It seems there are no relevant downsides in Legacy to playing snow-covered lands (let me know if you ever see an Icequake), but you can represent being on something like an Into the North deck by playing snow-covered forests.
It's a very marginal benefit, but every possible edge can help in competitive play.
Downside: they look like crap
I think that in the Salvation thread of Death and taxes, there were some people advocating that way of playing.
It's on the same line as playing wasteland or port first rather than a withe source before playing vial so your opponent can't put you on D&T if you play a plain and may think that you are playing goblins... (Or merfolk if they play wastelands).
But I agree with the above poster, the advantage gained is so thin that i will keep playing my 3rd edition jesper myfrors plains .
I thought Scrying Sheets was the go-to 'we should play more Snow cards' card.
"I'm happy for you Into the North and I'munna let you resolve, but Scrying Sheets draws into one of the best 20/20s of all time"
The thing of it is, the upshot is so meager that it's really hard to find anything that warrants their inclusion in the first place. If Into the North were worth playing, there are arguably stronger cards that see no play without begging the question; after all, we can cast Nature's Lore to go get Bayou, but no one really does.
Land ramp has the same problem as discard, right - by itself, it doesn't really do anything and it's a terrible topdeck. Obviously that does not mean that mana acceleration sucks, it just means that we've long since accepted that it works best when it's tacked onto a permanent instead of a spell, like an artifact (something something Mox) or a creature, even if it's easily outclassed like Birds of Paradise.
I realize Into the North is a specific example trying to describe a general one; however, what really is the biggest haymaker you can land with snow cards? (This has nothing to do with anything but I have the weirdest urge to stand up from my cubicle and shout "Snow time, Synergy". I probably won't.)
Into the North fetches Dark Depths... I mean, it's not like it's a completely useless tutor, there was a deck in one of the last BoM trials that was UG dark depths and had into the north. It won the trial, so it must not've been terrible. TBH, if someone plays a snow basic in a legacy event, I'm more likely to put them on reanimator/gifts style decks than anything else, since the traditional use for snow basics in competitive play has been as a gifts target.
Pretty much. I mean, I could put in a Snow Swamp and Snow Forest into my really B/G heavy builds and fake Dark Depths... or I could run lands that are intimidatingly handsome.
In seriousness, there's a lot of tricky mindgames you can do with your deck that have little to no functional difference from the standard. From running "off color" fetches to splits of functionally identical cards to whatever else I don't really care. More to the point is that there's a lot of things you can do, and there's a fine line between a clever ruse and your opponent determining you to be a ridiculous idiot.
Into the North is worth playing in 12-Post if you're playing Dark Depths, though you'll of course want your Forests to be snow-covered then.
Running snow-covered basics when your deck can represent something else with them is a tiny reward/zero risk smart move that some players do.
Posting about it on a public forum has negative value to be polite.
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You very likely can build it without spending any money, just out of what you already have.
An example with my (very large) list in a visual form
I have accidentally used snow lands from time to time and had opponents query me about it. I wonder if I was able to jedi them into thinking I had something up my sleeve.
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Sixty per...wait, what? I don't know what to make of your percentages there.
Also, I was judging a lot of sealed during Odyssey, Onslaught, and Mirrodin blocks. The venue had quite a few original snow lands mixed in with the other basics in their public box, and we occasionally had issues with teenagers who had not been around for Ice Age accidentally using snow-covered lands not even knowing such a thing existed. Then you would get some salty veteran hoping to get a freebie, calling the neophyte for cheating. That soured me a lot on tournament culture.
And then there was the punk who had convinced his opponent (and tried to convince me, lying face to face) that he had killed the guy with Price of Progress. Granted. His opponent had a miserable Withering Wisps/protection from black deck. But all those Snow-covered Swamps were basic lands.
Snow lands are a festering scabies pustule on the middle-aged ass of Magic rules.
"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."
"Politicians are like diapers. They should be changed often and for the same reason."
"Governing is too important to be left to people as silly as politicians."
"Politicians were mostly people who'd had too little morals and ethics to stay lawyers."
Of the meager jedi mindtricks that you can build into your deck, sometimes the most simple can be the most effective. Especially ones that impact turn one or turn two decisions. But Snow Lands? There are three possible routes for mindtricks, all of which are easily seen through or ignored and have no impact on the early game. If anyone actually falls for the Snow Lands, whether a mindtrick or a rules punt, they might actually be retarded. Though, I am a charitable man, so I wrote up this guide for said idiots...
1) Snow-Covered Lands are not non-basic lands.
2) If your opponent plays a Snow-Covered Plains... Your opponent is possibly playing Scrying Sheets. Give them a blue scratch-and-sniff sticker and congratulate them on their deck choice in the event that they do play Scrying Sheets.
3) If your opponent plays a Snow-Covered Mountain.... Your opponent is possibly playing Skred. The thing to be careful of is that Skred can potentially deal 3 (or more) damage to a creature. Which is huge for red and can be a pretty big shock if you're not used to it. Keep an eye out for inefficient synergistic options that may work with Skred to let it hit you directly. They may not be playing those inefficient synergistic options though, so you may have to play it safe and remember that they could draw a low mana cost direct damage creature removal spell at any time
4) If your opponent plays a Snow-Covered Forest, Swamp, or Island... You're possibly playing against Into the North. This is probably the trickiest of the three to identify as you can never count it out since there's only 48 to 75 completely identifying cards associated with Into the North in any deck running it depending on the build. You kind of just have to always play as though it's a possibility that they may have Dark Depths in their deck. Your best bet if you see a deck with one of these basic lands and still aren't sure after game one if they have Into the North in their deck is to sideboard in all your copies of Extract so that you know exactly what they're playing.
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Brian Fantana: Oh yeah.
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Ron Burgundy: Brian, I'm gonna be honest with you, that smells like pure gasoline.
Brian Fantana: They've done studies, you know. 60% of the time, it works every time.
Can anyone post the UG Dark Depths build or even a link to it?
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