I’ve been neglecting some of the updates as there has been just a bounty of delicious, delicious art from a bunch of sets. Best of all, there’s been tons of great full art options to review.

Breaking news from–uh–a few weeks ago (I’ve been distracted) Arena has swaggy Euro lands available for basic land usage! AIRHORN

The backstory behind the lands can be found here or here, but the upshot is that they were a promo run by Wizards in the year 2000 highlighting iconic terrain from throughout Europe. The White Cliffs of Dover are most easy for us Americans to recognize but here’s the full list: locations

Anyway, since I’m officially too old to figure out microtransactions, I had a pile of gold in my account. That just turned into 15 classic lands with the old school border! Right now I’ve been running the White Cliffs of Dover, Amsterdam Lowlands, Nottingham Forest, the Pyrenees, and the Ardennes swamp. A nice touch of flavor.

What better way to celebrate a birthday than formally updating the basic land box? Wait, don’t answer that question. It was rhetorical. VERY rhetorical.

I’ve been on the hunt for a good full-art forest for a while and there hasn’t been anything lately. However Modern Horizons had gorgeous snow-covered lands rendered in full and that’s good enough for me! A few trees short of a forest maybe, but I’ll take it. Substituting out is the Kaladesh forest. A fine forest, but didn’t have anything particular going for it.

I won’t lie: I was very underwhelmed by the Theros: Beyond Death lands when they were spoiled. Yuh-Gi-Oh/Pokemon, there’s no land in the land, &c &c. All true. However, once I saw them in person they were spectacular! The white mana symbol in particular looked great. Also fills a gap in the full-art slot for plains. Swapping out is a Plains from Shards. Fine plains, but also super generic. Not entirely sure if I even played Shards either.

As mentioned earlier, Throne of Eldraine had some spectacular basic lands. So it’s time to swap out Generic Swamp for, well, at this least swamp has some hot will-o-the-wisp action. Or swamp gas. Or something.