Flying across the country editing articles and working on decklists for #SCGPORT.
Step one = Get these Nomad Outposts out of Mardu ASAP.
— Cedric Phillips (@CedricAPhillips) December 1, 2014
This sparked a brief back and forth with some of his followers, including myself. I thought I would make a post to clarify my viewpoint and explain my reasoning.Note: Cedric is not suggesting cutting Outpost from the deck to play more basics, or to play Mana Confluence. He is only comparing it to playing additional scry lands.
My official position is this: Tri-lands are awesome and you should play four of them.
To explain my reasoning, there are a few assumptions I will be making. First, we are talking about 60 card constructed decks. If you have both tri-lands and scry lands in your draft deck, you should just play all of them. Second, current standard decks are mostly homogeneous when it comes to spell power level. If there was a specific card that you HAD to draw in order to win, scry lands are a lot better. The function of scry lands in standard is mostly one of avoiding mana flood, or pushing slightly inferior / matchup dependent cards to the bottom in hopes of drawing better options. Third, you want to play somewhere between 23-26 lands. Many color source balancing issues can be fixed by simply playing more lands (a good trick to remember for limited), but at some point mana flood becomes a real issue.
So starting with the basics. How many colors can you play in a 60 card deck if you only have basic lands? The spells you want to play determine the number of required colored sources you want, and then you add lands to meet those requirements. Frank Karsten did the hard work already. This article shows that if you have double colored mana requirements in two colors and want to play these spells by turn 4, you would need 12 lands of each color. With only basics, this is 24 lands total, and pretty much limits deck construction to two colors. This is also the reason that the conventional wisdom is to draft two color decks in most formats. Without access to common mana fixing like in Khans or RTR block, playing 3 colors requires 19-21 total lands.
As you allow access to dual colored lands, it becomes much easier to meet the minimum requirements set in Franks article. With dual lands available in each color combination, the 12 dual land and 4 of each basic gives you 12 sources of each of three colors while still within 24 land slots. If you allow the tri-land of those three colors, you could end up with 15 sources in each color easily. Franks math was only done to ensure 90% certainity. With more sources you can be more certain of having the colored mana you need. Brad Nelson has shown that when you add enough tri-lands, four color decks become possible!
Unfortunately, tri-lands aren't all upside. They enter the battlefied tapped, but so do scry lands! The issue comes down to how many ETB tapped lands we can afford to play. Another way to look at it is how many untapped sources do we need to play, since we can always play more tapped lands instead of spells. The typical standard Mardu deck plays 9-10 tapped lands.
I love scry lands. I was one of the few people in my play group not disappointed when they were spoiled. New Benalia was always a card I loved. That said, I think they are worse than tri-lands.
What advantages do scry lands have? They help mitigate flood, and the more you play the better they are. However, Most decks in standard also run fetchlands, which undo the scrying you have already achieved in the game. A deck like Blue-White Heroic shouldn't play Windswept Heath because it scrys so much that it would do more harm than good, even considering that it adds to delve to reduce the cost of Treasure Cruise. Scrying can also be used to "fix" your mana, digging you for the colored source you are missing. This isn't an advantage over tri-lands though, since tri-lands already provide the missing source. Deciphering between which land you want to keep and which land to push is another added level of complexity to the deck that might lead to more mistakes. Having to keep a land on top because its the color you need when you already have drawn plenty of mana sources is not taking full advantage of the scrys you get.
It is completely possible to get the mana ratios right using less than 4 copies of a tri-land. With each copy you don't play, you are increasing the liklihood of not having the mana you need. In return, you get to scry. Is the likelihood of the scry helping you out higher than the likelihood of running into mana issues?
@ceciliajupe @liam_ggwp @aulowry I think it is lazy deckbuilding to assume 4 tri-lands is the place to start. It probably isn't.
— Cedric Phillips (@CedricAPhillips) December 1, 2014
Maybe it is lazy deckbuilding, but it's something I've spent lots of time thinking about before. What tri-lands do is very unique and it's hard to find something to compare it to. From the Seaside Citadels of Brian Kibler's Next Level Bant, to the Savage Lands (instead of extra man lands!) of Simon Gortzen's Jund deck, they have a place in deck construction. I think 4 is the starting number, and I wonder how many more I would be willing to play.
Another way to think about tri-lands and their importance is to look at fetch lands in formats where dual lands are fetchable. In a typical Legacy deck, you run many more fetches than duals, many times not even running the full 4 copies of any one dual. This is because fecth lands that can get any of the 3 dual lands you use function as tri-lands until you fetch them. A fetch land in your hand with and single other colored land gives you access to all three colors of mana for your deck. Waiting to crack fetchlands is very important not just for brainstorming, but also so you don't restrict the colors of mana you have access to. Similarly, it is also important to not fetch the last copy of a dual land in your deck unless you have a good reason to. Not having a Tundra to get with Scalding Tarn the turn you need to cast Swords to Plowshares will cost you.
Bonus Top Ten - Top Ten Dual Land Cycles
1.Tundra
2. Hallowed Fountain
3. Adarkar Wastes
4. Mystic Gate
5. Seachrome Coast
6. Celestial Colonade
7. Temple of Enlightenment
8. Glacial Fortress
9. Flooded Strand (number 1 if tundra / hallowed fountain are legal)
10. Skycloud Expanse
Reminder that fetchlands aren't as good without dual lands!
