HS streamer has problems with MTG Arena

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#cgb #mtgarena #mtg #rarran

[@urnow2986]

Something I think is relevant, I believe it was an early discussion with Ben Brode that a lot of the RNG had to be added to cards in hearthstone early in development because the game would be too deterministic with constant mana. I think comparing the mana systems in a vacuum is unfair, (though, trust me, feels bad to get screwed) you have to look at every mana screw as the trade off for a Rag missing 5 minions and going face for lethal. Having to mulligan for your colors is equivalent to hunters companion always rolling Huffer for your opponent unless leoch is more damage on a given board. You cast Yog and it kills itself with the first spell is the same thing as sitting there with a lethal spell in hand and not drawing the last land to cast it.

[@laurelkeeper]

And since Magic is mostly played in paper, other sorts of variance are much harder and less fun to implement.

[@Kei-ye8if]

I totally agree with you, but I also think the trade-off as not being the point The point is how it feels, and playing something and it whiffing feels infinitely better than the game just not letting you do it at all

[@urnow2986]

@@Kei-ye8if ohh absolutely, feel of an implementation is 10x more important than the reason for it. Just thought it should at least color the "why have they stuck with this" part of the video.

[@L_O_V_E_L_A_I_N]

@@Kei-ye8if I can buy that but I personally disagree. I tried out Hearthstone when it came out and I liked it well enough for a few expansions, but I've always come back to MTG for a reason.

[@kylekonop4801]

@@Kei-ye8if Exactly. Any card game is going to have times where your plan doesn't work out, but mandating one fail state in *every* deck that plays out as "I did nothing while my opponent used me as a punching bag" is like a fine-tuned maximally frustrating outcome.

[@2424Lars]

About the mulligans, there are several turn one win combos in Legacy and Vintage (Doomsday, Oops All Spells, Storm), which would become way too consistent with a Heartstone-style mulligan

[@JohnFromAccounting]

Doomsday mulligans extremely well. That's what makes it so powerful. Bazaar HAS to mulligan until they get the card, but Doomsday doesn't need to go tunnel vision.

[@Dhips.]

Him not having the context of older formats or EDH is a blindside in terms of lands and mulligans. Imagining telling the Lands player they can't play their deck anymore because Arena pissed off a bunch of players who only play 1v1 on the train going to and from work. I can't really speak for how best of 3 standard is since It's been over a decade since I played standard like that.

[@pro711200]

​@@Dhips.Legacy players have been dealing with this for years now so I don't see why edh players get to complain. Every few years wotc prints some stupid edh mechanic that ruins legacy like initiative or monarch. White plume adventurer got banned in legacy and Invalidated half the decks in the format because initiative can't be interacted with. Sticker goblin made paper legacy play a nightmare because the stickers mechanic was never tested for 1v1 play. So yes I think edh players deserve a taste of their own medicine.

[@Depian86]

Yeah but there is a bigger issue in all formats: because MtG uses lands to play your spells, imagine if you only had 1 free mulligan but you get all lands or no lands and you do your free mulligan and are still in the same situation without agency to get a playable hand, that would be atrocious. Hearthstone can get away with it because mana is not afffected by mulligans

[@another7674]

then just dont change that and have diff mulls for diff formats. no one plays legacy and vintage but all standard players have to be punished for it?

[@AmberStarlight]

Regarding MTGs land system: It's designed specifically for tabletop play, and the Hearthstone developers recognized this, which is why they created autoscaling Mana Crystals. I had a similar experience to Rarran. Transitioning from HS to MTG Arena, the game feels akward, especially playing lands. However when I finally came around to play MTG with friends at a table, everything clicked instantly.

[@notimportant768]

it can also be an interesting deck building consideration, there are also mechanics, some explored some not, that make that part of the deck building process a bit more interesting. it does not however, even remotely excuse the price of fetches, shocks and to a lesser extent fasts and slows because upgrading a deck's manabase without any mechanics included in said manabase feels like getting fresh underwear on christmas. it's nice, if you're older you aren't going to complain, might even be happy about it, but this one is a free spell, this one can be a land or a spell, this one can be a creature and this one can end a game. The pricier lands increase your win percentage a little. The most mechanic fetches and shocks normally get to is smoothing a deck out or being more life for death's shadow, if it gets that much higher, unless you count 4nath as higher, it's probably a deck that isn't meta and should just be more accessible anyway. frick chase rare lands and frick bad precon mana bases that's my issue.

[@AmberStarlight]

@@notimportant768 True. I think Wizards price politics is a whole other discussion. I would never spend more than 10 bucks for a land only to make my deck 0.1% more consistant. Thank god the commander format shines brightest when its casual

[@manchovieclemmons2380]

If you ever played the WoW card games, they had a really cool mana system. No lands, but you could set any card in your hand face-down to use as resources. So every card in your deck was also a land.

[@andrewwestfall65]

@@manchovieclemmons2380 Hell yeah brother, Duel Masters was great

[@jasonritner9662]

That is a *huge* difference. Playing only on Arena, and only playing Best of One is going to horrifically taint one's view of Magic, especially compared to a smooth online experience like Hearthstone.

[@dominicius77]

What people don't get about the MTG land system is that it IS a problem. But it is a FUN problem. It's a problem meant for the players to solve. Decks are made or broken by how they go about solving the land problem. Mono red goes about it by only having red cards and having a low curve so they don't need many lands to function. Big decks can rely on gree ramp to solve their land problem. Control decks can rely on card draw to make sure they hit their land drops. And various fetches, looting effects or painlands go about helping you solve the land problem in different ways, and the way you build your deck to solve the land problem is one thing that will define it more than any 4-of mythic you decide to play.

[@patrickmchugh4616]

In addition, lands serve other functions as cards in the game. They can be creatures, provide utility by drawing cards, they can be sacrificed to effects, they can be an entire strategy (Legacy Lands), they can be a win condition (Valakut). The downside of having the "land problem" in MTG is far outweighed by the sheer gameplay variety and deckbuilding creativity that comes from lands. If you consider lands as just boring "mana production" then of course it seems unfair to draw more lands than the opponent. This is actually more of a limited issue where utility and special rare lands are not seen or picked highly.

[@scorpninja3492]

Land flood and land screw are part of the game! I know it sucks but, it's part of the fun

[@DeadCrabPrime]

I disagree heavily that its a fun problem. Its a unfun problem they have never really tried to fix.

[@hugomendoza5665]

Hmm, kiiinda like how the 'difficulty' in games like elden ring is 'the point.' What is generally a treasured feature to the fans is complete and utter frustration to outsiders.

[@ZeroFate643]

There should be way more smoothing mechanics at common and uncommon. The land system is how Wizards milks the fanbase by scamming them on rares. The biggest indictment of the land mana system is that BO1 needs a hand smoother because there are too many non games.

[@Noneadidal]

8:06 I think Rarran either doesn't understand how powerful older formats are or how generous the Hearthstone mulligan is. Being able to sculpt your hand in the way HS allows in any older formats would ruin them immediately. Wild for example is a format where you die extremely early, and while a lot of that is due to the lack of interaction hearthstone has on your opponent's turn, the fact that you can curve into a win by turn 3 with 80% of hands after milligan doesn't help.

[@domotoro3552]

you see less cards with the hearthstone mulligan than the london, can you explain why you think it’s worse for eternal magic formats? going to 5 with the london shows you 21 cards already, with an option to settle on 6 that you would have declined to get there. meanwhile a hearthstonified mtg mull would only show you 14 MAX and you’d have to take a large risk to even see that many… I think the biggest issue would not be “making combo better” whatsoever but instead would be people not adjusting to it well and mulling away mana sources to find hate/their combo/whatever and not getting mana in their replacement hand.

[@caseheroes9835]

​@@domotoro3552I haven't really thought that much about which would be better/stronger, but there is more to it than pure number of cards seen. For instance, with the hearthstone mulligan if you have an A + B combo, you see A in your opening 7, then you can just keep A and send back the other 6 cards looking for B. In the London mulligan though, you have to put back the A if you want to go looking for a hand with B, which does point to the Hearthstone mulligan potentially being stronger for those types of combo decks.

[@fernandobanda5734]

​@@domotoro3552It doesn't matter how many cards you see in total, because you're not looking for one card that wins on its own. What matters is what cards you keep combined with the redraws.

[@seandun7083]

Yeah. You also need to consider that a 5 card hand with 2 lands is more powerful than a 7 card hand with 0.

[@channinbaxter5561]

You could also get more non games. 7 non-lands, throw back 4, draw 4 nonlands again and you can't mulligan again.

[@c_nrad]

rarran hates lands but also wishes he could play any hearthstone class cards in any other class and i haven't heard him acknowledge the tension in these two opinions

[@caseheroes9835]

Yeah, this is one of the best things about the lands system, is that you can theoretically put any two cards in the same deck as long as you can make the mana work for it. There's always tradeoffs with colors, utility lands, etc.

[@saiqasan4702]

Idk. if he is fine with out of class cards costing more that in class cards, then that would be about as stringent as having to draw two different types of land in any multicolor mtg deck.

[@HighLanderPonyYT]

Yugioh

[@stunnfisk1276]

@@HighLanderPonyYTI didn’t even think of the color system in relation to lands, I think lands have proven to be a very interesting space of the game that just demands a few tears every now and then for the screwed and flooded games

[@imaforceanature7297]

⁠@@stunnfisk1276a few? Bro imagine if you put wild growth in your deck and wild growth was 18 cards in your deck. If you draw it all, you lose. If you don’t, you lose. And wild growth is a dogshit card to have if ur mana is capped but at least then you can throw it away and draw a card in its stead. It’s so strange that you defend this system tbh.

[@argentbast]

In defense of both resource systems, I think MtG’s system is good for the open-ended nature of MtG. One of the reasons (it seems) that Hearthstone can benefit from the passive mana system is that card selection is much more fixed. As Rarran said, you could watch what a hero is and know - generally - what the win conditions are going to be. Magic though does away with that restriction and make any composition of cards viable. This opens up a lot more possibilities but it also needs a way to rein this in to keep from devolving into “play the best combinations regardless of archetypes.” This creates one of the game’s core systems which is how to account for and adjust to the resource system. It also helps to know that your opponents have to work with these same conditions and variability.

[@travisdavis7290]

Important to note I think about lands, is this is Magic’s “class” system. Deck building will always be more interesting in magic than other card games, because you can always open up your deck to other tools, at the risk of consistency. Magic would suck if it had passive mana gain and anybody could play any card, in my opinion. I hate going flooded, I hate getting screwed, but I would never trade it away for a class system.

[@Ariovisti]

Coming from outside Magic, this observation about deck building really made lands click for me. I can't see any way to get the same soft cap on multi-color decks, allowing you to trade consistency for a broader range. Given that Rarran is a staunch advocate for allowing dual classing in HS - where it would be difficult to impose a real cost for it - it would probably have made sense to him if CGB went with the "USP" proposition for lands as opposed to going for the "battered housewife" approach.

[@SDREHXC]

This is the real answer to the why does magic have a mana system question I think. The implications it has on deck building with consistency and colour choice seem to be the main defining factor of the system. And with rotation they also have a solid level of control over what types of lands they want people to have access to as well.

[@HonorTheHunter]

Obviously lands are way too important in MTG to ever remove, but I wonder what an "MTG 2.0" would play like if it looked something like: - 40 card decks, no lands. - At the beginning of each player's upkeep, they may take a card of their choice from their 20 card "land deck" (basic lands only?) and put it into play. Not sure if I'd allow non-basic lands -- maybe simple ones like duals that come in tapped, but obviously in current MTG being able to put *any* land into play every turn would be degenerate. - Ramp cards would pull cards from the land deck and put them onto the battlefield. This system might still make it too attractive to play a lot of colors, though. Not sure. If you only allowed basics, it'd take 5 turns to have 1 pip of each color. Maybe if cards were rebalanced to have more with more than a single colored mana pip? Like rather than the average card only having one non-generic pip, the average were two?

[@matikkkii3482]

From gameplay perspective, lands suck. From deckcrafting, it's probably the most fun system. Going for one color, two? Or maybe just one color with a splash? How many lands, which lands exactly? So much fun decision making, just to draw 5 lands straight in a game and lose :D

[@fernandobanda5734]

​@@Ariovisti A few ways other games have tried this: • In games that use any card as resource, the color of the resource limits other cards you play. So you still get some of that inconsistency when playing too many colors or splashing. • In games that have "leaders" (something particular outside of your deck), a dual-color leader might be weaker or have a downside compared to a mono-color one. In HS, for example, you could make a Paladin-Hunter that could use cards from both classes, but with a Hero Power that's significantly worse than the Paladin's or the Hunter's, or have it start with less life. • In games whose resources aren't lands, you can still rely on soft synergy or hard limitations to encourage monocolored decks or decks with fewer colors. In Weiss Schwarz, you can't play characters that aren't level 0 unless you have a card of the same color in your damage area. In Battle Spirits, every card has a cost reduction based on how many cards of that color you already have on the field. So you *can* play multicolor, it just has a significant downside integrated into the base rules. • In Force of Will, where you have a dedicated resource deck, you still have inconsistency, but it's about color screw, not general screw/flood.

[@Wojtek36762]

Rarran is making several great arguments for playing best of 3, where mono red is a lot less dominant and the hand smoothing doesn’t give mono color aggro a leg up.

[@erics5975]

I think Rarran would appreciate the land system in the game if he actually did any deckbuilding. The trade offs in building a consistent mono colored deck that clearly has some gaps due to it's singular color identity vs something like a 3 color deck that has a crazy combo, or has an answer for everything, but has a less consistent mana base, is the fun of the deckbuilding. I don't blame him for just googling the best decks, since his challenge was time based, but the fact that you can make a deck with any cards you want is great for magic. In hearthstone, if I want to make a deck, 80% of the cards in the card pool are literally unplayable due to the class system.

[@davidb4935]

I think part of the appeal (and trouble) is that arena makes it so easy to never build anything

[@tuubi2783]

@@davidb4935 the unfair economy of arena is actually to blame for very few people brewing anything, the daily win system incentivizes you to win as fast as possible and the wildcard system is absolutely atrocious for brewing decks since the average person hardly has enough wildcards to craft a single deck even though "I do very well" for myself as a 60%+ winrate drafter in every set these are absolutely massive issues for any casual players as I've witnessed from my irl friends

[@nuhrii3449]

theres another game, its a little game called keyforged made by richard garfield. one of the KEY features is that you dont make a deck, you buy a predetermined deck, you cannot net deck, but each deck is made of three houses, which is like classes in hearthstone or colors in magic, and you dont have a mana resource because your objective is not to reduce your opponents hp to 0, there is no hp, your objective is to collect 6 embers to forge a key, three keys to win and you can only forge one key per start of your turn. as such at start of your turn, you declare a one of the three houses that make up your deck, you can play or discard ANY AMOUNT of cards of that house and you draw TO 6 cards. its much more puzzle game than combat because, yes combat is important, thats not going to win you the game for certain decks, a lot of decks just want to generate embers quickly not by combat.

[@jameswinslow8540]

Dude no builds their own decks on arena what are you smoking.

[@Addeand]

@@jameswinslow8540 maybe not for laddering, but you should definitely build your own deck before ragging on any card game.

[@mckaymusicTV]

I like this CGB x Rarran saga. You guys should try playing One Piece TCG or Flesh & Blood together for a video

[@Siuriki]

I'd love them to discover a whole TCG together. Be it good or bad.

[@Jimneban]

MajinBaeLoR would be a spectacular teacher for Flesh and Blood.

[@medoh368]

I think they should get married and have two beautiful children

[@Somane27]

Or Sorcery TCG!

[@Coreagrus]

My vote is for Fearia. I especially want them to play it now, with the land discussion, because I like how Fearia handles lands and mana, with a tactical, hex-grid board.

[@cyfrostan]

I'm kinda stunned that at no point CGB attempts to actually defend the land system, instead doing the boomer thing of "life isn't fair" "it toughens you up etc" 😂. What the land system allows for is to have a "class" system in which you can freely mix classes. Cause in TCGs with Passive Mana you can't really do that (at least not without introducing other deck building constraints). Magic instead allows you flexibility at the cost of consistency.

[@cyfrostan]

PS Duel Masters has a similar thing to Lorcana, to where you can basically play all your cards as either a land or a spell/monster. It's a bit oversimplified in other ways, but that change to Magic's system is good and preserves most of what's good about the land system while also cutting down on the frustration.

[@richardmenz3257]

That is a good way to put it. Also you mana doing a lot of other things like turning to creatures, making creatures, and so forth is cool. Lastly, because of land flooding / mana screwing I have a worst win/loss ratio against my friends than any other TCG. I happen to be the best player in my friend group and anytime we play any other card game that fixes the mana system they don't want to play it anymore because they cannot win. So it make casual players able to actually win matches so they keep playing because when the casual leaves the card game dies.

[@TURB026]

Absolutely this. It also adds a lot of depth in deck diversity beyond just red deck vs green deck. Multi-color decks are less consistent but have a higher average power level per card (picking the best cards per color, and access to multi-color cards). Decks run different land counts, so aggro decks can run fewer lands for more consistent spell draws, compared to a high land count control deck that will draw more lands, balancing out their better, more expensive spells (and often lots of card draw, they can see more cards, while potentially seeing the same amount or fewer actual spells).

[@paddyspub7225]

Love rarran, but it takes a special person to understand the beauty of never drawing your 4th land

[@mufasafalldown8401]

A "special" person indeed.

[@JonaxII]

The obvious solution is to not play cards that cost more than three.

[@dracosfire7247]

Winning with a midrange deck with only two lands is a rush I’ve never replicated in another card game

[@RobTunes]

Red players. You’re talking about red players 😂

[@trazocw]

The mana “problem” is the cost of absolute freedom in deck building. That includes the freedom to make bad or poorly-informed decisions. Every other card game mentioned has placed limitations on deck building in order to “solve” mana-except the Pokémon TCG.

[@yargolocus4853]

Agreed. You get 1 mana per turn on HS, but you can manipulate them further with classic ramp and some destruction and sacrifice. Magic makes mana crystals into cards, which allows for more complicated (though not necessarily better) system.

[@Coyote1911]

I like the way sorcery handles lands. You can draw from your library or draw from your lands.

[@drews8900]

Meanwhile, yugioh players all gas no breaks with all the problems... we have an ftk deck in the format right now, and it's like tier 2 at best. Mind you a 1 card ftk in 40 card decks where you can play 3 of them. And it's still bad.

[@The_Tornadoboy]

⁠@@drews8900that’s because MTG and hearthstone don’t have interaction like handtraps native to their typical gameplay. Being able to do something nutty but the path fragile means you’re never going to be able to compete at the top. Especially when you deckbuild without the generous unbricking option of a mulligan. Gimmick puppet can’t live through almost any of the very prevalent non-engine interruptions that all meta decks can (and do) run

[@stanislav328]

Wel the pokemon TCG also has ''mana'' in the form of their energy cards. They're not quite the same obviously, but you are very much limited in what pokemon you can play by having to support their attacks with energy cards.

[@AlphaetusPrime]

The land system makes deckbuilding way more interesting, at the cost of making actual gameplay more frustrating. Great for limited, great for people who like coming up with and refining their own constructed decks. Bad for people who just want to copy a meta list and play games.

[@lyra_tcm1953]

also not talked about is the utility that lands also have, mana crsystals can't become a minion to attack with or turn a token into draw, increase hand size, be a spell on the backside anyway or any other number of useful effects when not needed for mana

[@dragonzd97]

@@lyra_tcm1953 actually there is literally a spell to convert mana crystals into minions that turn back into mana crystals when they die.

[@Ynwell_theslaaneshi]

⁠​⁠@@dragonzd97yeah, living mana exists, but not only is it a bad card, it’s also not the same as mutavault, shifting woodlands, or thespian stage to name a few, which you can still tap for their original mana. Also they bring an empty mana crystal back, making them worthless unless your opponent kills them for some reason.

[@nickfuess7310]

agreed Magic is for brewers at its core.

[@RedWurm]

I would add the caveat that, in my experience, a lot of these interesting deckbuilding decisions are "do I want to spend an unconscionable amount of money/wildcards for a slightly more reliable resource base?" Like, just copying a meta list means adding 12+ rares and mythics because *that's how those lists mitigate the issues with lands*.

[@grit1]

The powerhouse duo of the react thumbnails back for another round

[@cdViking]

Really appreciated the perspective. FWIW, I see the biggest draws of the land system being the sheer variety to how games end up playing out + the way the game ramps up. Having played Hearthstone pretty hard for a few years I get how having 20% of game outcomes driven by mana issues can gnaw, but I also think that mono red (especially this iteration) in Arena Bo1 exacerbates the feel bad of an even slightly stalled mana base.

[@Nastyn1nja808]

the Rush of drawing the Land yiu need vs the Crushing feeling if defeat when yiu get the land you need lol added to getting cards you actually need lll

[@Barnif85]

Bro I'm also very new, started 2weeks ago. The hand smoothing algorythm makes so much sense. I wondered why I never was dealt a hand with 0 Mana cards. I also got 10 years of Hearthstone under my belt. Having A LOT of fun with MTG Arena! Edit: And even in this short time, I can tell, CGB is going gods work, helping us demolish mono red!!1 :D

[@MrGhostTheBigRoast]

good to know youre having fun. and i welcome the challenge - a mono red gamer

[@chasm9557]

Good to hear you're enjoying it, but trust me when I say that if you play enough you'll end up seeing hands with your 6 most expensive cards and 1 land, or 6 lands and a 1 mana removal spell.

[@jameswinslow8540]

It doesn't it's fake magic you can run decks with low lands and get good hands. MTG is a pretty crap product right now.

[@HighLanderPonyYT]

Find a better digital card game. There are plenty. MtGA sucks.

[@TheEvolver311]

Learn to draft to build your collection I haven't spent a dollar on MTGA in over a year and I have 3-4 of every card on the client. If you can average 4/5-3 records you will have each new set rather quickly and you will have a healthy stock pile of wildcards for the stuff you can't wait a week or 2 to obtain in the draft

[@Kilawpilath]

1:17 "Wtf is Mono red" Yes!!

[@sovietgreen9328]

I couldn't stop laughing!!

[@chasm9557]

It's what assholes like me play to farm the daily wins before screwing off to play random trash in Brawl that makes me happy.

[@christiangudmundsson8390]

I played magic a little bit back in like 95. And then a teacher (I took a course in cisco networking) convinced me to get back into it. He mentioned how he'd been grinding for far too long to reach mythic on arena. I looked around at decks and decided that monored would be the cheapest to get a competitive deck, so I got one and reached mythic in about a week (could obviously have gone faster but I didn't play that many games every day). I thought I was so good. I mentioned my achievement to my teacher and he didn't congratulate me or anything. Now I can understand why.

[@iamacharliest]

Better to lose to a mono red deck in 2 minutes than never resolve any cards against blue white for 30 minutes and lose anyway 💀

[@nekrataali]

Sligh is one of the most misunderstood decks in Magic. It's linear. It just plays things and turns them sideways. It's dirt cheap. You can build a Tier 1 mono-red burn deck in Legacy for less than $200 and you will completely dumpster $3,000 decks. The thing is you don't make a lot of decisions when playing Sligh, but the ones you do make are some of the hardest decisions in the game. The difference between a 5 life opponent and a 7 life opponent is huge. You have to always be aware of how combat can play out so that you're ahead of your opponent's aggro. Casting Lightning Bolt can lead to catastrophe if your opponent responds with Blue Elemental Blast or Misdirection.

[@dropbridge]

I think that the biggest point missing from the discussion here is that MTG is primarily a deckbuilder's game and HS is a grinder's game. Now both games have aspects of those things, but it's about what retains players for years. HS is designed for the moment-to-moment experience to be maximum fun, with all the slot machine aspects, unexpected twists, unpredictability, flashy animations, etc. It makes even the ladder grind somewhat dopamine-engaging and smooth. But having played HS for some years, it's not really a deckbuilder's paradise. You can brew, sure, but it has about 20 times less depth and possibility that MTG has (especially if you count all the formats in Magic). God knows I tried hard back when I played HS to brew stuff, but it always felt incredibly shallow after having experienced MTG in that regard. So I mostly played HS Arena (draft). MTG, on the other hand, not being a modern online ladder grind game, was never designed (and never will be) to be a smooth, dopamine-inducing optimized moment-to-moment fireworks display with no bumps to your enjoyment/frustration. If you come to MTG seeking specifically that, you're bound to be disappointed. It's like going to watch Dune, expecting it to be a light-hearted Marvel movie with jokes and bright colors. Lots of MTG players on the other hand are brewers. They come back and revisit the game trying to brew decks due to the deeply engaging nature of the vast card pool, myriad of comobs, tribal synergies, jank engines, even degenerate cutthroat turn 1-2 wins in older formats. And the land system enables that and also somewhat keeps it in check without the games devolving into pure uncontrolled degeneracy (yes, even in stuff like Vintage). And it's exactly why all the suggestions that people have (HS mulligans, landcycling on all lands, etc.) wouldn't work on MTG without making it a shallower game. Freedom and convenience are inverse to each other in game design. The more freedom you have, the less convenience is possible. MTG is a high-freedom, low-convenience game. For better or worse. Whether you love or hate that is up to you. But you can't have your cake and eat it too, especially in a 30-year old CCG that is so deeply and richly established that it has spawned its own "school" of game design. HS, on the other hand, is a low-freedom, high-convenience (momentary smoothness/enjoyment) game. Hence the class restrictions, no instants, less card types, simpler designs, etc. It's not bad, but it's just another type of game for a different audience. MTG and HS are catering to different things. MTG (in many ways, though not all) is a more cerebral and creative game specifically in the deckbuilding phase. With countless ways to tinker, optimize, research, explore, and express yourself. Watch Luis Vargas draft Vintage cube and see how much thought goes into the land picks to ensure he can enable the powerful combos from 3 to 5 colors, or to ensure an optimally smooth midrange-aggro build. Look at how many variants of storm decks, elf decks, mill decks, and so on are possible in Commander. And that's just scratching the surface. In a way, Magic is more polarizing in terms of the 'fun experience' aspect. It's higher punishment, higher reward. Sharper "gameplay lows" but much higher creativity. Therefore, I think Raran has a very skewed perspective of what MTG is. He came in with a HS mindset, which is a primarily ladder grind mindset and went into BO1 ladder Arena, which is absolutely NOT representative of the nature of the game. You could say he actually came into the worst environment possible for a new player to understand the sustained and long-term draw of Magic. BO1 Arena is the toxic family member at the Thanksgiving dinner of MTG formats. While in reality, the grassroots growth of MTG was always from kitchen table jank games, FNM brews, pre-release draft, and Commander creative builds. I've quit and come back to MTG many times over the years, like a vast % of MTG players. And what's always had me coming back was sitting down with my collection, my Arena collection or a new limited format, and puzzle-solving that, learning, growing, finding better brews, etc. A huge % of MTG player are deckbuilders and brewers at heart. It's probably the most rich and strong deckbuilder community of any card game. It's a community of puzzle solvers, meta-breakers, jank builders, etc. It's why Commander is so popular. It's a brewers' paradise. And no card game even comes close to the possibilities MTG offers for that. And it wouldn't be possible without the land system both keeping that in check and also enabling the open-ended nature of the game. It's also partially why draft is such a popular and long-lived format in MTG, since it incorporates these deck-building challenges in real time, with stakes and a dash of dopamine randomness. It's, once again, a puzzle solving challenge (come to think of it, even sideboarding is puzzle solving). While in HS the Arena format is somewhat fringe (especially after Krip and Trump quit it). It's just not what HS is about, not what the average player looks for, and not what the devs support. I actually remember watching a lot of HS Arena content back in the day, and my MTG brewer brain always loved the drafting part the most, with my interest always dropping once the actual games started. There's just something about deckbuilding, choices and pre-game strategy that deeply speaks to you after 20+ years of playing MTG. So, I feel like this discussion didn't really address the core nature of MTG at all, mostly focusing on the much less important aspects. Apart from slightly touching on monored on Arena being a product of the online grind that's not representative of "true" MTG and its strengths, but rather a bastard child of the modern online ladder gaming era. So, you can't base your view of the land system solely on the miserable experience of an online BO1, which (at best) represents like 10% of what MTG is about and why it's been so beloved and engaging for 30 years. Does getting flooded/screwed in BO1 Arena suck? Absolutely. It sucks even in BO3. Should you judge the overall MTG land system based on that experience? Absolutely not.

[@indigo1296]

The land system is definitely something that gets more palatable once you actually start building decks of your own. I hope Rarran actually goes to the upcoming Duskmourn prerelease or some other in-person deckbuilding event to experience it himself . I used to be an avid land hater, and actually ended up getting into MTG because I was trying to prove my friend wrong, and show that lands is an awful system for a card game. The give/take of running fewer lands for more gas to draw into, or more lands to cast bigger spells, while increasing your likelihood of flooding/getting screwed is such a fun extra dimension to deckbuilding. Experiencing the consequences of your land count directly in gameplay is a great motivating factor for continuing to hone your deckbuilding skills.

[@Kevmoeman]

I was watching one of my mtg pro tour playing friend draft vintage cube on MTGO, and watching them decide when to pick powerful lands over even more powerful cards showed me that there huge skill expression when deciding what mana sources to put in your deck. If you are just given a deck you would probably not understand the amount of knowledge you need to predict what lands youll need and how important this skill is

[@seandun7083]

Yeah. It's especially important in cube since you can't just slot in 4 of every good dual. Number of colors and the requirements for certain utility lands (Field of the Dead, Mystic Sanctuary, and Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle all come to mind) can all make deck building interesting as well.

[@Gorbgorbenson]

Standard is also not nearly as skill intensive as any other format since you're limited to whatever rare duals are in at the time compared to the best lands of a given time period.

[@killpioo2]

its such a satisfying skill to learn. IT took me a few hundred hours of watching lsv and a few hundred drafts but its so damned satisfying when a multicolor pile comes together in draft

[@Donmegamuffin]

1:16 "Wtf is mono red" had me in creases hahahahahah

[@DerekS-kq3zh]

One thing CGB didn't really touch on is that a properly built deck actively works against mana flooding/droughts. You need draw, fetching, filtering, and all of the cards devoted to that mean that you can't make your death ray as consistent.

[@logaf94]

I don't think he was trying to debate rarran too much and instead was focusing on letting him give his opinions as is

[@DerekS-kq3zh]

@@logaf94 That's fair. It doesn't really have to be a debate though. Rarran is perfectly correct to not like Magic's mana system, but it would also be valuable for him to understand how Magic players counteract it. It might shift his perspective on why people like it

[@ghandiwon]

​@@DerekS-kq3zhi think if CGB sat down and buily a couple decks with him it would help him understand the power. My impression is that Rarran was given premade decks and more importantly only a couple of them. Monoblue tempo, white weenie and azorious control can *only* exist in a system like the land system. And you *see* that once you start picking cards and looking at the tradeoffs of more lands, more colors and higher curves.

[@nekrataali]

Yup mana screw/flood is a feature, not a bug. MtG exists on a spectrum where you can ignore either flood or screw, but not both. It also allows you to attack your opponent's resources or make decks that don't use mana at all. Magic is at its best in Vintage and Legacy, either Constructed or Cube. The decks in those formats make it clear to anyone who plays them why Magic's mana system is still in place.

[@TimMachineQS]

I think the land system can be extemely frustrating at times, as Rarran explained, but it also opens up a ton of strategy surrounding it that other games will never have, which I think is cool.

[@forbidden.404]

The hand smoothing is also beneficial to mono red players not only because it might screw your multi-colored deck opening hand, but they can keep their land count really low, because most of the time they are able to win turn 3 with 2 or 3 lands at most

[@tinfoilslacks3750]

The land system has numerous massive upsides -mana is a gamepiece you can interact with on the board, like animating lands, untapping them, making them indestructible etc -lands directly facilitate magic's colour mixing and the colour pie, giving you massive deck building freedom while still having meaningful soft restrictions -Wizards has leaned into lands existing to create interesting non-basic lands as game pieces With all of that said, *even a perfectly built deck with the objectively optimal number of lands can get flooded or screwed, resulting in a non-game.* For plenty of people, this is a single issue deal breaker despite all of the aforementioned upsides and justifiably so. But I play fucking LoR, where we can bank unspent mana for future turns in case of bricking or just as an intentional play, so my opinion on resource systems is pretty warped. Edit: oh shit! One other super important part of lands I forgot to mention is its effect on card economy. In passive mana games like HS and LoR a "normal" turn is card neutral, you draw for turn, go up a mana, and play a card. In MtG a "normal" turn is card negative. You draw for turn, play a land, play a spell, going minus 1. This means even just playing normally exhausts your resources. Which facilitates a gameplay dynamic where in the early game mana is scarce and cards are plentiful and then late game cards are scarce and mana is plentiful.

[@empiresteve9]

Your second paragraph is dead on. I gave the game as fair a shot as I could over the course of a year, year and a half or so and I refuse to spend another game bricking every draw and literally being unable to play a card. There is nothing MTG or the community can say to convince me it’s worth that experience, especially not so consistently

[@austinturgoose]

I think the land criticism from non-MTG players is kind of funny. I've played multiple card games and the land system is my actual favorite part of magic. It leads to so many nuances in deck building and gameplay that I haven't really seen in other card games. Haven't played hearthstone to be fair

[@hugomendoza5665]

I have also played multiple card games and the land system is still my most hated part of Magic. Everyone's different. There's no 'right' answer to that, or any 'best' way to do a card game. I've played runeterra, hearthstone, magic, yugioh, and a few others.

[@austinturgoose]

@@hugomendoza5665 I can agree with that. People can definitely have their preferences on game mechanics. I just wanted to put out some of the things I value about lands in Magic, since CGB mostly went for the joking "Life's tough" angle.

[@Flawi]

Yup. Removing the land system simply dumbs down the deckbuilding. Magic is a worse game with a deterministic mana system, hands down. In paper magic you can even agree to shuffle so that every 3rd card is a land in a 20/40 deck, and while that might feel more "fair" to a newbie, the faults become very obvious very fast to anyone with a bit of experience.

[@YeahSureLetsGoSeeYamcha]

Land is one of those ideas thats good in theory, but MTG execution is just poorly implemented. They could try something like Instead of a full mulligan, you should be allowed to replace one random card your opponent chooses with one basic land from your deck to fix the hands with no lands. Regular mulligan in theory should fix most flooded hands.

[@actuallyKriminell]

Yeah. I think its a bit of a dunning kruger situation. To have them be distict physical cards in your deck opens up the most ways to interact with them. So many in fact that people can adjust to their individual play style in commander (without that being arbitrary)

[@BarnettBlazer]

Just wanted to comment and let you know that the rarran collaboration videos have been SOOOOO entertaining! I watch daily and these are some of my favorite videos you've produced. Keep up the good work CGB!

[@theelectricant98]

Vouch

[@DT-ld5lx]

I'll agree 209% that mtg is too expensive, there's too many people in the community that are too comfortable paying silly amounts of money on pieces of cardboard. But lands being a bad system is awkward to talk about because in the context of digital gaming it's really clunky. But as a physical card game, there's so many games I've seen that have tried to "solve" the problem just failing because lands are the baseline level simplicity and almost anything you do to change the system makes things a faff in comparison.

[@turkew2]

A defense of lands from a (not very good) mtg player: First of all; yes I have Stockholm syndrome and I am just used to lands at this point. Second of all; yes flooding out or getting mana screwed (I prefer the term landlocked) really sucks and is probably the worst experience in the game. The color aspect of MTG makes it difficult to cleanly compare it to other games with more passive mana systems like Hearthstone. For example Lightning Helix is a strictly better card than Lightning Strike despite them both being 2 mana; but the fact that you need 2 colors of mana for Lightning Helix as opposed to the 1 for Lightning Strike makes them both uniquely playable. That's just to say that the color of mana, and therefore lands, are a much more fundamental part of the balance of the game than I think Rarran realizes. IMO the most compelling argument for lands is the existence of non-basic lands. Even just the lands that tap for multiple colors with certain conditions change the game so much. Getting an opening hand with a Caves of Koilos (take 1 damage for black/white) versus Concealed Courtyard (enters tapped unless you have 2 or fewer lands (black/white)), with all other cards in your hand the same, could change everything! You may mulligan differently or go for different plays early in the game despite your mana base being basically the same. Utility lands take this to a whole another level. Being able to turn a land into a creature, or use a land to make tokens, or buff your creatures, or draw cards, or the other million things you can do with utility lands are a uniquely interesting part of MTG. To my knowledge no other card game has added as much alternative functionality to their mana system as Magic. TL'DR: Lands can be frustrating, but the fact that colors are such an important balancing factor of the game and the fact that non-basic lands add a unique depth to MTG makes them a net positive part of the game in my opinion.

[@DaybreakKingTrue]

Counterpoint to Rarran the class system in hearthstone is so limiting that it makes deckbuilding a joke. EDIT: also hearing a hearthstone player complain about randomness is wild so many cards are like here have this random card from a pool of over 100.

[@Dhips.]

Card games are random. If someone wants to play a game of pure skill they can play chess.

[@rickmel09]

mtg players spend a thousand hours and five billion dollars carefully tuning a deck, only to get completely dumpstered by a nadu combo :)

[@DaybreakKingTrue]

@@Dhips. Yeah it is just really weird that a guy who plays a game with so many cards that say random on them complaining about it.

[@Dhips.]

@@DaybreakKingTrue they don't think it be like it is but it do

[@ghandiwon]

​@@DaybreakKingTrueto steelman rarran, at least with random card effects, at least you get to *play* the card. Its a subtle difference, but can be meaningful. Especially because you can often make decisions before or after the effect. When you're screwed/flooded, it's like falling behind in Catan. You just do *nothing*. Its a very different kind of feelsbad.

[@oelboy]

33:52 slight correction: Pokémon TCG packs come with a code which can be redeemed for a digital pack of the same kind. But the contents of the digital pack are random and not linked to the real pack.

[@laytonjr6601]

Isn't that how Magic works? When I went to a bloonsburrough prerelease my box included a code that I redeemed on Arena for 6 boosters, same for the pack that I got from playing commander at my LGS

[@MrMarnel]

@@laytonjr6601 For Arena those are the exception, not the rule. Only specific things like Prerelease kits and promo packs come with codes. In Pokemon it's everything.

[@DayOfCasual]

@@laytonjr6601 yeah but that's all, that code is 1 time use only no matter how many you get and digital Magic Arena packs are half the size of normal paper magic packs.

[@randompecans]

@@laytonjr6601 Afaik, prerelease packs and promo packs come with an Arena code, along with certain constructed products like starter decks, but most other products don't.

[@brycemiller831]

As someone who has tried a LOT of card games, magic has never been my favorite specifically because I dislike land. That said, I believe it is still fun and carried by having 30 years of interesting card design. The cards do so many different and cool things, because WOTC has explored so many interactions cards can have. I only play for fun commander though, because lands in a competitive format would drive me nuts. Currently playing Digimon TCG and learning FAB

[@eckology016]

With respect to the cost of Arena, it's designed around the idea that you'll play Limited (Draft) sometimes, and that's a huge way to reduce the cost. You don't even need to get great at limited, just good, and it gives you a ton more resources without spending money. I've never spent a cent on Arena and have multiple full standard decks, 80k gold and 14k gems because of dailies and feeding those dailies into Limited. It's not like Hearthstone, you not only get the packs you win in the draft, you also keep every card that you drafted which can really add up.

[@HeWhoHungers]

I agree, from a casual player's perspective, Arena's system is infinitesimally better than Hearthstone's, as long as you're willing to experiment with deckbuilding and playing draft. I don't even think you have to be good at draft to build up your collection with it. Even going 0-3 you're still getting more cards from a quick draft than from buying packs with the same gold. After about a year of playing Arena around the time Guilds of Ravnica was added I've gotten into the position where I can build any deck I want, play draft whenever I want, play a couple sealed runs at the start of every new set if I want, I've never had to play a deck I didn't like, and I haven't spent a penny. And that's still the case today, with the only difference being my backlog of gold has only grown. I've never been in that position in Hearthstone, and, now that I've taken some breaks from it over the years, I never will be. And if my excellent f2p experience has to be subsidized by whales whose only approach to solving a problem is throwing money at it? Let them put up that money, Wizard rakes it in, and I get to continue to mess around with cards I don't own for free.

[@sallomon2357]

Yeah, I've been hearing a lot of complaints about how Arena's economy is fucked and thinking "have we been playing the same game?". It does take some time to get there, I admit, but at this point every set I can easily afford Set Mastery with ~10,000 gems to spare and at least 10 Premier Drafts, even while going 3-3 on average. And while I admit I only play (Historic) Brawl out of the Constructed formats, which does make collecting stuff easier, I also very easily get bored with decks, which means every week I build something new, and NEVER have any issues with having the cards I need.

[@SoldierTrax]

Oh man, lands are definitely a very nuanced topic, one which people in the comments have already given many examples of why they can be a net positive for the game, but i also wanna bring some generally less talked about points about them to the forefront: -Lands allow for there to be a higher amount of card draw and filtering in the game, since not everything you're going to draw is gas. -Lands constrain deckbuilding in different ways so that the player has to find ways to find consistency within the system, with multiple ways of interacting with them or using less consistent lands to gain access to more power (adding colors). -Further expanding on the previous point, lands heavily dictate the mana curve a deck can pursue and one must value the mana cost of a card as more than just "what turn can i play this on", which defines a LOT of what makes magic gameplay so unique. -Lands being cards allows for them to be more than JUST resources, with plenty of utility lands seeing play in standard and beyond In the end while the extra variance from lands can be extremely frustrating, they're also an extremely integral part to why magic plays the way it does, so i've come around from agreeing with rarran's point of view when i started playing to straight up being apprehensive to even criticise it in the slightest after several years playing. Every other system that has ever tried to "fix" lands in other games has felt either straight up worse or has defined the game to play in very specific ways far from what magic has to offer, so at this point, even with its drawbacks, i'll defend lands with tooth and nail, especially with all the work that has happened since the game's inception to make lands more interesting game pieces in general and to interact with more and more game pieces beyond just being mana to cast spells.

[@Russian_engineer_bmstu]

Yep You don't have to look far, lands existing directly created some of the popular strategies like amulet titan, scape shift, field of the dead decks from standard some years prior, control decks with mill lands as wincon, even manaless dredge is, shockingly, real because there are lands. Yes, while land system is something you have to think about, it is also something you get to think about, and if we don't account for monetary price, it's a good thing

[@ubermenschen01]

Mana screw/flood can be annoying, but the Bo1 Arena format seems tailor-made to make it as painful as possible.

[@MTG_Scribe]

I love the land system, but I think it's the kind of thing you only really start to appreciate the brilliance of when you get deep into deckbuilding. I'd go so far as to say that if the land system wasn't a part of Magic, it would never have survived the last 30 years.

[@jamaldavis2480]

I think it is crazy how much the Pokemon TCG is brought up when it comes to how they design things. Like the free pack code, and the rarities that allow for cards to be both affordable and expensive and the choice is whether you want to bling out your deck or not.

[@ToodleDoodle]

PTCG is honestly the most accessible in terms of being able to play competitive in both digital and paper. PTCG Live gives really good decks for free and usually they are "nerfed" versions of actual tier 0-1 decks. Paper they sell nearly complete tier 0-1 decks as precons for reasonable prices (not that the actual competitive decks cost that much to begin with). The only shortcoming I can think of right now is the current digital client is the worst of the big three on a technical level.

[@Chewy-Pudding]

I think Pokemon TCG just can't get away with treating its audience of players poorly the way other TCGs have gotten used to. Most people who buy packs of Pokemon cards never actually touch the game, so I feel like they gotta give every incentive they can to actually get their consumers to actually play.

[@rickmel09]

sadly, the pokemon TCG sucks and the digital client is even worse

[@Unelar]

tbf mana system gets more fair the older format you get. Is way more difficult to get screwed or flooded in Legacy or Vintage than standard. Not having fetchlands, mana acceleration, card draw and free spells hurts a lot in Standard

[@cynthia-op8rx]

the lack of any kind of digital codes in magic packs has genuinely been a barrier to mtg becoming my main card game that I really invest into. i don't have a ton of people in my area to play with, and I really like playing arena on my phone. not having codes of any kind puts me in this awkward situation where I want to invest in physical magic for the joy of playing irl, but I also want to invest in arena because it's so convenient and I can play as much as I want. but there's just no way I can justify the cost of doing both, and I don't want to split my money between the two so mtg just kinda stays as this thing I very occasionally spend a little bit of money on but never fully buy in. I don't even necessarily think it would need to be one-to-one, I can see a lot of potential issues with that. but if I could just get like... literally anything at all in arena for the packs I buy irl it would make me feel so much better about buying these cards that I know I'm not gonna get to play with super regularly.

[@seandun7083]

Yeah. You do get codes from pre release, but it would be great to have some in packs.

[@cynthia-op8rx]

@@seandun7083 yeah especially for new players when you don't have a play group yet 99% of your games are gonna be played on arena. so it just feels bad to spend money on cards and get absolutely nothing for the version you're actually confident you'll get to play reliably

[@pupsinsbarks]

Lorcana's inking system is like if every land in Magic was an MDFC. I think it's good Magic is exploring that design space and I hope they keep making playable MDFC spell/land cards, they make a huge difference

[@channinbaxter5561]

With the Hearthstone Mulligan you could also get more non games. Say your first draw is 7 non-lands, throw back 4 keeping your best, then draw 4 nonlands again and you can't mulligan again.

[@seandun7083]

Yeah. A 5 card hand with 2 lands is better than a 7 card hand with 0.

[@Red_Mag3]

Lorcana has the best mulligan rule I've ever seen. Put as many as you want on the bottom, draw that many, then shuffle. You get this one time per game.

[@creepykoala7255]

That's literally Hearthstone

[@dagonhydra]

It's very amusing to me that Rarran gushes about the Lorcana resource system, as it evolved from the Wildstorms TCG. It went Wildstorms (Image comics) > Vs (Marvel and DC) > World of Warcraft TCG > Lorcana. So someone whose main game is Hearthstone liking a system that is an iteration on the WoW TCG is funny kismet. Having played over 100 different card games, here's my take on the ultimate resource system: there isn't one. The resource system should match the game that's made. Hearthstone's automatic crystals matches what they wanted to do, and does help to simplify things like deckbuilding and matchups. Part of why lands work for Magic is that the game was originally meant to be played during downtime of D&D sessions. It is a game that is clearly as much about the fantasy as it is a game, and I think that's a large part of why it landed: more than almost any other game I've played it does feel like you're a wizard tapping into resources and summoning creatures and breaking reality with spells. I got so caught up in that fantasy it actively made me a worse competitive player. On the flipside, I have loved Warcrat since Warcraft 2, I had all of the RPG books and all of the fiction I could get my hands on. But when Hearthstone came out it felt so divorced from the class fantasies for me that I was forced to focus on efficiency and it actually helped to make me a more competitive player, which I find ironic.

[@Rapeurtugais]

Wasn't Wildstorms' system like, you have 10 mana per turn? It's been a while so I might be wrong haha. The first game I can think of that has the same mana system is Duel Masters, which was actually made by Wizards

[@dagonhydra]

@@Rapeurtugais Oh you are correct. It’s other systems that Vs adopted from Wildstorms. Funny enough I looked it up and Duelmasters was released March 2004 while Vs was April 2004 so Duelmasters was first by a little less than a month! In the US anyways.

[@Rapeurtugais]

@@dagonhydra Yeah. It was released in Japan in 2002, but I'm pretty sure most people from the Us or Eu had never heard of it by 2004 haha. Since it was make by Wizards, there are actually some beautiful collab cards in Duel Masters such as Nicol Bolas or Jace. I suggest you check these out if you've never seen them (my favorite being the "white" Nicol Bolas, you'll see what I mean haha)

[@dagonhydra]

@@Rapeurtugais yeah, I saw them when the Black Lotus card made the gaming news. Beautiful cards!

[@SnowFoxWithAGasMask]

I’m at 25:11 and they haven’t talked about instant speed interaction, which is the best thing about magic

[@ROYBGP]

Lorcana's ink system is dog water. It is insane Rarran used that as an example of "fixed" lands. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

[@FullOnGritz]

I find Rarran’s comments about spending money on IRL Magic tournaments is interesting, as a big part of winning tourneys is smashing the meta with cheap cards nobody thinks about. Nothing feels better than doing that. On the other hand, prohibitively expensive lands are a problem; if I’d change anything it’d be to make certain lands cheap and common.

[@wessmit3223]

As I’ve built decks I appreciate mana. How many land cards, how many basics, which duals etc. Still hurts to get mana screwed but no different than not drawing removal.

[@firedrake110]

24:08 The mana system in the LotR game was simple: you take turns between the Fellowship player (good) and the Shadow player (villains), and any cards the fellowship player chooses to play adds "twilight" to the pool, so basically the fellowship has infinite mana but the more they use, the more the shadow player has access to, and can use to punish them (your deck is split between these good/evil cards). Also, for every member in your party, you add an additional twilight to the pool when you move forward. Now it might sound insane that every time you're the "active player" you have infinite mana, but the way the game is structured it's perfectly fine for a player to just be able to play whatever they want. You only win by meeting one of two goals: Killing the opposing ring-bearer in combat, or by getting your ring-bearer to site 9 and surviving the final shadow turn successfully. To explain the "survive site nine" thing, both players have a deck of sites numbered 1-9 they bring alongside their main deck, which feature different locations the fellowship would travel to over the course of their journey. They all have unique effects, and an innate twilight number that gets added to the pool when a fellowship moves to it. Whoever is playing first (they're the first player to take a Fellowship turn) lays down their site 1. Whenever the fellowship moves to a new unplaced site, the shadow player plays the appropriate site from their location deck, so if you're trying to push forward quickly to end the game via surviving, you'll be forced to endure all the sites your opponent chose to synergise with their minions and effects. You HAVE to move forward at least one site on each of your fellowship turns, and there's normally a maximum travel distance of two sites per turn, but effects exist to increase the maximum locations you can travel to in a row. While there are decks that specialise in making a dead sprint to the finish, there's not a meaningful way for them to do so without taking multiple turns, even with increased movement maximums (which few decks could even use reasonably), so the aforementioned "infinite mana" isn't a problem in the LotR system.

[@BecauseYouShouldKnow]

A lot of people here are focusing on the mana system debate but missing why in context thats why Rarran has such issues with it, namely the real crux being Mono Red. Both CBG and Rarran spend most of the video discussing why best of one mono red is meta warpingly broken and its aided by the mana system in MTG specifically as its mono coloured and extremely low curve. They also both agree there is something fundamentally broken in best of one that cannot be solved by treating it as it is, though they don't know what they might be. My partial solution would be like Brawl in only best of one, not best of three, on the loading screen you get to see the pips of the opponents deck as that will reduce requirements of aggressively mulliganing just to deal with potential mono-red and the lack of dread when you mulligan incorrectly. Some will argue this isnt Magic, but best of one isn't Magic at its core and its the biggest complaint about it so if people think its not Magic why not treat it like "ok this mono red aggro is ruining the format and deck diversity in a place that only exists online, lets change it because it only is an online format that exists in a program and it does not need to be a slave to the rules of the other formats."

[@jake4179]

Rarran’s opinion on mulligan is definitely a result of no meta combo decks in standard rn lol.

[@L_O_V_E_L_A_I_N]

My argument in favour of MTG's mana system has always been that luck of the draw is a necessary aspect of card games, and there's no fundamental difference between not drawing your third land by turn 3 in MTG and not drawing your [insert legendary minion your deck is built around] on curve in HS. I've played both games and I invariably come back to MTG and am happier to have lands over passive mana.

[@melephs_cap]

Yeah I think that's a huge point. All card games have chance; Magic just has it in a part of its gameplay that Hearthstone doesn't. To look at it a different way, Magic requires more strategy, whereas Hearthstone just has a hard-and-fast rule. If the goal of card games was to eliminate luck of the draw entirely, they would self-destruct.

[@BaronVonHoopleDoople]

The difference here is that failing to draw your third land on time in MTG is a massive problem for every non-aggro deck, while the vast majority of Hearthstone decks do not require drawing one specific card to function. How much variance in a CCG should come from card draw is personal preference, but lands in MTG are a pretty big outlier in the amount of variance they create and many people understandably do not like this.

[@Spaced92]

@@BaronVonHoopleDoople I have never played Hearthstone but I seriously doubt Hearthstone does not have cards that are wincons. Many meta's will have one win con decks running rampant, the argument is based on vibes. If you think you've never lost a Hearthstone game because of bad draws, the game is just obfuscated to the player, as a lot of digital games are.

[@Joetrus]

Nah, there is a huge mental difference between "I have a card and can't play it because XYZ" and "I just didn't draw the card." If you don't understand that then you need to revisit the drawing board.

[@eldenbling2615]

Wizards Of The Coast: "we could never have different mulligan rules for different formats!" Also Wizards: "have our robots pick their hand for them"

[@nemthos2605]

As far as active mana systems go I have to say I loved the Warcraft TCG idea. In it you had dedicated Quests that you could use for your mana pool and solve them for a reward, but if you didn't draw Quests you can just place one of your normal cards into the mana pool.

[@davidb4935]

Lorcana handles the resources pretty interestingly, there are certain cards that you can choose to play as a "land" instead of what it is, but all the "mana" is generic, so the way they arbitrate classes is to make it to where your deck has to be two colors.

[@Pseudoscorpion14]

"You may have noticed a correlation with the sleeves" I play with the Teferi avatar and the premium Azorius sleeves. I've never played U/W control in my life. It's all about the mind games, man.

[@HatredXChanner]

This reminds me of a "land system" me and a bunch of friends came up in our "for fun playing in the kitchen" format. Each player could set up a "land deck" that they could draw of instead if drawing from their deck each turn. This side deck could only have basic lands with a minimum of 5 lands per color. The motherf* who had expensive lands that could not be in this custom land deck still trampled us every game. That said no one of us had monored at the time.

[@MrGhostTheBigRoast]

i forgot what its called but we used to play a cube with no lands and a shared library where you could use cards as lands. each card is 1 mana and its colors are the land colours you have available. pretty much how duel masters did it and now lorcana does it.

[@SSthunderchild]

My man invented Inscryption's "rabbit deck" before its time. Props!

[@Nemhain26]

The worst thing about lands is how much a good mana base costs. Spending money on an exciting card that does something cool feels good. Spending money on a land that does nothing but give you not one but TWO colors and doesn't come in tapped doesn't feel good but makes your deck better than just switching out a good card for another good card and it's a thing that you should do. Five color decks in commander are an atrocity to put together and it's the main reason why I started using proxies

[@Captainmaximus87]

39:49 Rarran just admit to becoming a Zombie for Lilly

[@Raagentreg]

I’m surprised there was no mention of the beauty of decklists that can spawn from the mana system. Charbelcher in Legacy often plays a single land in the entire deck, and then there are Lands decks which have over half of their deck being lands. Even in Standard, the difference between an aggro deck running 20~ lands and a control deck running 26~ lands makes a wild difference to playstyles of both decks. Aggro rarely wants to go past 3 lands, and control wants to hit a land drop on every turn of the game for the first 6-8 turns or so.

[@yargolocus4853]

I like these videos. I'm glad Rarran is engaging so much. I think lands feel worse when netdecking, because it just becomes a preset system you don't interact with. Imagine if you could configure your deck in HS to cap how many mana crystals it can generate, exchanging the scaling mana into more draws somehow? Or what if you could mulch your crystals for benefits? Or cast spells to get permanent mana to ramp into lategame? Or perhaps get different kinds of mana crystals that have alternative effects? Land system exists to be interacted with. If you don't engage with it, it will feel both rigid and negative. I want to see Rarran solve lands in the labs and find euphoria (or just play blue already)

[@d1edserg]

Most of your list was/is already in hearthstone. 1) mulching mana for benefits: through all history of hearthstone tried this multiple time, but only one card made this actually good ("Living mana" druid card) 2) cast spells to get permanent mana: druid do this all the time since classic hearthstone. Almost in every meta was some Ramp Druid archetype 3) different kind of mana crystals: there is no such thing, but hs has some stuff that gives you temporary mana and some for mana replenishing

[@yargolocus4853]

@@d1edserg yes. Here's what I mean by the feels-bad net-deck argument: suppose druid was uncontested tier 1, and everyone played big ramp druid only. On a mirror match up, both druids always ramp in early game. But if both of them accelerate ahead of one another, nothing changes. In that scenario, players might feel frustrated for having to do the chore of playing ramp, when you could just grant everyone automatic ramping. Especially in the times you fail to find your ramp, and just get behind for no fault of your own. If you delete ramping, you'd remove a huge part of druids identity as the ramping class. In mtg, green does ramp, white does balance (catching up to or punishing ramp), and red does land destruction and sacrificing. All of that would be still possible without lands as cards, that's true. These are just examples of possible ways to play with mana trough player input. What lands do help you with, is influencing mana in the *deckbuilding*. HS has some pre-game options, like choosing to be highlander, choosing to be even or odd, or to have +10 increased health and deck size. In the event that you build a deck without even costs, you gain an upgraded hero power at the beginning of the game at the expense of what cards to pick. By choosing your own lands, it's like you were manipulating the mana crystal generation that happens every turn. Maybe you only need low curve, exchanging crystal Gen speed for draw. Maybe you rely on value, investing in consistent generation and hoping to stabilize with powerful cards. Or maybe you make that all 0 and 1 drops deck full of wisps, and sacrifice your ability to ever get more than 2 mana.

[@d1edserg]

@@yargolocus4853 nah, druid becomes ramping class when it's ok with meta. During last year he was each very aggro, dragon deck, highlander, combo, and all this decks were effective. No ramping, only a 1 or 2 cards in dragon/highlander. So even without this you still have enough tools to make your deck work

[@yargolocus4853]

@@d1edserg I may have explained it poorly. In the imaginary world where you had to play ramp no matter what, it would make playing ramp pointless, but missing ramp detrimental. That's what lands do if you only follow the suggested deck and its ideal manabase. "I need 11 forests and 11 mountains for this deck to work, and that's the extent of me thinking about it" "why couldn't I just use 22 omnicolor lands?" "why do I need to put lands in my deck? Couldn't I just automatically play an omniland each turn?" As opposed to: "I have 11 forests and 11 mountains, but I really need to have more red mana in my games. I'll switch it to 8 and 14 instead." "oh but my ramp spells are green, and can ramp *into* red. Hmm, how could I optimize the ratio for early game.."

[@yargolocus4853]

"I'm going to play miracle rogue (storm in mtg) . I don't need more than 3 or so lands before I combo to win using the auctioneer draw engine, and drawing too many lands from that will brick it. How can I ensure I draw enough lands to start, while also minimizing the lands I have to include?"

[@Grooveworthy]

Great discussion, fellas. I gotta say, as someone who is newer to arena and *hasn't* played any other online TCGs, I still felt a lack of some kind of crafting system.

[@pipboy17]

I never really understood how rarran doesn't get the appeal of the magic land system. Lands in magic do far more than just make mana and what type of mana lands produce is also a trade off for utility. Colorless lands that have useful active abilities are something unique to magic because you can trade your mana for powerful effects. Your deck being composed of 20-40% lands also allows for individual cards to have far more impact on the game than other tcgs. Magic also has an incredible amount of deck smoothing effects from cycling to cantrips to tutors and fetchlands. Being able to cast brainstorm or ponder and select what you're looking for is a good tradeoff for tempo. A mono red deck is built to function off a minimum amount of lands while control decks will trade early board control and life to smooth their draws until they can swing the game in their favor with a boardwipe. Lands are good and magic thrives in part because of lands.

[@seandun7083]

I think he just hasn't played enough with it to really have experience with more than two colors or too many utility lands (though he definitely likes Restless Cottage). The parts of it he has seen don't outweigh the amount of non games it causes. I would be interested in seeing how his views change after experiencing older formats where there are a lot more 3+ color decks as well as decks built around certain utility lands and more ways to interact with lands like Blood Moon or Lórien Revealed.

[@RekiWylls]

Long time (casual) MTG player here: one thing I really enjoyed about the Final Fantasy TCG, which shares a lot in common with MTG due to being designed by a pro-MTG player, is how it iterates on the mana system. That game has "lands" in the forms of creatures with an ETB/aura effect, a mana cost, and no combat stats. Since "lands" have a cost, there's a mechanic to discard any card for 2 mana of that card's color, in case you either get mana screwed, need to scrounge for mana for a play, or just have a card you don't need. Also, because you discard for 2, lands are helpful to play odd-cost cards without overpaying. Really nice middle-ground IMO, and something MTG could potentially implement without worrying about throwing lands out entirely, or upending the game we all love. That said, I love the mana system; a little jank goes a long way to making something interesting and memorable.

[@Nightknight1992]

as a limited player the wild card complaint really got me good, i have hundreds of them lying around, whenever im done with a set and need to craft the few remaining missing cards for standard decks its not even the tiniest dent in my plethora of wild cards, feels good^^

[@JackgarPrime]

I love playing limited. It feels like its own game, and the way you accumulate resources from it is great. As long as you do at least pretty okay consistently, you can get enough return on investment to go right into another pool.

[@Nightknight1992]

@@JackgarPrime yes, plus no mono red xD also you get to see all set mechanics, that never make it to standard. and even if you only manage to get 3 wins on average if you reroll your 500 gold quests you usually can get enough gold withing a few days to get another draft in to then have enough gems again to keep going^^

[@Goldy01]

I'd rather have the imperfect land system, than not being able to interact with my opponent on their turn. My favorite mana system is definitely the one from Lorcana/Duel Masters, where you can use any card as "land".

[@ericaschner3283]

OT: If flooded is too many, too few should be a drought.

[@rb2kTube]

I view the lands system in Magic like the "ice system" in hockey. Sure, you would slip and fall less if hockey was played on a court but that misses the whole point of the game. The fundamentals of skating are as core to the experience of hockey as lands are to Magic's fundamentals of deck building, risk management, and variance. The fun is in trying to both build your resources (lands) and execute your game plan. Plus you can always build a deck to hit your lands 99% of the time (42 lands out of 60 cards) but, just like hockey players could also just skate slowly to make sure they don't fall and get hurt, the fun is in taking risks and pushing the limits. And building decks, playing optimally, and outsmarting the odds by riding that line between getting resources and turning them into a win with your spells is fun as hell. That is why the game has lasted so long.

[@theparagonal]

Calling mono red more egregious than even a tame YGO game is genuinely, certifiably insane. If a game doesn't (virtually) end on the first turn, it's unusual.

[@RodrigoCML7]

I think the comparison comes from the people playing YGO are playing at basically the same pace, while in mtg the discrepancy one can face vs monored against what oneself is playing can be frustratingly big.

[@dev.c121]

there are a lot of other factors like the cheap cost and most players playing it. I get mythic playing constructed and in the eternal formats I almost never play red. BUT if it’s standard…

[@RodrigoCML7]

@@dev.c121 I'd say it's most egregious in standard. Legacy for instance has super quick combos and powerful interaction like FoW. The only monored deck in the meta is painter's servant combo. The more power in eternal formats the less monored burn exists, because of those powerful cards that stand against it.

[@sir_quirkus7206]

Ygo is utter trash no idea why anyone enjoys the game it has become

[@Thomazbr]

Everyone in YGO is playing on the same level field.

[@sungodniku]

As someone who's played hs since closed beta, aswell as magic and yugioh since years before that; having a hearthstone-style mulligan in yugioh would completely break the game, and you were on the money when you postulated that being the case. As for magic, the London mulligan is generally actually quite amazing - magic, especially in more competative formats like modern, would be broken beyond belief if they used the hearthstone system; it's not uncommon for decks to be able to have combos that win on turn 2, and being able to sculpt your hand like that would be immense. I believe the main reason hearthstone allows that level of sculpting is due to not having lands - the key variance in the game is from the text on cards (e.g. babbling book), whereas in magic the key variance comes from the mana system, the balance of having the right colours/right amount of colours, and being able to curve out efficiently with your gameplan. It's 2 different approaches of achieving a similar outcome. As a sidenote, I think ironically the key variance in yugioh comes from not having a mulligan system at all, so you have to try to build your deck to be as proactive as possible with any combination of 5 cards, which can lead to some very interesting deckbuilding strategies.

[@igorporfiirio4915]

Rarran is understimating all the mana mechanics that wouldn't be possible with an "automatic mana" like hearthstone. I get it, lands can be frustrating, but it isn't to no gain, there's pros and cons. The way ramping and mana curve works in magic is fundamenttally different than hearthstone because mana is an uncertainty to some extent.

[@thedarkfox9851]

Rarran: "I'm so glad Hearthstone has a fair passive Mana system" Druid: "Ok so I'm following up my Puppetmaster Dorian with 4 Doomkins"

[@SoFishtry]

Bo1 is a bad format and I think a lot of Rarran's coplaints are because of that. Fling is so bad in bo3.

[@hobblingtoheaven5960]

I’ve played Magic for 20 years and Hearthstone for 10 years and I honestly prefer land over passive mana. Magic has given players so many ways to interact with and manipulate their lands and mana. CGB’s defense of land was definitely… Stockholm syndromy lol

[@crss29]

The land system needs no excuse. It's a feature, not a bug. MtG is, before a card game, a resource management game. Now, you may prefer a simpler game, with less resources to manage. And that is why it's good that variety exists.

[@moominfin]

So condescending, a "simpler game" as if a third of your deck being cards that barely do anything is the height of complexity

[@crss29]

@@moominfin The only condescension you can find in my comment stems from you. There are no value judgements in it. MtG IS the height of complexity in games. There are no contenders. That doesn't make it better or worse than any other game. However, it does firmly define it's niche among games. It also doesn't make anyone better or worse for liking it, or not.

[@SmashPortal]

What I'm hearing in the first 10 minutes is that Rarran would love brawl since you get a free mulligan and the commander tells you what archetype you'll likely be playing against.

[@Tebsteren]

@CGB You forgot to tell him about the Free muligan in EDH. We gotta convert him to Commander :D

[@stephenbrogan2002]

A big thing with the lands in magic is that you need them for balance. If you didnt need to draw your lands there would be no reason for every deck to not be 5 color

[@robertradford4707]

The land system *can* be positive and fun to try and deckbuild with, and is essential to balancing what is effectively "multiclassing" compared to hearthstone. I would very highly recommend checking out the card game eternal. It handles the land system a lot better, in my opinion. It has a land system, but several keywords like pledge(if its in your hand on turn 1 it can be played as a land of its color) /inspire (can be played as the card itself, or a tapped land)/plunder (transform any nonland into a land of its color, or transform any land into essentially a clue but in your hand)

[@seandun7083]

Interesting. Magic does have some similar mechanics like land cycling, mdfcs, channel lands, and various others, but they can't do too many without making decks too consistent.

[@NicholasBalanta]

In defense of agro players in an online card game... the games are fast, the decks are usually cheap and the win rate is decent. So a player with limited time or money can play within their limitations. The same way that they are raging about mono red agro (those white/green poison decks suck too); I felt about face hunters, pirate warriors and at launch demon hunter for HS. But hey the player wants a short game with a competitive deck.

[@Radenshaal]

I don't think not drawing lands is THAT different from only drawing your expensive cards and losing before you can do anything in a "gain mana every turn game". Especially having played so many card games at this point or even only drawing your cheap stuff in the late game. It is a variable but your entire deck is always a variable in any card game. What is pretty unique about the land system is the ability to have your resource system be more than just a resource, such as land creatures or other abilities on land, so having the element of lands adds salt but also design space that is fun too. Cost benefit analysis I would say, not just bad, but not just good either.

[@Nibbieful]

But drawing only your expensive things is ALSO a thing in magic, so if anything that comparison is working against your point. "Why have one way to screw your hand over when you could have two instead! Double the fun, right?"

[@lancex5195]

They aren't similar though? Because you can still draw just your top end in MTG alongside getting flooded/screwed. MTG has draw and mana RNG, hearthstone only has draw RNG

[@laurelkeeper]

@@lancex5195 and functionality RNG on every card, that's a massive element of Hearthstone's design philosophy and not Magic's.

[@lancex5195]

​@@laurelkeeperthe vast majority of hearthstone cards don't have RNG and it's a completely opt in system, if you don't like it you can easily avoid egregious RNG cards. I can't opt out of lands when playing magic

[@Radenshaal]

@Nibbieful it is different but I emphasised "THAT" different, because yes, it is a layer of rng in the game, but also an element of it to play with, because you have to also build around lands. The land element adds layers to the game too, since it makes card draw more valuable, it make mana sync abilities more valuable. I feel like saying it is only an element of rng that makes mana screwed or mana flood simplifies it a bit too much.

[@Bundurru]

I think the most important part about land system boils down to deckbuilding. You cannot put all cards like in Yugi or be limited to classes like in HS. If you never build a deck in MTG you will probably don't understand how land ratios etc. factors in into actually playing what was built. Land system gives the best balance of deckbuilding creativity while also not being all lose like Yugi. Obviously from time to time you will have just bad luck but that happens in every game.

[@Giperon1602]

So now you just make podcast? That is awesome, please keep going

[@zmadbassist]

A lot of people(especially those who only play digitally) seem to hyperfixate on the feels bad of the land system, but they also seem to disregard the feels good about lands. MTG has done an excellent job over the years of making lands another may to interact with your opponent or change the state of the game other than just generating mana. Some lands draw cards, buff creatures, become creatures, create creatures, make treasures to invest mana into future turns, etc. How many things can you do with Hearthstone's mana system? I guess you're gonna reach ten guaranteed given enough turns, but what else does it do for the game?

[@DragoonKain3]

Played MtG, Pokemon (which was basically MtG), WoW TCG (the one before hearthstone), and Runeterra. I love MtG because I can use ANY card, but the mana base must support it. With WoW TCG, which can use any card as a blank quest (aka land), then they limit you to only your class cards, which is a bummer. Runeterra is like HS with passive mana, but can only use 2 factions was the extent of one's restriction to deck building. So yeah, there's downsides to passive mana - you need to be more strict with deck building, else it becomes too powerful. Which is good for the newcomer to TCG, as it makes it easier to build a deck, but as a vet of TCG I see it as too restrictive as I like to mix and match more often.

[@PhosPhryne]

Watching people jump through hoops to justify lands is always so amusing. The lands is the worst mechanic in games ever. If magic came out today it would die in a year. It's just atrocious.

[@graemetang4173]

IMO WOTC fixed their own mana system with Duel Masters but it never really took off. Every card was either playable as a card or could be used as a mana source for its own color.

[@GumshoeClassic]

I'd say the reason we stick to the land system is because of one crucial fact: Magic doesn't have one type of mana. It has 6. And you can mix them however you like. Multicoloured decks pay for a larger pool of tools by having a more finnicky mana-base. How many different colours or how many of a single colour a spell needs influences its viability in mono- vs. multicoloured. These are trade-offs that the player has to solve, a deckbuilding challenge. The absolutely iconic "Red Deck Wins" was born from this exact conundrum. If we were to remove the land system, maintaining the WUBRG+Colorless framework with passive mana is nigh impossible. But if you consolidate them into a single, generic type of mana, colour and deck identity goes flying out the window. There's a reason Hearthstone restricts you to a single class barring a very limited batch of dual-class cards that only support a select few combinations per class. Does the land system screw you over sometimes? Yes, and it's a valid reason to not like it. But in turn, it opens up so many angles of card design and deckbuilding, which is a large part of what makes Magic special. And that's why we put up with sometimes getting backstabbed by our mana-base.

[@Michael.032]

Regarding mulligans, there are decks (such as Tron in Modern) that semi-consistently mulligan down to 5 or even 4 cards in hand. Changing the mulligan system too much would have the potential to break or invalidate a lot of decks that are built with the current mulligan system (the London Mulligan) in mind. Also, perhaps more importantly, Magic has something which Hearthstone doesn't - lands! And it's not terribly uncommon to get an opening 7 with 0-1 lands, and then mulligan to another hand with 0-1 lands as well. If we had Hearthstone's mulligan system, these games would pretty much just be an auto-loss. However, the London Mulligan allows for players to go down to 5 cards and potentially find a keepable hand, and although you're certainly significantly disadvantaged on 5, you still get to play the game and shoot your shot at winning. (And it's certainly very possible to win after keeping a 5, even if you aren't playing Tron)

[@schrodinger1374]

I think mono red is one of the biggest reasons I prefer BO3. The element of surprise is one of mono red’s greatest advantages, take that away and add the ability to sideboard and it evens the playing field. I also see a much greater variety in decks in BO3 which I quite like.

[@isvitdap]

Wtf is mono red? The real reason why everyone plays commander

[@Einherier1994]

i remember a card game called "force of will" where you had kinda passive mana, you had your "ruler" that you could use to make one man therfore getting a card from your mana deck onto the field or use the ruler for different things, i feel like that was a very interesting way of "solving" that problem.

[@AngelzWrath11]

I would absolutely LOVE if MTG had MDFC's with lands on 1 side as an evergreen mechanic. With a handful of cards like this in every set that comes out. If half the cards in your deck were tapped lands on the back, you could run fewer pure lands, which you would still run some of as a way of having untapped mana, and you would get flooded and screwed much less.

[@mjj29]

Yeah, shame cgb didn't mention these because they are exactly what rarren was praising Lorcana for

[@aidanbagshaw3411]

as soon as it was suggested I knew that I would take mana screw and mana flood over taking away the land system. Lands are the way that the color system is enforced (possibly the best thing about magic). They can be mana or utility or both. some lands act more as spells than they are lands. Land choice is one of the most important aspects of deck-building and has driven so much of the competitive innovation within the game. Lands are an imperfect system, but perfect systems are boring. Lands are worth it.

[@Dopamine_Drop]

You cant make enough of these

[@HVLuger]

I will send my opinion about lands. I first played Hearthstone when Quest Mage was the meta deck. And it was a very frustrating feeling to see how every game your opponent plays the same sequence of cards. Every game. Then I moved to MTG and got acquainted with this wonderful feeling when your opponents cannot play the necessary combination, even when they have a much stronger deck. That is, you still have a chance even in a bad setup for you. Just imagine if your monored opponents will play the same clear sequence of cards every game, with no chance on a land in the top deck. Have a nice day everyone :)

[@Superstarearth]

I feel like Rarran point of view of lands is super narrow within the Magic Arena best of one. Honestly if Rarran had someone sit down with them and build a really fun commander deck or Modern deck IRL with lands that actually heavily affect little things in the game. It's crazy how deep the gameplay gets when your fetch land is a massive key to how you play your turn. (brainstorming and other effects like that) Mono red in standard doesn't show how crazy effective lands can be a part of the meta.

[@pierrekimmel7364]

The landing system in the original Warcraft TCG was pretty interesting. Any card could be played as a land by playing it face down. This way, you had to make choices to "sacrifice" cards to play others. There was also quest cards that could grant mana while being played face up and gave a quest like the ones in HS.

[@Conradd23]

As a primarily modern amulet titan player, I love lands that do crazy things! Also, the Hearthstone mulligan would be SOOOOOO OP for my deck....

[@jacobb1611]

One thing I love about Magic is the land artwork and choosing which art I want for each deck