The Pro Tour wrapped up this weekend with an incredible victory from Christoffer Larsen in a set of five games seriously worth watching. Commentators and pros agree: Standard is in a great place once more, and the top 8 was filled with a variety of innovative decks and strategies filled with new cards from the expansion the PT is named after.

The drama of Magic: the Gathering’s highest profile event is obvious, but as great as the commentary team is, there’s one thing that generally goes under-discussed: the basic land choice of the pros who make it to the top tables. Especially at this tournament, picking the right deck was the difference between success and failure, but picking the right art for your basic lands was how you bore your soul to the viewers at home, how you let your opponents know your aesthetic preferences. So once again, join us at Cardboard by the Numbers as we explore the basic lands that won Pro Tour Lorwyn Eclipsed.

For those who have been following this series, there’s plenty of familiar landscapes here. Most players were limited to just a few basics in their decks thanks to the Standard format’s ubiquity of dual lands and lack of punishments for expensive mana bases. When they had to use a basic, they opted for the classics, with the Unhinged cycle better represented than Badgermole Cub in the Top 8.

Our winner, Christoffer Larsen, had the most basic lands of anyone in his deck. Perhaps that’s why he won? The 11 Unstable Swamps in his winning Dimir Excruciator list are hard to fault. Not my preference, but there is something to be said about Magic’s first borderless basics.

Second place finisher Toni Portoland is famous for his basic land choices, at least here at Cardboard by the Numbers. At PT Lorwyn, he maintains his good reputation with a lineup of eight unique pieces of art across his basics, featuring a Beta Mountain, some un-lands, and, most notably, a rarely-seen Rob Alexander Mountain and a Don Thompson Forest, both Arena League promos from the mid 2000s. These are fantastic choices, and I hope to see more pros delve through the backlog of the game’s 1,883 unique basic lands in future PTs.

Particularly in Standard, there’s little advantage to be gained by maintaining a suite of basic lands with uniform art. Indeed, even in Thoughtseize formats, the benefits of obscuring which basic lands one drew are rarely worth the aura to be gained by showing off not just one of your favorite Mountains, but two or three.

Luis Salvatto is a familiar face to long-time players, and his choice of basic land is similarly comforting to see at the top tables for those who have been slapping cardboard for years. His set of APAC Promo Swamps featuring a graveyard in Japan were leant to him by fellow pro David Rood, who himself made Top 8 most recently at PT Final Fantasy rocking Mountains and Islands from the same cycle.

Cyprien Tron was the only Top 8 player running one of the boogeymen coming into the tournament: Bant Airbending. The deck only runs Plains, and Tron used the opportunity to run the Borderless Celestial Plains 262 from Edge of Eternity, 2025’s most popular new basic land per a survey by Cardboard by the Numbers. I’d say that this Plains should be an honorary Urza’s land based on the performance of its pilot.

What are your favorite lands of the bunch? Who do you think is the style winner of the Pro Tour? Let us know in the comments or on our social channels, and thanks so much for reading! If you’ve enjoyed this article, sign up for our newsletter and be sure to follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Threads!!

Miles Atherton is the editor-in-chief of “Cardboard by the Numbers” and has been playing Magic since 2006. Since studying Agricultural Economics at UC Davis, he’s built a career as an award-winning marketing executive in the entertainment industry with a love of data journalism and now consulting for White Box Entertainment. He’s also written for Anime Trending, Anime Buscience, Anime News Network, and Crunchyroll News, serving as Executive Editor of the latter from 2016 to 2021.