Land Tax: A King's Ransom at a Minimal Expense

Land Tax seems reasonably innocent.  All you get are 3 basic lands per turn, and only if you have less lands in play than your opponent.  However, while it was in Type 2, it was one of the only cards that offered true, repeatable, and cheap card advantage.  Also, it's a whole lot less innocent in a format with Armageddon.  The card found a home in a deck referred to as "ErnhamGeddon."  It's a pretty simple strategy: play a big creature and blow up all the lands.  Land Tax provides a nice head start in restoring the land base, one an opponent would have a hard time matching.  Zuran Orb was a good way to make use of lands that were already getting binned, but it was still a difficult road.  It was also a great way to control the number of lands you had in play to ensure getting that Land Tax trigger if you were the one playing Land Tax.

Land Tax also had implications for Extended.  There's no point in me re-typing what others have already painstakingly written up: the GP Atlanta Coverage offers a quick look into Land Tax's history, as it was also the first sanctioned Legacy tournament to feature the card since legacy was born way back in 2004.

The Land Tax + Scroll Rack combo has been around since Tempest first came out.  Alongside a U/W Miracles shell, it can be devastating, turning Temporal Mastery into Time Walk time and time again.  It has also been an addition worthy of consideration in CounterTop decks.  The next few tournaments should determine whether or not the card remains unbanned.  We shall see.