I saw someone use
Map the Frontier to fetch
Arid Archway yesterday and was inspired to start this thread. I feel like conventional wisdom is to focus on untapped lands and lots of fixing when building a manabase, but we have received some interesting land types over the years that allow for more interesting ramp options and extra utility. Has anyone tried these land packages? Which of them are worth consideration?
As of this writing, there are six land types with mechanical significance, plus one supertype: Cave, Desert, Gate, Locus, Sphere, Urza's, and Snow.
Caves
Caves are the newest land subtype, which means they don't currently have much support. They do have some nice variety in effects, but I feel like this is more of a Draft-only theme.
Deserts
Deserts received a bunch of strong new options in OTJ, plus some nice support cards. Fetchable duals are nice to have (especially if you care about the ping), plus you have a fetchable bounceland, grave hate, and a nice manland. There are now two commander options for dedicated Desert decks, but I could see them being played elsewhere.
Gates
Gates are probably the land type with the most support - they've gotten cards from multiple Ravnica sets, plus the Baldur's Gate set.
Nine-Fingers Keene is the only dedicated Gate commander, but you could conceivably run Maze's End in pretty much any 5C deck. There are a bunch of ways to tutor for Gates, which makes them relatively consistent.
Spheres and Loci
Spheres are like the Phyrexian version of Locus cards. The only support card for both of them is
Monument to Perfection. The main appeal of Loci is copying Cloudpost with
Vesuva and similar cards to generate a bunch of mana. There aren't any real payoffs for Spheres, although I could see decks like
Titania, Protector of Argoth being interested in the ability to cycle
The Hunter Maze for value. Otherwise, you're likely looking to use The Mycosynth Gardens in an artifact deck.
Urza's
There aren't any support cards for Urza lands, but they are capable of generating a bunch of mana. Similar to Cloudpost, an Urza-based strategy is likely to want to be running land-copying effects, or at least a bunch of tutors to fetch the missing lands.
Snow
Snow is a supertype, and tends to be somewhat parasitic - many snow cards care about you having other snow cards. One benefit of a snow manabase is that it is pretty easy to swap out normal basics for snow-covered basics. Snow lands don't currently provide much utility,
Blood on the Snow and other cards can reward you for having a snow manabase, and Dark Depths is an interesting fetchable win condition.
Snow-Covered Wastes suggests that Modern Horizons 3 may have a snow theme, which means snow decks may be getting more support in the near future.
tl;dr:
What land packages have people experimented with? Do any of them feel worth running instead of a more 'traditional' fixing-focused manabase?
