Basic Lands of Los Angeles

When building a Magic: The Gathering deck, the number one consideration is which creatures and spells to include in order to give you the best chance of winning the game. The next thing to consider is mana base: what colors of mana do you need to cast said creatures and spells, how much of it should you put in your deck, and in what ratio? After the completion of these two steps (which can consist of nearly innumerable substeps), the rest of the deckbuilding process is mostly mechanical. You grab the desired creatures/spells/nonbasic lands from your collection (or acquire them from your local card shop or the Internet) and populate the remaining slots with whatever basic lands you happen to have lying around.

It's in this last part that I personally differ from most of the Magic players I know. As I've written before, I put a lot of thought into basic lands, especially the art. In fact, I make it a point of pride not to include more than one basic land type with the same art from the same set in my decks (unless it's a limited event and I'm under a time crunch to finish my decklist, but even then I'll still take some time for aesthetic tinkering). Maybe it's this obsession with aspects of the game that have nothing to do with the actual gameplay that make me a less effective Magic player than most people I play with. But then again, that only makes me a MORE effective Magic aficionado.

Another thing I appreciate about basic lands is that since they describe common geographical features, their art could come from pretty much anywhere. Which Magic player among you hasn't come across a particularly breathtaking vista, looked through your thumbs and forefingers at right angles, and thought, "That sure would go great on a Plains/Island/Swamp/Mountain/Forest card!" I know Magic artists must have those thoughts, or else it's the world's biggest coincidence that Theros Island #237 looks exactly like an iconic beach in Baja, Mexico (see above).

I've certainly had those thoughts, especially as I travel throughout my hometown of Los Angeles, CA (hence the Hometown tag on this post, which was previously reserved for a baseball related project). Thanks to the magic of smartphones (pun most definitely intended), I was able to capture five images that I think epitomize the five basic land types in Magic, as they are found in LA. And thanks to the magic of MTG Cardsmith, I was able to plug those images into a realistic Magic card frame to see what an LA-based set might actually look like. Here are the five cards:

This is a picture of Janice's Green Valley, a section of the Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area (notice how it's very clearly not referred to as a "Park"). There's a bit of a disconnect here, since there is a lot of green in this card - both in the name of the location and the color scheme of the image itself - while Plains tap for white mana. But it is also very clearly a picture of a plains, and it wouldn't be the first card of its type to be dominated by a grassy field.

I took this picture while standing on a cliff somewhere in Malibu, in the northwestern part of Los Angeles County. It was surprisingly difficult to find a stretch of coastline in LA that wasn't dominated by tourists on the beach, oceanfront property, or the Pacific Coast Highway. You can still see some of these elements in the background, but the focus is clearly on the crashing waves and the majestic cliffs. That's not to say that I feel architecture should be wholly absent from basic land art, but I wanted to focus on the geography in this first set of images.

I stumbled upon this marshy tract of land in Franklin Canyon, a hidden hiking oasis in the heart of Beverly Hills, and I have yet to come across anywhere else in the LA area that looks quite as likely to produce black mana. California is in a drought of epic proportions, after all, and without water, a swamp is really just a patch of dirt. I'm pretty sure this area also has some green mana, since soon after taking this picture, I was chased from the scene by the unmistakable sounds of a nearby Hornet Nest.

This was actually the hardest clean image for me to find. While LA is a decidedly mountainous environment, most of the ones you see are of the shrub-covered, rolling hills variety, rather than the stark jagged peaks preferred by Magic artists. And even if you find one that is appropriately majestic, there's usually a freeway or a bunch of power lines or an upscale neighborhood in the way. This particular outcropping can be found on the Solstice Canyon trail, just miles from the ruins of an abandoned mansion that would make a pretty sweet nonbasic land in its own right... but that's a project for another time.

Unlike my search for an adequate mountain, it was pretty easy to find a grouping of trees that could pass for a forest. This wealth of options allowed me to get picky about such aspects as lighting, and it was the mint lens flare that put this image over the top for me. These trees are also in the Kenneth Hahn Area, right before the main entrance. (If you look really hard at the bottom right corner, you can see the chain link fence that marks the border of the not-park.)


Maybe these examples will get you thinking about how normal everyday sights can form the basis of a fantasy setting. Or maybe they just gave you an increased appreciation for the existing art on basic lands. Or maybe not on both counts. Either way, I hope you enjoyed this tour around my hometown, seen through the lens of Magic's most common card type.