Land Cards

Lands represent locations under the player’s control, most of which have mana abilities. Because mana is needed to use almost any card or ability, most decks need a high number of mana-producing lands (typically between 33-50% of the total deck) in order to function effectively. The most commonly printed Magic cards are the five basic lands, one for each color, each of which intrinsically produce one mana of a specific color.

“The basic idea is that a mage must first create a bond to the land through some kind of ritual. Whether the mage actually needs to visit the land is an open question. Maybe some lands are so mana-rich or renowned that mages can create a connection to them from across space, time, or even across planes. In any case, once a mage has established a bond to a given place, they can manifest that bond by concentrating on it, then channeling the mana from the land into themselves for spellcasting.

“Perhaps this bond is abstract and only in the mage’s thoughts, but we’ve also thought about ways to represent the bond visually, such as with ‘mana globes’ that float around a mage. The mage would create a small mana globe – roughly baseball-sized – that is a magical manifestation of his/her connection to a given land. Then the mage could literally ‘tap’ the mana globe to draw its power into themselves. The mana globe would then slowly regenerate until it was ready to be siphoned again. The bond could also be represented at the site of the land, such as with a totem or magical sigil that ‘marks’ the mage’s bond to it.

“One recent development in this area has to do with legendary lands. It used to be that any unique place would be considered legendary for card purposes, whether it was a single structure or an entire city. We decided recently that unique places should be able to accommodate more than one mage’s bond. Theoretically, that means you could start seeing more unique places on nonlegendary land cards. This doesn’t mean we won’t print legendary lands anymore; such lands will simply be conceived as places that can support a bond with only one mage.”

-Brady Dommermuth