Mono color basic land choice

[capitacommunist]

I'm working on foiling my Adeline, Resplendent Cathar, and have been considering what would look best with regards to basic lands, I.e., all different ones, several different ones, only old border/new border or mixed, only full art/mixed, etc. I've found it more of a struggle for a mono color deck, since it's 25+ basics rather than 3-7 per color like in multicolor decks where the choice is much simpler. Currently I have all unique ones.
Curious to hear what aesthetic choices you have made for your basic land heavy decks and why.

[Dunharrow]

My monoblue Kefnet deck has a mix of foil Rebecca Guay islands and foil islands from Theros (original set).
My monoblack deck has all Theros Beyond Death full art swamps (the nyx ones). I think I was short a couple and put the Seb McKinnon Secret Lair swamps (full art, non foil). I would have liked to get them all TBD nyx lands, but I am currently short a few. One day when I draft my TBD box I should get there.

I am going to make a monogreen Legolas deck at some point and I am not sure what I will use. Maybe all lord of the rings forests (the map ones and regular ones).

To me there is almost no advantage to having the same art for all the lands - it is almost never relevant. But I try to have lands I like in each deck, and monocolor is a great way to fill your deck with your favourite lands.
I don't put the Rebecca Guay Islands in any other deck. I think I have about 20 in Kefnet. I wanted them to shine there.
My Marchesa the Black Rose has some nice islands, but there are probably 3-4 islands in the deck and all with different art.

[Dunadain]

All my lands must match

[pokken]

I play revised and 4th ed basics if I'm not mixing snow for field of the dead

White borders make searching effects go faster

[NZB2323]

Not mono colored, but in my Orzhov cleric tribal deck I run the 4 plains from Baldur's Gate with the 4 different D&D quotes and then plains from Unstable. I think the deck runs 8 plains in all because there's a lot of double white costs with Knight of the White Orchid, Auriok Champion, Leonin Relic-Warder, and Voice of the Blessed.

[3drinks]

All Ice Age snow basics, or KHM snows since they are exponentially cheaper, but retro is much more sexy. If non-snow, it's full CR text basic lands so I can literally point and say "read the card".

[TheAmericanSpirit]

I tend to use Portal basics for my nice decks and whatever's lying around for my WIP decks. The only thing I'll never use are snow basics. Snow is a stupid mechanic and literally every snowland is as aesthetically interesting as hospice decor wallpaper imo.

[3drinks]

I tend to use Portal basics for my nice decks and whatever's lying around for my WIP decks. The only thing I'll never use are snow basics. Snow is a stupid mechanic and literally every snowland is as aesthetically interesting as hospice decor wallpaper imo.

But they enable Arcum's Astrolabe for free mana fixing plus whatever ancillary support you have with artifacts!

[folding_music]

i like early lands with text on. those darkest print revised/unlimited swamps are killer, so are Mirage Tom Wanerstrand plains. I would love to have a deck with 100% APAC basics but those are spendy

edit: fave basics after the pre-Masques ones are the ones from AFR or CLB cos of those adventurer prompts

[Mookie]

I tend to use Portal basics for my nice decks and whatever's lying around for my WIP decks. The only thing I'll never use are snow basics. Snow is a stupid mechanic and literally every snowland is as aesthetically interesting as hospice decor wallpaper imo.

But they enable Arcum's Astrolabe for free mana fixing plus whatever ancillary support you have with artifacts!

I'll give a shout to Blood on the Snow, Dead of Winter, and Field of the Dead as three more reasons to run snow basics.

Beyond that, I would say my basics depend on what I personally like and deck theme - I generally have a bias towards full-art basics, and I like spooky Innistrad art for my graveyard-y decks / Kamigawa cyberpunk art for my artifact-y decks.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

I tend to use Portal basics for my nice decks and whatever's lying around for my WIP decks. The only thing I'll never use are snow basics. Snow is a stupid mechanic and literally every snowland is as aesthetically interesting as hospice decor wallpaper imo.

But they enable Arcum's Astrolabe for free mana fixing plus whatever ancillary support you have with artifacts!

Insufficient incentive in a noncompetitive format. We'll forgo the Astrolabe debate (I think we both know where each other stand) and agree to disagree.

[Igzex]

Mirage Plains. Respect the Zebra.

[DirkGently]

I have sets of unhinged basics for each colour that I always use. If I'm using snow basics, though, I'm ashamed to admit it's a bit of a hodgepodge from all the snow sets, though primarily modern horizons.

[Treamayne]

Korean basics, where possible. Snow if I expect somebody to sandbag an Extraplanar Lens.
Otherwise on-theme. E.G. Vampires gets all Crimson Hunt Full Art, Illusions gets 28 different islands (wackier is better), etc.

[RowanKeltizar]

I'm working on foiling my Adeline, Resplendent Cathar, and have been considering what would look best with regards to basic lands, I.e., all different ones, several different ones, only old border/new border or mixed, only full art/mixed, etc. I've found it more of a struggle for a mono color deck, since it's 25+ basics rather than 3-7 per color like in multicolor decks where the choice is much simpler. Currently I have all unique ones.
Curious to hear what aesthetic choices you have made for your basic land heavy decks and why.

I gotta admit I am a big sucker for fancy basics. I was into full art basics when they first came out and always wondered why they didn't print more basics like that. Now I got my wish lol

For adeline, I guess I would run foil innistraad black and white full arts. I tend to gravitate toward the basics from the plane where my commander is from. I really like most of those basics and there are a nice variety to choose from so if you wanted all of one art that you like a lot you could do that, or just run a mix of all four (i think that's how many we got?)

I was into using the gold stamped art cards as basics for a while.

[Dragonlover]

I use the lava egg Unfunity mountains for Lathliss because theyre rad and look like dragon eggs. Molimo is all Invasion/Odyssey, soon with a sprinkling of Commander Masters cause mint foil basics from 23 years ago are thin on the ground. It gets the old borders because that's what I had when I built it, and now it's just part of the feel of the deck.

Abaddon and Gimbal have both kept the basics from their precons, wincons doesn't have any and nothings leapt out at me for Glissa so she's still just got the ones that I dug out of a box when the deck was built.

Dragonlover

[DirkGently]

black and white full arts.

Please don't. B&W sounds neat in theory but in practice it's so annoying to see what's going on from the other side of the table. Leave the full art lands in your binders and play with something that's functional.

[Dunadain]

black and white full arts.

Please don't. B&W sounds neat in theory but in practice it's so annoying to see what's going on from the other side of the table. Leave the full art lands in your binders and play with something that's functional.

I'm confused; it's pretty obvious in a mono-colored deck.

I could see confusion in a deck with multiple different B&W basics, but if they are all plains, then there should be no problem.

[gsgfdf]

I use full art basics in all my deck, something that feels appropriate with the deck's theme.

My elfball uses these for example

For my Minn, Wily Illusionist I used all different arts in foil and modern frame. I hate mixing old and new frames.

[DirkGently]

@Dunadain mono colour is better but I'm still off it. They look fine on their own but next to regular cards they look like crap, and they don't look like plains. They look like a wastes or a nonbasic. I just don't see any upside tbh. Probably the only land choice I think is an outright mistake.

[Dragonlover]

Yeah not a fan of the black and whites from an accessibility standpoint - my wife processes them all as swamps which has led to issues in the past.

Dragonlover

[Ruiner]

Usually my basic lands are just whatever random basic lands I have when I am throwing the deck together. Then, I eventually make them all match based on my whims for the deck and what I think looks cool or fits the theme. I like the uniform look of matching basics.

Not sure what your budget is on this foiling, but one of my monowhite decks uses all foil Unsanctioned basic Plains and I really like how those look.

[RowanKeltizar]

The only time I can think of full arts causing confusing in my playgroup is with this particular one:



Just because it's predominately red in color. But even so, the mana symbol is very prominent. The black and white basics, yeah I could see that being problematic out off all the other choices we have, but in a mono color deck the issue is a moot point imo. I have a full set of black and white basics but the frames are colored so they are easy to tell apart.

I'm not in a position to complain about what other people do with their decks art wise. There are 10 different arts for the same card in some cases, several of which don't even look like a traditional magic card. Some of the anime cards could be mistaken as pokemon or yugio. This is a casual format, so I'd argue it really doesn't matter. If you are playing cEDH or tournament, sure I could see there being issues. As far as basics go, I think that is the least of our problems when it comes to seeing what cards are on the battlefield. As a playgroup we keep our basics separate from non-basics as a generally accepted practice. I get more annoyed when folks' exile pile is mixed in with their graveyard, or if mana dorks are lumped in with lands.

[kirkusjones]

Totally deck dependent for me.

Grismold is all old-bordered, with the non-snow basics (thanks Field of the Dead) being Unglued.

For Raffine, I use the Dominaria United Stained Glass full-arts.

If I had a mono-blue deck, I'd probably run all snow-covered islands from Ice Age, specifically this one:



I remember seeing them for the first time when I was in third grade. They looked so mysterious.

[PrimevalCommander]

I like colorful basics. Really RED mountains, GREEN forests, BLUE islands and so on. The Unfinity lands do a good job of getting vibrant colors and I picked them for my Kalamax, the Stormsire deck. I figure an electric elemental dinosaur could feasibly be on this vibrant plane.

I also have a strong affinity for original Zendikar full art basics. They were the first full art basics I was able to pull in packs and the colors on those are very nice. Still some of the very best full art lands ever printed in my opinion.

I have 1 deck with original foil Unhinged Basics and that will be the only deck getting those just to be unique. Most everything else gets non-foil Zendikar full arts because I stocked up on them. I liked the style on the Kamigawa japanese basics, but the art just didn't capture the color pallet I wanted for most of them.

Innistrad black/white = barf
Capenna cityscape = meh
Kamigawa Japanese = so close, but no
Phyrexian = not bad, but not my style. Though the island is a really nice foil. I may be tempted.
MoM mech bacis = good for artifact theme, or robot/vehicle theme. Cool robots.
Amohonket Bolas = good for bolas decks, otherwise fine
Modern Horizon's snow = uninspiring, but fine for snow synergy.
Unsanctioned full art = Nice art, good color. I must have missed these. One deck will get outfitted with these lands in the near future.
Unfinity = fun and colorful