Comments on: Glacial Fortress versus Arcane Sanctum, etc.

By: james a

james a — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:57:50 +0000

I’m disappointed that these lands aren’t typed with the proper land type. Since granting that type automatically grants the land the ability to tap for the respective mana, it really seems any land that taps for colored mana of a certain type unconditionally should BE that type. Painlands didnt have to count, as it was add mana and pain, not tap, add mana. Yes, these would be more powerful in formats with the original fetches, but there really isn’t anything in print in standard that would abuse the interaction, and they can always print BASIC on any new fetch style effects if they dont want this to be searched up. I think itd be great design space to have alot more non-basic typed lands, and only give green access to search up non-basic forests, restricting other colors to basic land search. my 2 cents on the design. And if you draw 2, would it be so terrible if the first one that CIPT turned on the 2nd in your grip for turn2? In general, I like the design alot though, very elegant, and generally wont have any disadvantage after turn1 in most games.

By: Five With Flores » Vampire Nocturnus and / or Drowned Catacomb

Five With Flores » Vampire Nocturnus and / or Drowned Catacomb — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 01:08:31 +0000

[...] four Kird Apes via Windswept Heath and Wooded Foothills. The tri-land cycle from Shards of Alara (Arcane Sanctum et al) shattered the notion of mana discipline, and we found ourselves in a Block Pro Tour where [...]

By: Five With Flores » Glacial Fortress & Deck Design

Five With Flores » Glacial Fortress & Deck Design — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 01:59:31 +0000

[...] case you hadn’t yet seen it, I did a review on Top 8 Magic about Glacial Fortress, the U/W M10 dual land that was recently spoiled on the mother [...]

By: ProdigalT

ProdigalT — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 10:44:23 +0000

Maro stated that the next two blocks are not going to be gold-themed like recent sets, but there are numerous competitive two-color decks in standard right now. I like these lands, and it would have been even sweeter as a 10-card cycle.

By: Thomas

Thomas — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 10:41:50 +0000

@Dochetwas - It’s a nice land, not a snow land. The clue is in the name.

For too long we have been complacently filling our decks with all the colours of the pie. It will be nice to see a return to two colour magic decks for a while. Though I imagine we will see both in the upcoming standard. At least they’ll be no vivid lands.

By: MTG Battlefield

MTG Battlefield — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 10:25:41 +0000

Top 8 Magic » Glacial Fortress versus Arcane Sanctum, etc….

Your story has been summoned to the battlefield - Trackback from MTG Battlefield…

By: Ben Carlson

Ben Carlson — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 07:31:10 +0000

Here’s to hoping you’re right, would be nice to see some two-colored decks in the future! I’m not particularly fond of these dual lands, I think they favor control decks just a bit too much, as you don’t want to play too many of them with aggro one-drops.

By: Dochetwas

Dochetwas — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 04:50:39 +0000

That’s actually an interesting way of looking at the card.

That’s about opposite of how I see these duals. Much as the ability to come into…um, enter the battlefield untapped is really cool, I tend to view that as an extra perk of having the proper basic land types, instead of as an incentive to go straight UW (or whatever) for the consistent untapped land.

I have a feeling that we’ll see Glacial Fortresses sitting next to Swamps and/or Forests a respectable amount of the time, considering how many 3+ color decks people are wont to play currently.

As a side note: Why is this card named Glacial Fortress, but is not a Snow Land? There’s no reason for it to be a Snow Land in isolation, but then again why bother making Snow a mechanical feature of Magic & not use it for cards whose names invoke Snow? Frown.