Basic Land Game is a Magic the Gathering variant where all you play in your deck is basic lands. How many, that varies but common decks seem to be either 5 or 10 of each non-Waste basic. It’s a game that has probably as many variants as there are playing groups. Here are the rules I’ve learned but I’ve seen different rules being played with.
It’s a fun quick game that can be played between rounds or while waiting for your play group to arrive.
Lands are the cheapest cards but there’s also a lot of variety so you can build your deck with your favourites (like the John Avon full arts above).
The goal
To win, you need to either play a full domain (1 of each land) or 5 of a kind of one type of land.
Setup
Shuffle your deck and draw 3 cards. Player who goes first cannot draw a card on their first turn.
If you go first and drew only Mountains and/or Forests, you get a free mulligan (as neither does anything on first turn going first).
If you go second and drew only Forests, you get a free mulligan.
Playing lands
Each land has an Enter the Battlefield ability:
- Swamp: your opponent shows you 3 cards from their hand. Discard one. (Alternative: discard a random card from opponent’s hand.)
- Forest: Return a card from your graveyard to your hand.
- Mountain: Destroy target land.
- Plains: Draw a card.
- Blue: you can either play it to Scry 1 (Look at the top card of your library. You may put that card on the bottom.) or use it as a counterspell (to counter a land, you must exile the same type from your hand and discard an Island.)
Other people
- SnapCasters video
- Alternative rules by UltimateGuard: The Basic Land Game: Rules, Gameplay & Strategy
- Tolarian Community College’s video on Basic Land Game