Basic land counting

Basic Land Counting
Mechanic
Introduced	Alpha
Last used	Avatar: The Last Airbender
Text	... number of <basic land type> ... for each <basic land type>
Scryfall Statistics
cards

Basic land counting is a mechanic that creates an effect equal to the number of basic lands of a certain type the player controls.

History

All colors have access to this, but it is primary in red, secondary in black and green, and tertiary in white and blue.

In older ages of design, scaling based on lands was more common and it was nearly as likely to count opposing lands as one's own. These were often hoser effects, and as those became less common designs, so did this mechanic.

One of the most famous uses of this was in Torment, with Cabal Coffers and Mutilate supported with a reprint of Corrupt. The latter would be reprinted as part of several cycles while also spawning two mechanical call-backs.

Since the change in border, there have multiple cycles of land counters: Shadowmoor, Magic 2010, Zendikar, Journey into Nyx, Brothers' War and Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Naturally, the effect is maximized when playing in mono-color or close to it, both in Limited and Constructed. While there has been in increase of typed nonbasic lands making it possible to be powerful in multicolor decks, the costing from the power ceiling tends to make them unappealing most sixty-card formats. The exception are spells that amount to being single-target removal, which scale up in targets with the game but are cheap to cast.

Although Wastes has no basic land type, the technology does exist to create cards that count Wastes; they use the templating "for each land you control named Wastes." So far, only one has been printed: Walker of the Wastes.

Basic land counting is often used in conjunction with star creatures.

See also

• Domain
• Sweep