[Discussion-Strategy Issues] Correct number of Basic Lands?

[Kerz]

With the recent surge of powerful permanent land hosers (Back to Basics, Crucible, and to a lesser extent Blood Moon) in the type one metagame, Basic Lands are more important than ever. Keeping the never-faulting huge amounts of Wastelands in mind, I ask how many Basic Lands should be the minimum for Control, Aggro, Combo*, and all the types in between?

I realize that the number will be generally different for every deck. I am looking basically for a rule of thumb regarding this aspect of manabase constuction.

Would you feel safe running a deck with zero basic land?

*Most Combo decks can't afford any basic land, nor do they need to take them into effect in their gameplan. TPS is an exeption to this, though.

[Nameless]

Personally, I could give a crap less about all the possible hosers running around, it won't make me play more basic Islands.

I play with half a dozen ways to stop Blood Moond and Back to Basics, I use my own Crucibles and try to keep thiers out of play, and I gernally find that to be enough.

Though it is also probably very important to note that I use Green over Red in various builds of my 4CC, and Back to Basics/Blood Moon can't stack up against a few Rays of Revelation.  I mean really, you can only counter so many of them when you're loosing 2 for 1 card advantage and expect to win every 'counter war' over it against a Control deck.

(As an aside, funny thing about using Rays to kill B2B is that 90% of the time they don't even bother countering it even if they have one, they just see the Flashback and say 'Screw it.' and don't bother.)

Really then, I think it all depends on what you're trying to accomplish with your deck that warrants the inclusion/exclusion of basic lands.

[ELD]

I feel dragon should at least run a single swamp.  I have seen it lose to B2B and Bloodmoon when it really doesn't need to.  As for control decks, I've been fine running 2 basic islands in both my 4c Tog and Control Slaver decks.

[jpmeyer]

From what I've found, you really need at least 5 or 6 basics if you want to be able to deal with Crucible of Worlds.  Anything less than that and it tends to lock you down for too long and your opponent just pulls too far ahead.

[bebe]

I played four basic islands at Ontario Vintage. Had I not , Crucibles would have locked me down. Every deck I played had them and I don't play with them. I lost only one match all day and that was because of an active Library. Never drew any Wastes of my own.
On another note I find that five fetches in a u/g deck is just about perfect if you use Brainstorms and Sylvans.
I wonder why Sylvan is not used in these builds more as it really functions well with Brainstorm to ensure good draws if use fetches.

[Nameless]

From what I've found, you really need at least 5 or 6 basics if you want to be able to deal with Crucible of Worlds.  Anything less than that and it tends to lock you down for too long and your opponent just pulls too far ahead.

I'd certainly agree 100% with that, and it's why I'm not sitting back touting that it's not an issue at all.  Back to Basics and Blood Moon aren't problems...  Crucible of Worlds, on the other hand, certainly can be devistating.  Basically, either you run a lot of basics (being 5-6+) or you hope you can counter/Duress the little bastard before it hits the playing field.  While Crucible may not, in and of itself, win games all the time it certainly has taken more then its fair share, and the tempo advantage it can create had claimed a rather large pile of victims itself.

I played four basic islands at Ontario Vintage. Had I not , Crucibles would have locked me down. Every deck I played had them and I don't play with them. I lost only one match all day and that was because of an active Library. Never drew any Wastes of my own.
On another note I find that five fetches in a u/g deck is just about perfect if you use Brainstorms and Sylvans.
I wonder why Sylvan is not used in these builds more as it really functions well with Brainstorm to ensure good draws if use fetches.

Actually, Sylvan Libary is still used...  Just not as openly as you might think.  As I mentioned earlier, I use Green instead of Red, and a Sylvan takes the slot of my 4th Brainstorm in 4CC.  This being the case, I can attest to the fact that not only is it insane with fetchlands (with or without a Crucible of your own in play), but that morphing up an Angel with Sylvan in play invokes card scooping with lightning speed.

EDIT:  Sorry about the double post, could a friendly Mod merge these, please?  =P

The "Edit" button on the top right of your posts is your friend
-- Toad

[Wollblad]

I will continue to hold on to the Stax issue which perhaps represent the most effective use of CoW. Here two basic lands are the absolute minimum to have any effect at all because then you can have two "safe" lands and play a third one to play something even if Trinisphere is on the table. But still it is only a matter of a limit and you have to do something very constructive with that three mana, for example play Rebuild or just simply win. To get a real advantage you need more like four or five basic lands so you don't have to use your fetch lands to find your basic lands.

[Dante]

I played Dragon at Gencon with two basics (1 swamp, 1 Island) and found that it was enough to deal with a full set of strips, but NOT really enough to deal with Back to Basics (once Steve got it down, it was pretty much over).

In general, I feel that in a fully powered non-control deck, 1-2 basics (assuming 4-6 fetches) is enough to deal with a full set of strips, crucible or not.

I also feel that 5-6 is the proper amount really needed to play your full game against back to basics.

Bill