(Expedition Map | Art by Franz Vohwinkel)

A Brief PSA

Before we begin I do want to remind everyone to be kind to one another. Behind every comment is a living breathing human who loves Magic. Even if they don't agree with you, most of them aren't trying to make Magic worse.

Now that we've done that, let's riff on some bad cards, shall we?

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302: Pillar of the Paruns: 416 Decks

How many multicolored spells do you need to run to make this land work? Obviously the lucky charms deck with the new Niv Mizzet, Reborn that just runs all the multicolored cards will want this. But say you’re playing Cromat and running like 25 multicolored spells. Is that enough? It’s not like putting forests in a blue-green deck, because the Pillar doesn’t help cast non-multicolored spells. It’s multicolor or nothing! I think the only way to find out is to play it, but that's a lot to ask from a 10$ land that is pretty bad anywhere else.

Over, Under or Just right? Just Right: The lucky charms decks probably make up its numbers alone.

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301: Primal Beyond: 416 Decks

This is where my list gets kind of unfair. When I started this list, Primal Beyond was sitting at 341 decks before anything from M20 was spoiled. Then people found out M20 had an Elemental subtheme and the card spiked to $8. I expect this card to continue to go up, but I can’t keep editing this list in real time, so here it shall sit. Its practical application is pretty obvious. Elementals? Great. Not Elementals? Not great.

Over, Under or Just right? Underplayed: Like I said, as M20 becomes more commonplace, this card is going to see more play.

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300: Teetering Peaks: 436 Decks

Apparently this thing was a beating in Limited so that's cool. In an all-in Voltron deck it's not the worst, but even then, having this as your turn three land is super awkward.

Over, Under or Just right? Overplayed: I respect the people playing it Lu Bu, Master At Arms. Those people get a pass.

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299: Thran Quarry: 442 Decks

Now here is a five-color budget land that I think is really good. An aggressive tribal deck like Humans, Slivers, or Zombies will almost always have a two-drop for this card and those decks often have a variety of colors. Plus the trigger happens at end of turn, so you can play this turn two and cast a two-drop.

There's definitely a downside, though: the land is really bad against removal and Wraths. However, if I play a Selfless Spirit on turn two with this land, do you really want to waste your Path to Exile on it? You probably would rather save that Path for a big scary Dragon aimed at your face. And while it's really bad against stuff like Wrath of God, at that point, everybody probably has seven or eight lands in play already.

Look, it's not perfect, but lands that do this much are hard to come by. Often mana bases have to pick between being fast, consistent, or cheap. So having a land that does all those things, even with a downside, is at least worth looking at.

Over, Under, or Just Right? Underplayed: I bet most of the people reading this article have a deck that should at least consider this land.

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298: Sapseep Forest: 472 Decks

The only mono-colored cycle of lands with basic land types, courtesy of Shadowmoor. This fact is cute but will barely come up. They don't have the 'basic' supertype, so stuff like Nissa's Pilgrimage can't grab these. Stuff like Skyshroud Claim can, but most of the time it is just a random tapland.

Ironically, green has the easiest time finding these with all the land tutors, but the green land has the worst effect in the entire cycle. A year or two ago, I would probably still have run it. Nowadays, there’re so many better utility lands I’d rather play. A tapped land is just way way worse than colorless lands, especially for such small upside. Why would you create chances to lose tempo when you don't have to?

Over, Under, or Just Right? Just right: Again, it’s difficult to fault people for playing this. It just does so little for the possible tempo issues.

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297: Orzhova, the Church of Deals: 484 Decks

'Target player' instead of 'each player' makes this land a lot worse, but it's still uncounterable lifegain and life loss on an untapped land. That still puts two counters on Karlov of the Ghost Council, draws a card with Well of Lost Dreamss and kick-starts Sanguine Bond & Exquisite Blood. Not bad for a land, even if it does cost six total mana to do so.

Over, Under, or Just Right? Just right: The day you kill someone with this will be a story to remember.

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296: Spawning Pool: 487 Decks

The first of the mono-color creature lands from Urza's Legacy. I'm a little surprised no one talks about this cycle more. This land can block and then tap itself to produce the mana to regenerate itself, so this ability actually is just two mana to activate. On the negative side, regeneration always taps the creature, so you can’t use this as a blocker in multiple consecutive turns. It's pretty disheartening to attack into this; often just having the ability up can discourage people from attacking you. Even if it just Fogs one combat, creates one more blocker, and buys one more turn, sometimes that's all you need to crack back and win! Worse comes to worse, it's three mana for sac fodder. Massacre Girl, anyone?

Over, Under, or Just Right? Underplayed: I’m pretty surprised this is the least played of the five creature lands. This seems legitimately very good. I don’t know why it has the most synergy with Skeleton ship though. Oh, it's because it's a Skeleton. Ohhhhhhhhhh.

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295: Quicksand: 498 Decks

This is the type of card where they really wanted to make it flavorful at the cost of giving it a bunch of strange exceptions. Why -1/-2? Why attacking? Why does the quicksand go away? I'm sure it made sense to the people that made it but to an average player, it just looks strange.

Flavor aside, in the contest of “land that I don't care what they do because they are colorless” this ranks pretty high. It’s not amazing, but it does something, which is more than I can say for some others.

Over, Under, or Just Right? Just right: I wouldn’t play it outside of colorless decks unless it had some good synergy with my commander. In colorless decks, there’s not much reason not to run it because the effect actually will matter occasionally.

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294: The Lorwyn Tribal Lands: 512 Decks

(Ancient Amphitheater; 916, Gilt-Leaf Palace; 514, Auntie's Hovel; 461, Secluded Glen; 369, Wanderwine Hub; 301)

This is where ranking cycles by the average fails. Unlike the Onslaught tribal lands, these lands all sort of do the same thing. So it’s redundant to go through each one and say “This one is good in Goblins and this one is good in Giants but none are useful anywhere else." That's not really interesting or fair when fetch lands are lumped together.

But that leads to this really lopsided average. For starters, Ancient Amphitheater has twice as many decks as the other members of the cycle. This is something we’ll see a lot during this series: the Precon Effect. Ancient Amphitheater was in the 2015 Kalemne preconstructed deck. Sam Alpert wrote a little bit on this, attributing it to new players buying decks and putting them straight on websites like Deck Stats. But Kalemne, Disciple of Iroas decks only make up 200 of the almost 900 decks playing the card so there's something else going on. Perhaps a lot of people buy the precon and then take it apart, giving more players copies just lying around. Perhaps the new synergies make it better than it was before. I'm really not sure, and this is something that will pop up a lot over the course of this series.

Even disregarding that, you can definitely see which tribes people care about. The Elf and Goblin lands are ranked almost twice as much as the Merfolk one. With the new Modern Horizons Goblins, Auntie’s Hovel has only gotten more popular. So the average isn't really representative of the individual power of the cards, but I don't think anyone will get mad at me for not giving Wanderwine Hub its due.

Over, Under, or Just Right? Just right: It’s obvious that the desire to build the tribes is pushing the numbers.

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293: Arena: 515 Decks

Of all the lands that don't tap for mana, this is probably one of the better ones, though that's not high praise. It’s pretty mana-intensive so activating it probably takes up your whole turn until the late game. But on the other hand, fighting is basically only in green and there are decks that probably want the ability to snipe creatures like this. The one everyone brings up is Phyrexian Obliterator, and while that is deliciously evil, good luck casting a quad black spell and playing a land that doesn’t tap for mana. Actually, decks with black or white in them have no problem getting rid of creatures, so why would they waste their time with this dopey land?

Over, Under, or Just Right? Just right: I don’t know. It’s a card that fills holes that don’t really exist. It’s funny in Kresh, the Bloodbraided?

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292: Urborg: 538 Decks

I bet a few of you were surprised by Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth being so low on this list but no, there are just two cards named Urborg. That’s not confusing at all.

We can see this cycle gradually work it's way up from "probably never relevant" to "might show up occasionally." Swampwalk is cutting into what little territory Hammerheim had, and while removing first strike isn't quite as good as Landwalk, first strike has more relevant cards in Commander. It’s still not something that you’ll see every game but it’s something that you might actually see more than every 50 games.

Over, Under, or Just Right? Just right: It’s still not relevant enough that I want to fork over $10, but unlike the other ones, there is tactical reason to run it.

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291: (Tie) Moonring Island: 538 Decks

“Ah yes, that’s certainly the 10th island on top of my library that I'm about to draw. I’m so glad I put this land in my deck so I can know I’m screwed but can’t actually do anything about it."

Over, Under, or Just Right? Overplayed: It’s cute in two decks: Daxos of Meletis and Isperia the Inscrutable. Other than that, the information does nothing.

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290: The Empire Ritual lands: 539 Decks

(Havenwood Battleground; 1046, Ebon Stronghold; 777, Dwarven Ruins; 479, Svyelunite Temple; 254, Ruins of Trokair; 140)

I really love this cycle. They allow for some kind of broken things, but are balanced by entering tapped so they never get too broken. However, in Commander, they aren’t great. Cheating a Lord of the Void into play on turn four isn’t worth losing a land when everyone is at 40 life and people are casting Genesis Wave for 20. That said, I have played decks that want to get out their commander ASAP regardless of how much it takes, and these cards accomplish that.

Over, Under, or Just Right? Just right: Do I really need to mention why the black and green ones are higher than others? It’s good with The Gitrog Monster and Titania, Protector of Argoth. Find me a land that's not good in Gitrog and Titania.

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Wintermoon Mesa, New Tech in Gitrog

And that'll do for today. Let me know what you think about this batch of lands. Did I sell you on Thran Quarry? I think it's my new favorite secret tech. Thank you for everyone that comments and reads these. I appreciate it.

Next week, there's snow place like home!