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.

A's vs. Royals 2015

I'll update this post with more thoughts about the epic rivalry that has been sparked between the A's and the Royals this season, but let's start things off with a picture that adequately describes the most recent dust-up.

UPDATE: A five game suspension and a couple of undisclosed fines. That's how chapter one of the great A's vs. Royals unwritten rules-a-thon 2015 officially ends. Yordano Ventura gets one of the fines for beaning Brett Lawrie (pictured, right) in response to a "good hard slide" that ended up injuring Royals shortstop Alcides Escobar. Meanwhile, Kelvin Herrera (pictured, left) gets the suspension and the other fine for throwing behind Lawrie's head, even after it appeared that all the on-field retaliation was finished.

The tensions between these two clubs date back to last year's Wild Card game, a brutal extra-innings affair, where Kansas City simultaneously put a pin in Oakland's late season collapse, and exposed Jon Lester's issues with the running game for all the world to see. Actually, the tensions can be traced all the way back to the 60's when the Athletics franchise left Kansas City for Oakland. But the funny part about these particular tensions is that the player whose actions sparked this little fracas wasn't even with the A's last October, let alone in 1967.

Brett Lawrie has a bit of a reputation as a badass - just look at his arm tats and warrior eye black - so maybe some preconceived notions had something to do with the Royals getting all bent out of shape. But judging by how calmly Lawrie reacted after getting hit by Yordano Ventura, it's clear that he has an understanding of baseball's unwritten rules. If something you did on the field is perceived as dirty or unnecessarily rough, you can expect some retaliation. Lawrie clearly expected the plunking and he silently walked to first base, even as Ventura gave him the stink-eye the whole way (a look he usually reserves for Mike Trout). It wasn't until after a 100-mph fastball from Herrera came whizzing behind Lawrie's head that he started showing some emotion, and with good cause.

This week in the fantasy baseball league of which I'm the commissioner, I posted the poll pictured at right. Take a moment to mull over the choices and sound off in the comments or on Twitter (@Hunter_S_Batman) with your opinion. However, after reviewing the facts, I realize there's one other option that I didn't include. Remember that Ventura's beaning of Lawrie and Herrera's rogue suspension-inducing pitch took place in two different games and were separated by one very important hit batter: Lorenzo Cain was hit in the foot by A's starter Scott Kazmir on a pitch that appeared to be unintentional. Or at least it appeared so to the umpires, because no punishment was issued. That is, until Royals manager Ned Yost stormed out of the dugout, ran his mouth, and was immediately tossed from the game. Yost clearly was under the impression that the A's wanted to continue the beef, and his ejection likely put that thought in the minds of some of his players, one of whom nearly took an opposing player's head clean off.

So I don't know if two-thirds of the fines/suspensions that were issued by MLB due to this mess would have gone away if Ned Yost had just turned around and walked back down the dugout steps after Cain's HBP. But it's worth considering another option to add to the poll above: Ned Yost is an unapolagetic hothead who let all that bunting affect his judgment. We'll see what happens when these two teams square off again in late June, but unless Kelvin Herrera waits until then to serve his suspension, I can't see how tempers aren't gonna flare...

Thoughts (and Charts!) About Opening Day Rosters 2015

I haven't written any blog posts recently because I've been spending these last few weeks creating content for other corners of the interweb. (Forget for a moment that these corners are both owned by the same giant corporation.) That's right, the ryskmonger42 channel is finally getting some love, at least from its creator - the subscriptions stopped coming in when my Batman Power Hour got blocked (password is batman). And then while I haven't been recording myself playing video games or editing that gameplay footage or messing around with musical mashups, I've been putting the finishing touches on my 40 Man Rosters document.

Now that I've got all the info entered as of opening day, I've started drawing some broad strokes conclusions about the state of MLB's rosters. The first thing I looked at was the distribution of pitchers and position players on each active roster. When I watch games with the uninitiated, one of the most frequent questions I get is about roster construction and the pitcher-to-batter ratio. I say that for the majority of teams it's 12 pitchers and 13 batters, and the research I did into this year's crop of opening day rosters confirms this: 23 teams or 77% follow this model, as you can see in the chart below. The other two permutations we see - one with an extra pitcher, one with an extra batter - are so infrequent that it's worth just listing the outliers. The five teams carrying an eight-man bullpen are the Orioles, Blue Jays, Indians, Mets, and defending World Champion Giants. The two teams with an extra piece of bench depth are the White Sox and Dodgers.

The next factor I examined was the number of rookies each team has on its active roster. I prepared a chart for this too, and if you skip ahead you'll see that there's a big cluster of teams with either one or two rookies, no team had more than six (which comes out to nearly a quarter of the big league roster), and only one team had no rookies in the big league dugout on opening day (the Miami Marlins). Looking at the two teams with six, it's clear that clubs can stockpile rookies for very different strategic reasons: the Braves are in a self-professed rebuilding period and are breaking in some future regulars, while the Blue Jays want to contend and are looking to capture some lightning in a bottle from their talented youngsters. Keep in mind that I'm relying on Baseball-Reference.com's rookie status calculations, as I wouldn't want to determine how many days each 2014 first year player had on his team's active roster.

Usually I would do a tally of how many new acquisitions are on each team's active roster, but I feel like I've done enough showcasing of newly acquiried talent for one offseason. This next list is a little more targeted and less broadly indicative of MLB trends as the previous two, but since I went to all the trouble of including Cot's Baseball Contracts info into my document, I made a list of each team's highest-paid player going into the season. In the notes section, I pointed out which contracts were newly signed for 2015 and whether the initial contract was signed by a different team than a player's current team. I also added an extra player in the notes section for two teams, the Tigers and the Giants, both of whose highest salaried players quickly went on the disabled list to start the season. Not mentioned in the notes section are players whose salaries are being partially paid for by the teams that traded them, such as Matt Kemp, Trevor Cahill, and Prince Fielder starting in 2016.

As a bonus addendum to the above lists and charts, I want to share some observations I had when going through the minor league affiliates for 2015. As you may know, there are six levels of the minor leagues. Every team has an affiliate of the four highest skill levels: AAA (Triple A), AA (Double A), A+ (Class A Advanced), and A (Class A). All but eight teams have an A- (Short Season A) affiliate, and all but two teams have a Rookie level affiliate in either the Gulf Coast League or the Arizona League. Also, 17 teams have affiliates in one of the other two Rookie leagues, and it's one exception to this rule that brings me to my first observation:

- The Royals are the only team to have an affiliate in both of these aforementioned non-Florida-or-Arizona Rookie leagues: the Appalachian League and the Frontier League.

- Minor league teams are often named after their parent club. The teams whose name appears on the most affiliates (not counting GCL and AZL) are as follows: Braves (4), Cardinals, Yankees, and Mets (3), Red Sox, Cubs, and Blue Jays (2).

- There are two affiliates who share the name of a major league team with which they are not affiliated: the Indianapolis Indians (PIT AAA) and the Spokane Indians (TEX A-).

- The Angels are the only team to have two affiliates with the same name that is NOT the name of the parent club: the AAA Salt Lake Bees and the Class A Burlington Bees. I think it's safe to say, AAAAAUUUUGGGGHHH!!! NOT THE BEES!!!