Whats better basic land or non basic land

[tate]

What is best land or non basic land

[guyarney]

It depends on the needs of a given deck.

[Arix]

And, of course, the land in question.

[Lightning1714]

I think basic land would be better. Because you can have as much basic land as you want in a deck. Also that's what puts into play most of your creatures.

[seba1983]

ok so Forest will always be better than Taiga in a red / green deck ?

generaly non basic lads have a lot to offer. many of them are more powerful than basic lands in direct comparison. however there are reasons why basic lands are realy good sometimes too. baic lands are harder to disrupt than non-basics. here is a short list of things you dont want to see if your running almost only non-basics:

Magus of the Moon
Blood Moon
Wasteland
Back to Basics
Ghost Quater

there are others but these see the most competative play.

among the non basics the duals, shock-duals, fetch lands, mishra's factory, mutavault and wasteland see the most competative play by far. there are some excelent utility land though that offer you things few other cards can. here is a short list of my personal favourits:

volrath's stronghold
academy runins
tolerian academy
gaea's cradle
tabernacle at pendril vale
maze of ith
dark depth
serra's sanctum
glacial chasm
strip mine
bazar of bagdad
mishra's workshop
library of alexandria
karakas
rishadan port
ancient tomb
emeria the sky ruins

and some that dont realy see competative play any mre at all but are still awsome for casual:

vitu-garazi the city tree
kjeldoran outpost
lake of the dead
urza's workshop
cabal coffers
kor haven
mikokoro, center of the sea
miren, the moaning well
petrified field


there are many more. generaly non-basic lands will fall into one of two grand categorys. 1. mana fixing (i.e. they produce more than one type of mana) or 2. utility (i.e. they have some special abilitys that let them function a bit like a spell that can not be countered e.g. man-lands - creatures; strip mine - landdestruction etc.)

basic lands however have the added advantage that several cards specificly look for basic lands such as harrow or rampand growth.

in casual you will usualy not need non-basics for your deck to work. hence it often is a question of budget too.

on the whole i totaly agree with guyarney and arix. its a question of context. what deck, what format etc.

neitehr are stricktly better or worse. though dual lands are more or less stricklty better than basic lands they are more vunrable. if no one plays non-basic hate where you play they are better basic lands. then again they cost 30$ a pice as a starting value and can cost a lot more. hence for most people duals are nothing they consider.

[yoyo]

isnt taiga a basic land that has both forest and plains

[seba1983]

no it has basic land types. that is something totaly diffrent to being a basic land. you can only play 4 taiga in your deck and taiga counts as a non-basic land for all purposes.

[guyarney]

Just put 28 Strip Mines in your artifact deck and you'll win every time.

[seba1983]

naa 20 mishra's workshop will do ...

[guyarney]

naa 20 mishra's workshop will do ...

5k worth of land

[Swordcraft]

whoa how come its worth that much

[seba1983]

because its from antiqueties and totaly broken. antiqeties did not have the print size sets have today so the total number of workshops are fewer than modern rares by far. as for the brokenness a land that taps for 3 mana ? do i need to explain why that is utterly broken ? turn 1 trinispheer = double timewalk, turn 1 metal worker = turn 2 win with staff of domination ... the list of broken plays you can do with the workshop goes on ^^

i know i can buy a workshop for about 150 euro in germany so 250$ a pice sounds right ^^