(Expedition Map | Art by Franz Vohwinkel)

On the Cusp of Greatness

The canyon is deep and wide, but only we can scale it. Last time I said things were getting better and I guess that pattern hold true? Judge for yourself! Shall we continue?

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329: Keldon Megaliths: 243 Decks

Try to imagine a scenario where you can activate this card and are happy about it.

I'll give you one: Rakdos, Lord of Riots EDH deck with a Kozilek, Butcher of Truth under an Outpost Siege, a Lightning Greaves and seven lands on board with no other card in play or in hand. I win.

Over, Under or Just right? Overplayed: I honestly have nothing else to say. It’s just eh.

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328: Safe Haven: 245 Decks

Yes, I know I just spent the past three articles enforcing that playing lands that don't tap for mana is bad, but this one is okay, I think. I would always play Endless Sands first but that doesn't mean I don't want two. Mono-black and mono-green decks would love ways to blink their creatures, and those ways are few and far between. I've seen Cold Storage see some play for these decks and this is basically that but cost way less mana. Plus, this basically soft blanks any removal, as you can exile in response. Don't misunderstand me, this doesn't go into every deck and doesn't replace a land. It's a spell, but a spell some decks might want.

Over, Under or Just right? Underplayed: If not for Endless Sands, I would have said this is a slam dunk, but I think Safe Haven is still totally playable, in addition to Endless Sands.

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327: Turntimber Grove: 246 Decks

So let's talk about taplands for a moment. Colorless lands are pretty easy to evaluate if they belong in your deck. Can you afford to lose the colored source for the flexibility of the land? Taplands are a lot harder to evaluate and I think people overrate and underrate the downside.

At the most optimized level, mana bases will consist of fetches, shocks, duals and a couple basic lands. All untapped, and 100% consistent. However, even if you own a Flooded Strand, do you own six Flooded Strands? You might be able to build the perfect mana base for one deck, but not for all your decks. Eventually if you want to have any sort of variety within your decks, you have to start running some of the less good options, and that mean that sometimes you run a couple tap lands.

And that’s okay. Yes, there will be games you lose because of tempo, but that can be over-exaggerated and really only matters a lot in games with high-power decks. And the alternatives to taplands is either a mana base of only basic lands and Command Tower, which is clunkier and will lose you way more games. With some good fixing in mana rocks and land based ramp, the tempo that's lost becomes minimal after the first few turns. So I think a few taplands for consistency are fine.

But that’s where I draw the line. Let's get back to Turntimber Grove. Remove consistency reasons and the taplands look a lot worse. Now you get all the the tempo loss of playing a tapland and lose the consistenscy of dual or tri-lands, and what you gain is a tiny effect that I wouldn’t run if it entered untapped. I run tap lands only as a way to make sure my mana works. That effect has to be really good to get me to run a mono-color tapland.

Over, Under or Just right? Overplayed: In conclusion, taplands are a necessary evil I run only insofar as to let me do the cool thing.

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326: City of Shadows

Oh goodie! Another land that doesn't tap for mana. Kind of?

City of Shadows is one of the weirdest lands to evaluate. Basically you can exile a creature to put a counter on it, then tap it for mana equal to the number of counters on it. So on the one hand, any land that could potentially tap for 2 or 3 mana is worth considering. On the other hand, this land is real gross in the early game. It’s very possible that this land does nothing. It's like a Temple of the False God on steroids. Stone terrible early game, but can be really good as the game goes on. I honestly can’t tell if this card is great or terrible.

Over, Under or Just right? Underplayed: I guess? Lands that tap for more than one are really good and I’m sure being $20 is part of the reason for the low number of decks, but I honestly don’t know what to make of it. Play it and find out?

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325: Diamond Valley: 263 Decks

I’m going to be very happy when I get out of the bottom 50ish lands and can stop saying “A land that doesn’t tap for mana.” Ignoring all tempo and power concerns, lands that don’t tap for mana don’t feel like lands. It feels like having a creature with no power and toughness or a sorcery that sticks around on the board. The defining characteristic of lands is that they tap for mana. Take that away and they aren't much different than artifacts.

This is at least better than some of the others ones but is it realistically better than High Market? Maybe there are decks that want two High Markets, but at that point, there are other sac outlets available to them. There’s also the small fact this land cost 400$. That might have something to do with the lack of play.

Over, Under or Just right? Just right: Despite all my nitpicks, If I owned one I probably would play it for the nerd cred.

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324: Nomad Stadium: 266 Decks

When I was viewing the cycle of Threshold lands, I figured this would be the worst-performing one, but I was surprised to find it’s actually run in more decks than Centaur Garden. This is mostly because of Darien, King of Kjeldor. It was practically made for that deck and it makes up 228 of the 266 Darien decks. After I thought about it, with all the random stuff that triggers off gaining life, I think I actually prefer this to Centaur Garden.

Yes, in this 40-life format, I would rather have random lifegain than combat tricks. What is Commander?

Over, Under or Just right? Underplayed: I actually think lifegain decks might want this. Aristocrats anyone?

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323: The slow pain lands: 266 decks

(Caldera lake; 369, Salt Flats; 262, Pine Barrens; 239, Scabland; 231, Skyshroud Forest; 228)

Random trivia! Before Modern Horizons, this was the only enemy cycle that didn’t have ally equivalents. I wonder why they didn’t bother making ally versions.

These must have been printed before they know that pain lands weren't that powerful, right? Nope! The ally pain lands were printed in Ice Age two years before these. Why make lands strictly worse version of lands that already exist? Simply put, they didn’t want people to play enemy colors. They wanted to thematically show that these colors didn’t work well together, so they made strictly worse lands to emphasize this. It reminds me of when they let red counter blue spells or when they let white destroy black creatures. These cards work really well at flavorfully showing the heart of the color pie and the differences between colors, but they lead to terrible gameplay.

Also, like these off-color cards, Wizards realized that having enemy colors suck shut down a lot of cool deck ideas and sought to remedy this a few years later with the set Apocalypse. I could write a whole article on Invasion block alone. I think it's one of the most important blocks in magic's history. In particular, Apocalypse was groundbreaking in terms of Magic design. There were enemy color cards before Apocalypse but there was usually only one per block. With Apocalypse, the status quo changed dramatically. Compare the number of Izzet card in every set before Apocalypse with the cards just from Apocalypse. Most importantly, with this new set, enemy colors finally got some good dual lands which are still good to this day.

Over, Under or Just right? Overplayed: Sorry, back to this terrible cycle. Caldera Lake is really carrying this cycle. I think this is just because Izzet has more decks than any of the other colors pairs, otherwise why would you be running a worse Guildgate? They are quite bad but imagine if you wanted to build a Izzet deck and this is all you had. Truly, it was a dark time.

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322: Stensia Bloodhall: 269 Decks

I actually really love this Innistrad cycle of lands. They are super flavorful, they have unique effects, and they are great late-game mana sinks. That said, I don’t think this one is very good. It’s a fine ability. The fact it can enable Bloodthirst and Spectacle is neat. It’s just so expensive. Five mana pretty much ends any conversation of putting it in a deck.

Over, Under or Just right? Overplayed: For a while I was reading it as each opponent, and had this as 'Just Right.' But target opponent makes this way worse. Even aggro decks don't want to spend five mana on this.

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321: Hammerheim: 274 Decks:

Yep. Tolaria is part of a cycle and there's basically the same logic for this. Unless you care about basics, there isn’t really a reason not to run it, but there's also no real benefit you get from it. I actually looked it up, and Landwalk does show up more than I thought, so it’s a little more relevant then Tolaria. But the fact these lands cost 6$ for an ability that basically won’t matter almost every game kinda kills any enjoyment I'd get out of these.

Over, Under or Just right? Just right: I did just realize these are legendary so maybe something cute can be done with that?

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320: Corrupted Crossroads: 285 Decks

Anyone up for five-color Eldrazi? Anyone? Seriously, the normal Eldrazi Commander decks don’t want this, but there is a cool deck with all the Devoid creatures. They just got the best commander possible with Morophon, the Boundless. Battle for Zendikar may get some (somewhat deserved) flak but there were some sweet colored Eldrazi that doesn't really have homes elsewhere. Fathom Feeder and Sire of Stagnation are a couple of my favorites.

Over, Under or Just right? Just right: Again, super niche but in the right deck, why wouldn’t you run it?

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319: Daru Encampment: 286 Decks

The first of the single-color tribal lands from Onslaught. I bring this up because I have nothing to say about Daru Encampment. It’s not bad, but I can think of about 15 colorless lands I'd run before this land, even in a Soldier deck.

Over, Under or Just right? Just right: I won’t fault people for running this. If you make a Soldier deck it’s about as on-brand as you can get.

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318: Undiscovered Paradise: 311 Decks

Have you heard of Landfall? I know, it’s kinda obscure. It’s only on one of the top 20 commanders of the last 2 years. Jokes aside, angry Omnath has over 1,500 decks but this is only in 50 of those decks, and that seems wrong. I won’t deny that this land isn’t great in the early game, but it's not a dead card and the reward is free Landfall every turn for the rest of the game. $12 isn’t cheap but not outside the realm of possibility.

Over, Under or Just right? Underplayed: It doesn’t even enter tapped. This just seems like straight value.

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I am the Tangent Master. Crumble Before My Rambling!

Quite a lot of side stories this part. As always, let me know what you think about this batch of lands. Do you shout Hammerheim to the heavens when you play it? Do you have a deck for City of Shadows? Let me know in the comments!

Next week, maybe I can stop rambling enough to get out of the top 300.