Pattern Recognition #166 - Landfall redux

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

3 September 2020

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Hello everyone! Welcome back to Pattern Recognition! This is TappedOut.net's longest running article series. In it, I aim to bring to you each week a new article about some piece of Magic, be it a card, a mechanic, a deck, or something more fundamental or abstract. I am something of an Old Fogey and part-time Smart Ass, so I sometimes talk out my ass. Feel free to dissent or just plain old correct me! I also have a Patreon if you feel like helping out.

And welcome back everyone! With Zendikar Rising spoilers in full swing, I think it's time to dust off an article I wrote two years ago (oh got, I've been doing this for almost four years now!) and renew and review it for Zendikar as the mechanic is back! And it's one that I (still) love, so let's get right to it.

Landfall is a mechanic, namely a triggered ability, that checks whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control and if so, does a thing. On Rosewater's Storm Scale, it is a sold 3, meaning that it is something that we will see again and again in the future.

Initially developed for the Zendikar block in 2009, Landfall was a means to represent the theme of Exploration, being able to Explore strange new lands, meet interesting people and stab them in the back for their loot. Each new land opened up New Frontiers and options for the player, and Landfall provides.

This theme of going to new places came about as Zendikar was initially conceived of as a sort of Dungeons and Dragons-esque setting, where adventuring parties would go out into the vast unknowns and the places they would go to would be different each time the lands went Into the Roil and shifted around. Now, if this sounds familiar, it's because with the set announcements this year, and the Party mechanic from Zendikar Rising, all pretense has been dropped.

Anyway, Landfall is a mechanic that I can appreciate from the get-go because, well, it's really ridiculously simple. Play a land, get an effect! It's this simplicity that makes the mechanic something near and dear to my heart.

And because it is the mechanic of lands entering the battlefield, whether it be by your one land per turn as written into the rules, a land put into play through Cultivate, or fetched from the library via Fabled Passage or simply because you can play more than one per turn thanks to the reprint of Azusa, Lost but Seeking.

I, along with a great many other people, knew that Zendikar Rising was going to have Landfall in it when we saw her being spoiled for Core 2021. It is one of the natural synergies that just makes sense, and being able to trigger landfall multiple times a turn - so long as your hand holds out - is a good thing, with no downsides. Again, as long as your hand holds out.

Now, because of this simplicity in the nature of the trigger, with so many ways to trigger it, I find that it is an excellent teaching tool, and resource maker for the game. You see, one of the things that I have had to try and teach new players is the importance of playing a land each turn, especially for the first few turns. I've had cases where a new player doesn't understand that just because they can't play a spell this turn doesn't mean that they won't play a spell next turn, or on my turn. But the only way they can do that is if they play a land this turn.

With Landfall triggers in play, I can use them as a reminder that playing lands have an effect, and as a bonus, teaches newer players to keep an eye on triggered abilities. In fact, there's a rather large cycle of common cards that all have the same basic effect. Namely 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 all in alphabetical order, though not sorted by colour or set. These all share the effect that when you play a land, the creature in question gets +2/+2 until the end of the turn.

The idea here is that while more advanced players do their spells in the second main phase, something I do remind people is an option for reasons not needed to be talked about here. But even they still play their lands in the first main phase, so I can combine these multiple lessons into "Play land on first main phase, swing with bigger creatures in combat, cast spells in second main phase".

And yet, that's just the beginning of what Landfall does. Hedron Crab is getting a reprint now called Ruin Crab, which will see even more Mill decks showing up in Modern, Standard and Brawl. Playing a 0/3 on turn 1 with a single starts the Mill train going with lands played on subsequent turns. And unlike other sources of mill, playing a land can't be countered. I mean, sure, you could bounce the Hedron Crab or attempt to Stifle the trigger, but that's a losing prospect in the end.

There are other cards that look for Landfall as a bonus, such as the Expeditions of 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? Or on the flip side, the Retreats, like Retreat to Hagra, a very nice way to make your creatures more lethal or to drain the life from your opponent.

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! And Zendikar Rising has a new version of him - Omnath, Locus of Creation, now up to , which has multiple Landfall triggers based on how many hit the table each turn.

Landfall is a mechanic that has no upper limit to what you can conceivably do (but can have limits in practice because "I play a land, I win the game" is a bit too much). As long as the end result is balanced around one or two triggers per turn, why not slap something down onto the table? Why not play a land again and again?

Of course, this isn't just why I think Landfall is so awesome. I have more evidence to prove it.

You see, Landfall isn't just an if/then piece of logic. Now, it certainly can be as with Rest for the Weary, a card that checks backward in the turn to see if you have already played a land this turn or not. But rather, it is also a when/then clause, because - and this is the most important part - Landfall was printed in Zendikar first, along side five of the most sought after lands in the history of the game. Not the most sought after, I'm pretty sure that title belongs to the ABRU Dual lands. No, I'm talking about Arid Mesa, Marsh Flats, Misty Rainforest, Scalding Tarn and Verdant Catacombs.

These five fetch lands, staples of Modern, desired for Commander and played in Legacy, they were not only designed to allow you to fix your mana bases (I'm looking at you Ravnica Shock Lands), but also to allow you to hit Lnadfall multiple times per turn by playing the Fetch, then cracking it for a second land. Something that was made available to all colors, and not just exclusively 's purview.

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

In addition, cracking a Fetch Land doesn't have to just happen on your turn. There's nothing stopping you from sitting on a Arid Mesa, and on your opponent's turn, cracking it for the Landfall effect when you go grab a Stomping grounds.

But, let's take a break from my unabashed gushing.

Landfall occupies an interesting spot in Magic's game engine, being attached to one of the fundamental rules of the game. Playing lands. And now that we're looking at the third major outing for this mechanic, I think that Wizards is really getting a handle on this.

You see, part of what makes Landfall good isn't that it's from a set where "Lands Matter", not like I suggested last time. No, rather what Landfall does is smooth out gameplay, especially in the limited formats. I've talked before and since about the nature of lands in the deck, especially the subjects of mana flood and mana screw. The screw is easier to get out of as you're still sitting on cards you can play, but mana flood is drastic, at least in my opinion.

At a certain point, having too many lands is bad, You need to draw cards that do something, you need to be able to act and not hold a bluff that will be called sooner or later. And here, Landfall comes to the rescue. It's not much, but what Landfall does, is it takes away the uselessness of later and flooded 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, and not just another card held in reserve for an cost card.

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 lands with conditional landfall, such as with Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle, which looks for Mountains after a certain point to cast Lightning Bolt and this sort of conditioning extends to a few other cards like Oran-Rief Hydra, which checks if the land is a Forest or not for a bonus effect.

Yet no matter how much I try, the words of my editor of the time, Boza, still ring true.

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 now as then 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 or Capsize 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. And return it has!

Join me next week when I talk about something new! Something different! Something that isn't a two year old article given an expansion pass and warmed over! Or so I hope. :)

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!