From: csivils@blkbox.com (Craig Sivils)
Subject: Visions bounce lands, 2nd thoughts......
Date: Tue, 1 Jul 1997 21:01:26 GMT

For quite a while I took heat for my defense of the mirage fetch
lands.  Now some people are actually starting to play them.

With mirage fetch lands, I kinda liked them from the start so it was
easy to defend them and not worry about the heat.


But now I'm starting to see some merit in the worst scorned lands
since homelands tri-lands.

In fact, I've built a few decks which pack FOUR of these suckers.

It comes down to the fact that glaciers have spoiled us.  But you
can't always have thawing glaciers.

Glaciers are not legal in the mivilite format, and glaciers will be
gone when tempest hits.

In a strange way, the bounce lands sit the opposite side of thawing
glaciers from fetch lands.  A fetch land emulates a thawing glaciers
ability to 1. provide a selection of mana colors and 2. thin your
deck.  But because a fetch land is not reuseable it does not generate
card advantage.

Now, bounce lands don't provide a selection of mana colors and neither
do they thin your deck.  And if you get really technical, they don't
generate "card advantage" BUT, they simulate it.

It takes two lands to produce the mana that 1 bounce land produces.
Technically not card advantage since you don't have the extra land,
but it does let you do more with less lands.  (before I get a
gazillion mail messages, yes I'm aware that one ld spell would take
out two mana).

IF you don't have a thawing glacier, then many decks suffer in the
mid-late game because they don't have the same mana-build up that they
would have if they had been using a thawing glacier over the course of
the game.  The bounce lands can provide a similar increase in mid-late
game mana by getting more mana out of the land cards that you do draw.

And maybe it's all in how you look at it, but if you think of the
bounce lands as baby thaw's then their drawbacks start seeming more
like, "of course", rather than ouch!!!!

A thawing glacier means you cannot play a mana producing land that
turn.  The turn you use the thaw, you must tap another mana producing
land.  The land gained by a thaw comes into play tapped.

In a vaguely parallel way this is similar to the loss of a land for
one turn when you play the bounce land the fact that the bounce land
comes into play tapped.

Two other factors to think about when trying to do an analysis on the
bounce lands: The proponderance of winter orbs in the current t2
environment AND the number of games decided by a slight mana
advantage.

I'm starting to reconsider just how "sucky" these lands are.
Especially in the MIVILITE format.

Craig