The Palatial Estate

Land: Not very exciting. Can it be made more exciting?

To make it slightly more exciting, I'm also including my mana-producing artifacts.

10 Mountains
11 Islands
1 Sol Ring
1 Winding Canyon
1 Strip Mine
1 Vivid Crag
1 Vivid Creek
1 Mana Vault
1 Reliquary Tower
1 Riptide Laboratory
1 Faerie Conclave
1 Soaring Seacliff
1 Spinerock Knoll
1 Izzet Boilerworks
1 Cascade Bluffs
1 Izzet Signet
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Shivan Reef
1 Evolving Wilds
1 Terramorphic Expanse
1 Grixis Panorama

A few notes:
1) I've had very little trouble color-fixing in the past, and I'm trying to be more minimalist in land selections. The Steam Vents are in my Elemental Shaman deck, since it is the only Island in my collection I can search up with Igneous Pouncer. Believe me, I am getting better use out of it there!

2)With 2 colors, anything more than a couple mana in each color is probably unnecessary. Most of the spells in the deck will either need 1 or 2 of the required color, perhaps 1 of each. No big worries.

3)Hopefully I'm not going crazy with Mana Vault. I've heard some horror stories…and once I get Fatesticher running concurrently with the Vault perhaps I'll write some horror stories of my own. This is how I ended up self-banning Curiosity. But we'll see…the right cards may never come up!

Revealing the land cards near the beginning of the process serves a practical purpose. Whenever I begin construction, the card choices are inevitably overwhelming. A little voice starts calling in the back of my head. From the prehistoric, lizard part of my brain.

"Cut some land! Cut some land!"

Never listen to this lizard. Mana screw is never fun, and it is even more never fun in a 100-card singleton deck. Always better to have too much land than not enough. I've tried to put in more "fetch" lands to get the best of both worlds…two land slots that combine into a single actual land drop. We'll see how it goes.

But regardless, these land choices are now LOCKED IN STONE. Like Excalibur.

So until Arthur comes along (and he's still resting up with the unicorns in Avalon), I can focus on the rest of my deck in sublime acceptance of the current land count.

40 more cards to go!