything you want as long as you are willing to play a land.

Which you should. Be playing lands I mean.

Of course, it gets even better. Because Landfall is awesome, and need to prove it.

You see, Landfall isn't an if/then piece of logic. Now, it can be, such as with Rest for the Weary, but it's also a when/then operation. So, if you somehow play more than one land in a turn with cards like Exploration or, and this is the single most important connection Landfall can have - Arid Mesa, Marsh Flats, Misty Rainforest, Scalding Tarn and Verdant Catacombs.

The Fetchlands were printed beside Landfall, and they were designed not only to go call forth the Shocklands in every format except Standard, but to allow you to double-trigger Landfall in a turn.

So all those awesome things that happened once? They now happen twice!

Now, let me be a little bit more serious here.

Landfall occupies a vital portion of Magic's game engine, one that I don't think that Wizards themselves has realized to the point of internalizing yet. They're still wary of the mechanic and what it can mean for the game.

You see, Landfall came from a set that had the theme of "Lands Matter". I've talked before about how too many lands and too few lands in a deck can make a mess of that deck and lead to that most horrible state of affairs - being unfun to play.

But with too many lands, or even after a certain point in the game, every land you draw becomes a 'dead' draw. It does nothing, except take up space in your hand. What Landfall does, is it takes away the uselessness of later land drops by turning them into spells. Not in the same way that Spellshapers do, but by enabling the spell-like effects of a Landfall triggered ability. Landfall makes ~1/3 of your deck useful into the endgame.

This may not seem like much for finely tuned Modern or Commander decks, but in the context of Limited? Sealed or Draft? This is amazing. A deck that dead-draws a land with a Landfall card in play is manifestly better than one that does not have Landfall. It gives a stalled board state something to do, and that something can be better than just "Land, Go" as a player's turn.

So, what's the problem with Landfall?

Well, uh....

Sorry, give me a second here....

None. Not really. None that can't be fixed.

There are no Lands with Landfall (probably to avoid problems of "does this card trigger itself?"), which I think kind of makes sense. Imagine a deck that wins through the use of just Lands and how a player that can't interact with Lands (unlike ) is left in the dust as all they can do is try to race the pure-Land deck!

Oh, and the most horrible part is that there are only 71 cards with Landfall in the game so far! That's not enough! We need more!

And hey, it's not like it's a mechanic that limited to colour, card type, or even set! Just have a set where you want to play lands. Which should be all of them! ;)

However, my editor, Boza, long may his wisdom reign over my excesses and eagerness, gave me a couple of counterpoints to address.

The first, and perhaps most important is that while, yes, Landfall makes 1/3 of your deck more important and viable, but at what cost? Here's the thing - Landfall requires no modification to a deck. Or rather, very little. Why have a card like Dream Twist, where you can only have four in a deck (though with eight castings thanks to Flashback, when you can have Hedron Crab and just keep getting the same effect over and over again for far longer - and for far more if you have a second, or heavens forbid, a third in play.

Landfall, he pointed out to me, and I can't really raise a proper objection to, is that because of this, Landfall has no opportunity cost. This is a little complicated as a concept, but the gist of the idea is that Landfall works off of playing Lands, rather than being a spell in of itself. It's free to recast over and over again without devoting more and more space in your deck to the mechanic.

My counterpoint is that there is an opportunity cost - the Landfall card itself. You still have to play the card, and keep it in play in order to gain the cumulative effects of the mechanic.

Another drawback is that Landfall is dependent on playing a land. No lands? No Landfall. And unless you're in Blue, and are going to Boomerang your own lands back to your hand to play them again, these are dead cards in your hand. Although most likely, this is a card that you will use regardless, so it's not really a dead draw of a useless card.

Landfall is a mechanic that has many similarities to Slivers. In the leadup to Dominaria, one of the most often asked questions of Mark Rosewater was "Are there going to be Slivers?". He responded that Slivers could not be in Dominaria because they would either dominate the set, or not be worth putting in as there was no support for them in other sets in Standard.

Putting Landfall in the same position. It it a really powerful mechanic, make no mistake. But if there's too much of it, or given too much support - like Evolving Wilds for example at common - then it's a mechanic that will dominate the set. Too little, and it's like any other flash-in-the-pan mechanic, and doesn't leave its mark on anything - an effective waste of space in the set.

It's a Balancing Act for sure. I love it, I want it Evergreen, but in reality, it's safe at Decidious.

Oh well. I look forward to its return.

So, here's the friendly reminder about my card creation challenge! Just one more week to submit stuff!

For another week - that is, until the time next week's article goes up on the 27th, please post on my user wall your text only card creation. No symbols please! One card per person, and no images! At that time, I will look them all over, and start talking about the ones that I think are most interesting. I'll break them down, build them back up. Point out the good and the bad.

Oh, and no new mechanics on your cards. Established stuff only.

See you all next week when I talk about something nice! Well, I think it's nice. But it's been removed from the game because Wizards things it's too complicated - then they brought it right back without fanfare.

Until then, please consider donating to my Pattern Recognition Patreon. Yeah, I have a job, but more income is always better. I still have plans to do a audio Pattern Recognition at some point, or perhaps a Twitch stream. And you can bribe your way to the front of the line to have your questions, comments and observations answered!