Pointed Discussion

Strictly a combo card, but very viable as such.

Some very potent decks have been built around this/using this as the main engine.

Works well with Second Sunrise getting back the Ghost Quarter and an extra land. Also goes well with Landfall-Cards like Plated Geopede. Imagine playing a Ghost Quarter on turn four, sacrifice to destroy your land, get a new basic land, then play Second Sunrise to bring all lands back on the battlefield. Having a land count of five vour Plated geopede will be a 11\11 creature.

Agyrem

This is to Stripmine as Path of Exile is to Swords to Plowshares. Only Stripmine was incredible and had no drawbacks, and even then, this card is insane in my playgroup. Hardly any of us use basic lands in our best decks, so I essentially have three Strip Mines in "Killing Gentleman".

Happy Razing, my friends.

I don't think of this as a combo card. This is a destroy your opponent's manabase card. Get rid of one of their Dual Lands, Tri Lands, Tolarian Academy, Gaea's Cradle, Manalands and all they have to replace it is a basic land (you can't even search for another dual land).

Wasteland looks familiar

A darn shame it says "may". It could make for a really evil combo that strips your opponent of all their basic lands. It can still do that until they get wise of you with any Exploration and Crucible of Worlds type combo. After they get wise of you it's still a good ol' Strip Mine.

@sarroth: besides being lame, that doesn't even work. ghost quarter's ability will be countered by the game if its target is gone

flagstones of trokair.

enough said

Fair land destruction? Never thought I'd see the day.

Most decks in Extended/Legacy use almost no basic lands. Destroying their dual land, utility land, man-land, and all they get is a basic land back, if they have any in their deck.

One thing Ghost Quarter is better than Wasteland is that it can also destroy basic land. In aforementioned situations it's possible that your opponent would never get a land back.

Can provide some interesting one-time utility in desperate situations. Say all you need is to land lord of atlantis to seal someone's fate, but you only have one U producing land in play. You tap it for U, kill it with quarter, search up an island, and boom, you have UU. Sure, you lose a land in the process, and it's ill advised to ever try it, but in a last stand situation, it's nice to have that utility. Can also be played with submerge effects to put the opponent in a tough position. Do they want their precious tarmogoyf back, or do they want to get strip mined?

Well, back in the days many decks ran four of these in Standard. IIRC, the reason was that IzzetTron (Urza's Power Plant decks) was quite rampant.

Target your own Darksteel Citadel every turn. Profit!

Being reprinted in Innistrad!

Aven Mindcensor
Leonin Arbiter

Getting an Innistrad reprint.

so you can lose a Ghost Quarter and a Flagstones of Trokair to get two Plains? SIGN ME UP

Besides being easier to acquire pocketbook wise than older cards for legacy where basic lands are rare, this will see play in standard decks, can be played in modern as either land destruction or combo piece, on the chance your opponent doesnt play fetches imagine activating ghost quarter then casting archive trap for free when they search, very versatile and balanced.

@JFM2796 : Yep, confirmed for Innistrad now.

I recently designed a Desert World set where I tried to imagine a plane that was the opposite of Zendikar or Alara- very sparse mana, with no basic lands in the first set- (to teach people to really appreciate them when they were put in the second). Instead I used a kooky kind of mono colored painland cycle with the desert subtype. Not as painful as X Edition Duals, just painful enough to be nearly strictly worse than basic lands. And then I thought about making a special twist off of Strip Mine, called it Salt Mine, and I just realized- it was exactly the same card as Ghost Quarter, except it searched deserts instead of basics.

Desert Land Cycle template, in case anyone's interested:

White Desert

Land-Desert
Whenever cardname enters the battlefield tapped, you lose 1 life
T: Add W to your mana pool

With lots of effects in different colors (G, W, U, and Salt Mine) that got lands to enter the battlefield tapped, and not always in a Rampant Growth way.

And then I added a cool 'Arid' keyword that rewarded you for playing with deserts. Stuff like +1/+1 counters and tokens if you controlled/took pain from/tapped mana from deserts. Combined with Salt Mine, I was attempting to find a way to get people to use the Desert Lands, even though the Core Set would obviously keep the basics in rotation, and just take the pain, rather than try to avoid it, so they could experience what a Desert World might be like, but still be able to cast their spells and make decent decks. My idea for draft was to have the store's boxes of lands be deserts instead of basics.

I still don't know if Desert Lands are a good idea or not, but it's pretty obvious that Ghost Quarter is a very good template for fixed Strip Mine, and if anybody else is into custom sets, and they're thinking about messing around with something as fundamental as lands, then a Ghost Quarter variant should probably appear in your block.

I am SO happy this is getting reprinted in Innistrad. Getting a Basic Land really isn't all that much of a drawback. Consider killing their Inkmoth Nexus (or any other manland for that matter), or their dual lands or prism lands. With Zendikar out of the Standard picture, you won't have to worry about extra Landfall triggers, and Tectonic Edge essentially costs to activate. All things considered, I think this is a more than decent land removal option, especially for the soon-to-be Standard and quite possibly in Modern.

With infect decks running rampant, Tectonic Edge is not going to kill their Inkmoth Nexus if they're a dedicated poison deck. I'm happy it's rotating out, it was really only good for sniping Worldwake manlands anyway. Inkmoth Nexus needs an unconditional answer, and the "fixed" Strip Mine is just perfect for it. I'm sick of turn 3 wins in standard. . . from a 6 dollar manland and a bunch of Giant Growths.

Gives you a solid defense against inkmoth nexus

Go ahead, search your library for a land...

Its a TRAP! Archive Trap

can you sacrifice it if youve tapped it already for mana?