#manlanding

[vvatchword]

kids named tucker are finally men. they are entering my thirstpostiverse. I don't like it

[digit4lbl4ckhole]

Digital

[rpking99]

New Queen Of Atlantis

Closed with @a-den-of-demons

Continued from here

Alexander smiled as he looked at the queen. He was an older man, an experienced super human warrior coming from greece. He kneeled with proper respect, "I am honored you chose me. Arthur was a close friend."

"Thank you, Alexander, I am glad that you put yourself forward for this position. I have had rulers of many a kingdom across the planet, even including several manlanders who see themselves as rulers because of their large wealth, offer their hands to me as king." She said calmly as she crossed her legs, holding her trident powerful

[lesbianralzarek]

mtg standard decks i think the bg3 origins would play

astarion: monored aggro, but tbh i dont think hed even like it. he heard someone say its easy to pilot, and thats all Mr. Not Really The Planning Type needed to hear. bored and barely pays attention when hes playing. outside of the pun, i think orzhov bats would be a perfect fit for him, and make him feel smarter even if hes not the best at it

gale: keeps making combo decks and getting bored with them after a handful of wins prove to him that the concept works. still trying to break 2-mana jace. unwinds with azorius control and gets defensive when people call it winconless, because technically he has manlands and sunfall tokens. wants to think that his opponents are also having fun, but why tf would they be?

wyll: oh he had fun at the bloomburrow prerelease. still hasnt given up on frogs yet because he likes helga for both lore reasons (he loves an underdog! she just has to believe in herself!) and because hes a massive timmy who loves big creatures. totally isnt mad when his opponent efficiently removes 3 of his vaultborn tyrants in one game. why would he be mad? its just a game. he takes a smoke break after the match for completely unrelated reasons

karlach: hasnt played in years, so she had to rebuild her entire collection for standard (mostly plays edh for that reason. her fav is her rin and seri deck with mostly older cards in the 99 that she refuses to acknowledge are bad in 2024). plays the greediest lizard deck youve ever seen because shes also a timmy. i think shed like boomer jund if any of her friends (other than gale) played modern

lae'zel: prowess and she fucking loves it. "gruul is brain dead"? not the way she pilots that shit. she runs her deck like the navy. takes forever psychoanalyzing her opponent and thinking 4 turns ahead. cant play edh because she thinks the social contract is dumb. why doesnt everyone try to win? winning is fun? fight her like you mean it. genuinely a good sport when she loses so long as it was a good fight

shadowheart: looks like somebody misses the 8 rack. 4 cut downs, 4 go for the throats, 4 deep cavern bats, 4 bandits talents, my god she wishes thoughtseize was standard legal but liliana keeps her bloodthirst sated. gets mad when she loses to zoo decks but deep down its 70% jealousy. feels a weird sense of loyalty and duty to stick with monoblack, but shed convert to naya in 3 seconds if she ever tried it

[inventors-fair]

Smooth Moves: Animated Adaptation Runners Up

Our runners up this week are @grornt, @melancholia-ennui, and @yd12k!

~

@grornt — Festival Lantern//Festive Apparition

Is it a lantern brought to life by the festive atmosphere, or a spirit using a lantern to join in on the festivities? Who cares, it's fun! That's really the crux of things here. It's nothing earthshattering or groundbreaking, no, it's a fun little card that I'd be overjoyed to play. Plus, it does it job very well as an impassive utility artifact that, with a bit of coaxing, goes fully on the offensive. I love the condition on the transformation, too, as generally you're encouraged to discard lands instead to squeeze as much card advantage as possible out of it, unless you have something you specifically want in the graveyard. Plus, it also mean that there's an inherent safety catch in the ability if you'd rather keep it from being subject to creature removal as well. It's smart and it's fun and there's not a lot else I can ask for.

@melancholia-ennui — Nexus of the Roil

I'll freely admit that manlands were in fact my first thought when I came up with this contest, and while I'm extremely pleased that so many people went into so many other directions, it is still nice to see a few standout man lands in the bumper crop. I love the idea of a manland that acts as land creature support, because that immediately flips the script on the design paradigm. Manlands are, generally speaking, a bit of extra utility on top of the inherent usefulness of being a land. While that can be a strong draw over similar lands, I'd hardly say it's usually the focal point. The animation ability and its associated text are absolutely the focal point here however, with the land part consequently being a bit vestigial. But that's completely fine! It's a new and interesting direction that feels like a wonderful crystallization of the gameplay of both manlands overall and whatever other forms of land animation you can get your hands on! The focus on land types feels a teensy bit odd, but does work in the sense of putting the spotlight more on the lands you put in the deck. It does mean that Planar Nexus and especially Omo kind of supercharge it, but that feels less like a bug and more like a feature.

@yd12k — Simic Stockpile//Self-Sustaining Sludge

Only the Simic could come up with an idea like self-sustaining sludge and think it was a good one. And it is a good one for our purposes, even if it's not one for the people of Ravnica. Double-faced cards that flip-flop between their faces rather than just being a one-time trip have always fascinated me. And while this does a good job of cycling back on forth on its own, you're absolutely being encouraged to speed up the process, as it were. Three creatures to trigger graft/evolve per side is a fairly big ask, after all. But the card does generally live up to its self-sustaining name. Whether you leave it humming away in the background or bring it to the forefront and try to turbocharge it, it's very much content to do its own thing ad infinitum, and I think that's just cool design.

~

And that is, once again, a wrap! As usual, I'll be available for the rest of today for additional commentary requests on the fair discord. That said, circumstances may conspire in a week or so to make this much less of a regular event, so heads-up about that. At any rate, see ya there! —@spooky-bard

[thecornwall]

Cornwall's Random Card of the Day #1096: Ghitu Encampment

Ghitu Encampment is an uncommon from Urza's Legacy, seen here in its Jumpstart 2025 printing.

Okay, up till recently I had no idea what Jumpstart was, but since then Spice 8 Rack, random Youtuber and A Million Times More Reliable For Magic Knowledge Than Its Own Fucking Website Now did a video about it. It's a product for beginners: each "pack" is half a deck, they're made to be smashed together and played immediately, to help someone Jumpstart(get it) their Magic experience without having to be handed a friend's deck or go to a limited event or buy a box of cards and build a deck from scratch.

I find this relevant for the reason of I think it's kind of mean to put manlands in those decks. Players get taught what a land is there for only to immediately get sucker punched by one coming to life and wrecking their recently learned combat math. Not what I would have chosen for intro beginner product.

The Ghitu, btw, are Jhoira's people, they live in Shiv. It was once phased out of the multiverse, but in Time Spiral it managed to phase back in, and has been back to being a part of Dominaria ever since.

[markrosewater]

If/when three color manlands?

If. Three color is already a lot for a land.

[dravidious]

You're more amazing than licks

Had a brilliant idea for a commander deck: Mutate onto things that you're not allowed to mutate onto

[farsight-the-char]

I can't believe there is no "spider-manland" in mtg yet.

Feels like an obvious one.

[8thy]

Custom MTG token art time - Horror

Tbh pretty weak art of mine all things considered was trying to make a landscape that looked like a creature a bit like the AFR/WOE/LCI manlands

[nem0c]

I myself am respectful of ruined lives and forced choices. On the street once Anna did not fight hard enough against the fourteen-year-old toughs who wanted his twelve-year-old ass; he didn't go to the extremity of berserk rage, reckoning his life as nothing in defense of his virility; he forestalled - by surrender - the plucking out of an eye, the castration, the throat cut with a broken bottle, the being put out of his twelve-year-old action with a stone or a tire chain. I know a lot about Manlanders' history. Anna made a modus vivendi, he decided life was worth it on any terms. Everything follows from that.

Joanna Russ, The Female Man

[sdyuteiaok]

Man, my opponent's taking a ton of turns, but I have him with 2 Chandra ping emblems, so he's on his last turn--he's gotta win this turn...he already weaseled out of an earlier death cuz he gained a little pocket of life on that last turn. And fumigate his Castle Ardenvale token for 1 more life for one more turn...and got 'im. Finally. Dude was playing super loosely, he probably had me if he would have been swinging in with his blue Hannes manland, but he just kept fiddling away with extra turns and card draw and stuff. He even could have been making Ardenvale tokens to eventually eat with The Wandering Emperor for a little bump of life. Anyway, Tumblr says we've had our main Tumblr page for 10 years now. How about that.

[a-magical-recap]

Foundations Retrospective - Top 20 Competitive Cards

Number 6 – Soulstone Sanctuary – 190 points

Standard [186], Pioneer [4]

Soulstone Sanctuary, the other card on this list that originates from Foundations, is a pretty solid "manland", a land which can turn into a creature. While there were already a few manlands in Standard thanks to Wilds of Eldraine and The Lost Caverns of Ixalan, those have the downside of coming into play tapped. This leads more aggressive decks like Gruul Prowess Aggro and Dimir Midrange to replace some or all of their on-color manlands with copies of Soulstone Sanctuary, which can tap for mana the turn it enters and become a solid attacker later in the game. Cards like Manifold Mouse in the Gruul Prowess decks can even take advantage of it being all creature types.

(I score competitive cards by assigning them points for appearing in the main deck or sideboard of Top 8 decks at larger tournaments such as MTGO Challenges or Magic: Spotlight events, and cards earn 2 points for appearing in the Top 8 at the biggest tournaments such as the Pro Tour and Regional Championships)

[s1g4]

Magic the Gathering tip: No

I will play 30 pieces of interaction and a single manland like it's 2012.

You can take the Jace out the format, but you can't unsculpt my mind.

Magic the Gathering tip: don’t forget to put a wincon in your deck

[inventors-fair]

Ba-sick Designs

Burgeoning Frontier by @reaperfromtheabyss

Ooh, a classic Serra Avenger land. Honestly? Power level wise, I think this is pretty good. It’s obviously better in slower formats, but then again so is Temple of the False God, and no one is calling for that to be banned. I’m not sure if I want this to have a regular “T: Add C” ability just so it’s not a completely dead draw? I know I would just glance over an opening hand with this and two other lands, and only realize my mistake after keeping. Anyways, the name is pretty evocative, that of a developing frontier town that needs a bit of time to really get up and going, but I really think you could have slammed this one into a home run with some flavor text giving me a specific example. Maybe this is on the vaunted Wild West plane? Or maybe it’s the folks of Eldraine expanding into the wilds? Who knows? I want to, that’s for sure.

Cliffside Arboretum by @hypexion

This is probably the simplest land on the podium this week, and it’s that simplicity I love. Conditional duals are hard to design, especially since most of the “balanced” design space is taken up already. However, in a simple, clean ability, you made a dual that actively gets better when your land base gets worse. I’m a huge fan of that, since it’s definitely not designed for high power tournament play, but is the perfect thing for little Timmy to slot in his new Gruul deck. It’s not overly punishing either which is nice, but it’s great in your opening hand, and still good if you’re running mostly basics or fetchlands. I don’t have much else to comment- other than the fact that a cliffside arboretum sounds fantastic and makes me wish that we could commission artists for this silly little contest.

Thirsting Jungle by @nine-effing-hells

Conversely, this one is probably the most complex land in the top 6, but again deserves that position because of how smoothly everything fits. This land carries some super interesting tension between when you want to play it- turn 1, so you have an untapped triome for the rest of the game? Or forgo the early color fixing and hold onto it until you have some sac fodder, in order to turn this into an absolute beast that dodges most forms of removal? It asks you to make some hard decisions but rewards you for them both, which is what I love seeing in a design. I was going to comment on the lack of haste, before realizing it enters tapped, so that’s irrelevant. All in all, it’s an awesome card, and a manland that weirdly wants to push more aggro than control, which is awesome.

And that's that! I'm on vacation this week, but hopefully will be able to get the commentary to you good folks sometime soon.

Ciao!

~judge @naban-dean-of-irritation

[uubbbrr]

i remember one time I was playing hbrawl and my opponent was playing baby tamiyo (MH3), they get a turn 3 flip as per usual, and eventually make their way to ult'ing tamyio, they draw half their deck and I cast an emrakul to steal their turn, I draw the rest of their deck with seagate and kill them to deck out. I decided to look at their deck and it was LITERALLY only counterspells and manlands. there were no green sources of mana aside from maybe two manlands and it was just like..... why??? there's no wincon! what are you doing!! I hate that the arena hbrawl meta is just annoying your opponents to death