Originally Posted by
Obfuscate Freely
Horizon Canopy is amazing for Zoo because it helps turn excess land into business spells. One of the major problems with the archetype is that it suffers from manaflood as a game progresses. This is because it has to have enough lands to consistently curve out in the first three turns (this is even more important with the printing of Woolly Thoctar), but cannot afford to offset this with lands that have abilities other than tapping for mana (things like Wasteland, Mishra's Factory, and even Barbarian Ring). Thus, in every game, a full third of your library becomes virtually blank as soon as you draw your third land.
Horizon Canopy easily slots into a RGW manabase without negatively affecting your ability to access all three colors of mana. The benefit is that when you draw your fourth land in a game, if any of those lands are Horizon Canopies, what was a blank draw instead becomes a new draw (and one that will probably be a non-land card). This makes a huge difference in close games, since trading a land for a burn spell or an extra creature is just like drawing an extra card right when you need it.
The life you lose to Canopy is the only cost associated with playing it, and is very rarely problematic. Zoo is one of the most aggressive decks in the format, so few decks are capable of profitably applying pressure to its life total.
