Land Tax

Amazing that this card only costs 1 white mana. While other reviews highlighted the obvious Zuran Orb combo, I use Land Tax as a pseudo deck manipulator. The "up to" 3 basic lands allows you effectively regulate your spell-to-mana ratio in real time. Couple this w/ blue spells like Brainstorm, Ponder, Gitaxian Probe, Arcane Denial, and Preordain, and my control factor is in hyper-drive!

I have a bud who runs an extended angel deck based and uses this card with the orb. It can be better i assure you, but it still runs great.

And to Carey, this doesn't only grab plains. It grabs 3 basic lands.

In a way, its better than Ancestral Recall. It only gets you plains, and only at specific times under specific conditions, but those are not hard and it thins your deck to the point that pretty much every card you draw is a spell and you can cast any spell you want to, especially when you use dual lands that are part plains.

Definitly five, one mana makes this freakin' card too good. Ivory tower, Zuron orb, or Land's edge paired with this monster card is too pretty. Not to forget the extra protection from rack em' decks and all those nasty spectors these days. One of my most abused cards ever.

what can one say? true believers know and those in the dark just have to see to believe. the other night i was playing my 1.5 mono white deck with four of these in there against one of the world championship decks from..?..anyway, it was a four color deck with 'survival of the fittest' and 'recurring nightmare.' great deck and i was lucky to win especially when my opponent sideboarded in his 'lobotomy', two of which were used on me in game 3 to rip out my 'aura of silence' and 'wrath of god.' but, not to fear, because my opponent went first and needed four or five mana to get going. of course, i dropped a first turn 'land tax.' by turn five and using a 'tithe' or two i had taken all the plains out of my library except for one! anyway, just an illustration of the power of this card which has been a mainstay for quite some time now. gets only four stars because i don't believe its a comfortable fit with all decks in my humble opinion........