One of the things I always have the most trouble with when putting together a Magic deck is finding the right basic lands to put into a deck. On MTG Arena or Magic Online this is a no-brainer, since it's so easy to get a favorite set or two of basics and use them across multiple decks. Your options are a lot more finite in paper and when you end up with a wide swath of different lists you want to play with, it gets harder to choose the exact kinds you want. It's easy to want full sets of full arts or a specific kind of old-school basic, but there's only so much availability, and it makes you want to go all out on some special ones to really make your deck that much more special.

Many players go about this in different ways. Beta basics are always popular choices and Guru, Euro, and APAC promo lands are always great ways to show off in a high-end fashion. For others, it's merely finding a beloved old frame land or else going out of their way to get a particular foil. Nowadays, though, there's another means to make this happen: Secret Lairs.

I don't think there's any beating around the bush in saying that Secret Lairs have proven somewhat controversial since they started releasing. Some players love them, others can't stand them. One of the bigger points of both intrigue and consternation has been in the basic land drops. Usually, these special Secret Lairs end up being $30 for five basic lands, which sounds absurd on its face. However, time has proven that in most cases, the lands in these drops roughly maintain their value and provide some really cool specialty ways to up your deck's style without resorting to picking up judge foil basics or the like.

We've now had numerous basic land lairs four years into the program and I want to take a look at the hottest ones. Really examine which ones people are going after the most. As such, I'm going to be checking out and discussing the top 8 basic land Secret Lair drops, plus one additional one that stuck out like a sore thumb.

So first, let's lay some ground rules for how we're going to do this, since as is typical with Secret Lairs, there's a lot of weird one-offs and exceptions. The golden rule is that everything must come from an actual dedicated land Secret Lair drop with one of each basic land. This helps focus the list on the whole, but as such this excludes the following:

• Lair drops with only one land (see various artist series drops)
• Bonus cards such as the foil Jumpstart basics or the Heads I Win, Tails You Lose basic land.
• Lair drops that only make up a single basic land type. This is mostly because things get weird with the astrology lands and there's also that one recent The Mountain Goats one with several different art Mountains.
• I'm also skipping ones from the most recent drops as they're still getting into peoples' hands and so prices haven't had a chance to settle or are simply unavailable. This includes PixelLands_v02.jpg, Meditations on Nature, and Paradise Frost.

In short: we're taking the simplest approach to things. In the interest of simplicity, I'm also making this list based on averages listed on MTGStocks.com (as I couldn't pull many values here on CoolStuffInc.com) for the foil and foil-etched versions. This is due to the fact that the Godzilla Lands and Eldraine Wonderland basics only come in foil and it's probably not fair to stack them up against non-foil counterparts.

Let's dive in, starting off with something a little...different.

Dishonorable Mention: Secret Lair x Arcane: Lands ($6.63)

Normally I wouldn't put in a dishonorable mention, but in this case, I felt like I had to point this out. When I totaled up the values on all the Secret Lair basics, almost all of them were at least - or close to - $30 or more total. That adds up considering that's usually around the going rate for a full cycle, though it might be a bit higher for foils. Still, when they were all stacked against one another, I was absolutely dumbfounded at how low the Arcane lands were. All of them are barely over a dollar, making for a truly abysmally low value Secret Lair. It's a real buyer beware story, but hey, if you're an Arcane or League of Legends fan, at least you can get some cool basic lands for cheap!

8. Shades Not Included ($48.11)

Of all the lands on this list, these are probably my personal favorites. Over the last couple of years, I've really come to love synthwave music for the sounds, but also for the whole visual aesthetic that tends to come with it. That look came to Magic in full swing here with the Shades Not Included lair, which notably included artwork by Ben Schnuck - a beloved proxy artist in the community. It's great to see Wizards bringing on fan favorites like him, and even more when it brings about extra stylish lands like these.

7. Featuring: Gary Baseman ($48.84)

Gary Baseman was a really cool artist to bring on to do a bunch of cards, and especially basic lands. He's known for his truly unique visual art style that many of a certain age will no doubt recognize for his past work with the board game Cranium and the children's television show Teacher's Pet. Each of these basics brings Baseman's uniquely surreal cartoon look to the game. It's not going to be everyone's cup of tea, but for those looking to make their decks a little weirder, this is an easy go to, making it among the more sought after drops.

6. Transformers: One Shall Stand, One Shall Fall ($49.05)

If you were a child of the 80's, Transformers were huge and all over the place. This continued into the 90s a little with the likes of Beast Wars, but by then the hype was certainly waning a bit. That all changed in the late 2000s when Michael Bay started putting out some of the biggest blockbusters ever on the back of this popular kids series. The toy line - as well as the films and television series that came with them - has a rabid collector following, so it stands to reason that these specialty basic lands would follow in that trend of popular collector items. It certainly helps as well that there are so many Transformers legends thanks to The Brothers' War which drives the demand up even further on these, so as to have fittingly on-theme lands.

5. The Unfathomable Crushing Brutality of Basic Lands ($54.53)

There are a ton of Magic players out there who fit the groupings of metalheads, goths, punks, and so on. This is the kind of basic land set that really appeals to a lot of that player base - myself included! I bought two of these sets myself to use for my primary Commander deck, and it's clear that others enjoy them on the same level. Their popularity didn't go unnoticed either and Wizards ended up bringing back the artist for the full art basics in Phyrexia: All Will Be One. There are some who probably prefer the unique feel of these basics to the more Phyrexian ones, however, meaning this lair still maintains its aesthetic flair even when a similar set of basics has also been released since.

4. The Godzilla Lands ($55.24)

Godzilla is about as eternally classic as you can get. Since the original film, Gojira, came out in Japan in 1954, it's become a monstrous franchise that's become incredibly pervasive in pop culture. It runs the full gamut from iconic classics to modern blockbusters to the schlockiest B-movie trash you can imagine, and is beloved for the wide range of variety it brings to the table. Even today, there's multiple films and series releasing around the property such as Godzilla Minus One, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, and the upcoming Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. Given how popular Godzilla continues to be all these years later, it's no surprise that these five basics - among the first to feature external IPs in the game - are among the most sought after.

3. PixelSnowLands.jpg ($58.92)

The awesome thing about synthwave basics with Shades Not Included is how they're more or less a modern version of a retro style. That's more or less the same here, where pixel art has become more and more common as the years have gone by, with artists who grew up in the 80s and 90s paying homage to the classic sprite art video games many of them grew up with. In this case, these basics are made to look very similar to how it would've looked to open a window on, well, Windows back in the early 90s, giving them a very particular aesthetic flair for a certain kind of crowd. The fact that these are snow basics is just icing on the cake, as those kinds of basics get way less love than your standard basics do.

2. Special Guest: Kozyndan: The Lands ($59.01)

Kozyndan is a couple who do all kinds of cool art with one another. For Secret Lair, the pair brought a uniquely Japanese flair to their artworks while being uniquely its own. There's a certain sense of calm simplicity to them while simultaneously maintaining a striking visual flair. I don't really have too much to say on these other than they're cool as hell and it's not surprising at all that people fell in love with these. If you put them into any deck, they'll make it stand out that much more among the rest.

1. The Tokyo Lands ($74.54)

Japan has always had this sort of nerdy appeal thanks to video games and anime being so pervasive within nerd culture. Couple that with the cool factor of the city of Tokyo itself, and you get some of the most easily in-demand basic lands you can imagine. There's a cool style and look to them that doesn't just appeal to your average Magic player but can even make a random person find them extremely cool and unique. I'm a little bit surprised they make the top of the list, if I'm being honest, but seeing them here, it makes all the sense in the world for such an iconic setting to create some of the most in-demand basics of all time.

Paige Smith

Twitter: @TheMaverickGal

Twitch: twitch.tv/themaverickgirl

YouTube: TheMaverickGal