For as long as I’ve been writing about Magic: The Gathering (MTG), I’ve told the tales of the storytelling propensity of the lands, with basic lands being chief among them. They are the Alpha and the Omega of flavorful deckbuilding, the point of departure for inspiration and the final tweak to make things just right.
Magic: The Gathering – Assassin’s Creed has its own set of ten full-art basic lands; four of those artworks also appear in cropped versions in a more traditional layout as part of the Assassin’s Creed Starter Kit. A Reddit post from preview day (with a small correction) lays out the landscapes we see:
With more than 30 years of MTG history, there are many other basic lands to help tell your very own Assassin’s Creed story right alongside, some from settings with the same inspirations as the Assassin’s Creed games. They’ll mesh MTG’s Multiverse with the new Assassin’s Creed cards, and weave a narrative that shares in the best of both franchises.
Plains
The Plains are drawn from Assassin’s Creed Origins (Egypt) and Assassin’s Creed 2 (Renaissance Italy), both civilizations which have inspired Magic sets. That being said, there are even stronger matching choices drawn from outside Amonkhet and the Conspiracy sets.
Egyptian
Situated on the Egyptian plane of Amonkhet, the Showcase Plains that appears in Core Set 2021 tells the story of planeswalker Basri Ket’s homeland. It’s a near perfect-match in feature art and frame to the new work of Assassin’s Creed, as it’s an Amonkhet before Nicol Bolas, and as close to a ‘real’ Egypt as we see in Magic. Even a few years later there is something very contemporary about the Showcase frame of that set, and it fits like a glove here.
Cityscape
Even though Ravnica, one of Magic’s most visited worlds, draws its inspiration from fifteenth-century Prague and Slavic folklore, visually, the sweeping cityscapes match up to what we see in the newest Plains.
The Magic versions just put us, as the viewer, over the city, and the relationship of the two side by side makes for a nice narrative.
Island
Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag (Pirates) and Assassin’s Creed Odyssey (Ancient Greece) are the two storylines chosen to represent the most popular basic land, the Island. Islands are often as straightforward as they come, and these each have some well aligned choices for choosing basics outside the set.
Pirate
Assassin’s Creed is not the first time a pirate ship has appeared on a basic Island, and there are two easy choices to run alongside this new piece by Alexandre Honore.
Both are by Titus Lunter: whether it’s sailing the Forgotten Realms, or simply making it float (Get it? The ship floats on water, but now it’s floating in the air!), either would seamlessly fit in your next Pirate pursuit.
Greek
Assassin’s Creed is, as far as I can tell, the first time a classical statue has appeared as the centerpiece on a basic land. In any case, two of my favorite Greece-inspired landscapes can be found above and below, and would suitably flank the Assassin’s Creed Odyssey basic.
Interestingly enough, as classical as it appears, the work from the original Theros is actually drawn from the Arch at the End of the World in Cabo San Lucas, where I visited with my wife in 2022.
Swamp
Assassin’s Creed Syndicate (Victorian England) and Assassin’s Creed Liberation (Colonial America, Spanish-controlled Louisiana) provide for the two most interesting and creative of the lot, capping two ends of the landscape spectrum, from the super-industrial down to the swampland bayou.
Industry
Buildings are not something often found on Magic’s Swamps, and especially not as the focal point. So for complements, we’re looking both within, to the girders of Art Deco New Capenna, and below, with the underbelly of Ravnica’s sewage system.
This is the hardest work to match, but for me, the most innovative and interesting new land artwork of the entire release.
Wetland
Mangrove and cypress trees are staples of the swamp: in Magic, the real world, and as seen in Assassin’s Creed. There is no shortage of this subject matter across the Swamps of Magic’s past, but few fit the same aesthetic an Assassin’s Creed player might be looking for in cohesive deckbuilding, where high fantasy and highly stylized images just won’t do.
But if we look at the lamplight Will o’ the Wisp of Kamigawa, and the newest Swamp from Modern Horizons 3, we can capture the essence of the new Swamp from two very different places in the multiverse.
Mountain
Adventures across the Holy Land combined with Chronicles’ three different settings (sixteenth-century Ming China, nineteenth-century India, and early Soviet Russia) make for a curious combination, especially when looking for Mountainous makeweights.
Fortress
The first Mountain that came to mind, was, like this newest one, no Mountain at all. From the architecture to the forced perspective, this piece by Muhammad Firdaus for Battle for Baldur’s Gate provides the same feeling as the Damascene building one might approach in the inaugural game.
Vista
Similarly challenging is the Chronicles Mountain. Many of the Mountain views in Magic look over a very fanciful landscape, filled with wild landmasses or unusual ranges. This piece, however, a sunrise on Innistrad, evokes that same sense of discovery present in Chronicles; specific enough that it’s recognizable, but generalized as to be anywhere and everywhere all at once.
Forest
Widely apart in terms of time, from the ninth-century Vikings of the British Isles in Valhalla to late eighteenth-century Colonial America, both Forests offer an opportunity for flavorful enhancements.
Viking
The Norse-inspired set of Kaldheim only provides one option that isn’t covered in snow. It provides a much more ethereal example, akin to what Valhalla might feel like, drawing from the magic and mystery imbued into the culture and its traditions.
Woodland
A colonial mansion at the clearing of a deeply wooded trail will read as ‘American Colonial,’ but for the true ‘American Forest,’ one must look to Steven Belledin’s Forest from Magic 2010. One of the most-reprinted Forests in the history of the game, it’s an amalgamation of real-life Forest experience by the artist, from childhood to adulthood, up and down the East Coast of the United States. He wrote about it in a blog post that’s still as poignant as it was in 2011.
Tell Your Story
Magic: The Gathering – Assassin’s Creed, like so many Magic sets, is a point of departure for storytelling. It takes a rich history of gameplay and narrative and sidles it up next to one of the greatest stories ever told in Magic: The Gathering. The world is your oyster when combining the two, and I wish you the best of luck in telling your own story through your deckbuilding. I can’t wait to hear what you have to say.
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