Grounded

Goblin Gardener card art

In Magic, lands matter. A good deal. This month, I'll focus on this card type, referencing the comprehensive rules to do so.

Lands make up ~40% of a given Magic deck, and a deck may contain any number of basic land cards. Other cards are limited to 4 copies (in most variants) or 1 copy (in singleton variants like Commander).

There are two types of lands: basic and nonbasic. The relevant rules:

205.4c Any land with the supertype “basic” is a basic land. Any land that doesn’t have this supertype is a nonbasic land, even if it has a basic land type. 

305.5. Land subtypes are always a single word and are listed after a long dash. Land subtypes are also called land types. Lands may have multiple subtypes. See rule 205.3i for the complete list of land types. Example: “Basic Land — Mountain” means the card is a land with the subtype Mountain. 

305.6. The basic land types are Plains, Island, Swamp, Mountain, and Forest. If an object uses the words “basic land type,” it’s referring to one of these subtypes. An object with the land card type and a basic land type has the intrinsic ability “{T}: Add [mana symbol],” even if the text box doesn’t actually contain that text or the object has no text box. For Plains, [mana symbol] is {W}; for Islands, {U}; for Swamps, {B}; for Mountains, {R}; and for Forests, {G}. See rule 107.4a. See also rule 605, “Mana Abilities.” 

305.8. Any land with the supertype “basic” is a basic land. Any land that doesn’t have this supertype is a nonbasic land, even if it has a basic land type.

Note: older sets (prior to Eighth edition) "didn’t use the word “basic” to indicate a basic land. Cards from those sets with the following names are basic lands and have received errata in the Oracle card reference accordingly: Forest, Island, Mountain, Plains, Swamp, Snow-Covered Forest, Snow-Covered Island, Snow-Covered Mountain, Snow-Covered Plains, and Snow-Covered Swamp."

Don't forget Wastes! This card is a basic land type but with no subtype, which is why it is not mentioned above.

As lands are the resources in the game, powerful ones (some nonbasic lands) can be expensive. More on that later this month. For today, I want to highlight the difference between cards that reference basic lands vs. cards that reference basic land subtype(s). I'll choose one basic land—Forest—as an example. 

There are 33 types of forests in the game. Two are basic: 

The rest are nonbasic. Four examples:

In my above examples, each of the nonbasic lands has two or three subtypes. Forest is always one, with other basic land types being the others. 

There are many cards in Magic that allow you to search your deck for lands. Pay attention to the wording for what it is allowing you to seek:

In the above example, Ranger's Path enables you to get two Forest cards and put them onto the battlefield tapped, while Cultivate enables you to get two basic land cards, put one onto the battlefield tapped, and the other into your hand. Note the difference, and the power, of the wording. 

- Ranger's Path enables you to get even nonbasic lands so long as one of their subtypes is Forest (any of the examples I showed above). You could choose Spara's Headquarters and Wooded Ridgeline, giving you access to four colors of mana on the next turn.

- Cultivate enables you to get any kind of basic land, but only basic. So you could choose one Swamp and one Mountain, but not a nonbasic land like Woodland Chasm.

Other cards like Three Visits or Blanchwood Armor do similar things; both trigger off Forest cards (and not only basic land Forests).  

And cards like Farseek enable you to get any land who has a subtype of Plains, Island, Swamp, or Mountain:

Some cards, like Crop Rotation, enable you to get any land card (basic or nonbasic) from your library:

This is obviously powerful (and a key card in landfall decks), though you must sacrifice a land as an additional cost.

A land needn't have a subtype of Forest to produce green mana. Yavimaya Coast, for example, produces one green or blue mana but does not have the Forest or Island subtypes. Since it is a nonbasic land, none of the cards listed above, except for Crop Rotation, could search for it.

As you build your decks and think about lands (and cards that search for them) to include, look closely at wording and subtypes. They make all the difference.