(Expedition Map | Art by Franz Vohwinkel)

Onto a Brand New World

This is the last of the old articles I've moved from Reddit. From here on in, I'm writing stuff just for EDHREC! The sky's the limit now! I'm free to discuss whatever my heart desires. Maybe I can discuss some of my favorite commander decks. Or maybe I can write about what I would design for commander if I were part of Wizards! Maybe I can write about the beauty and elegance of Eye of the Storm. Truly I am the maker of my own destiny!

You know, on second thought, I think I'd like to keep writing about lands. Let's just keep doing that.

266: Rishadan Port: 776 Decks

If this was a list for any 1v1 formats, this is probably within the top 20 lands. In an aggressive deck, having the ability to leave your opponent a turn behind forever is gross. In Commander, it’s obviously a different situation.

I think the top commanders for this card sum it up pretty well. Two Pirate-themed legends, followed by two banned commanders, followed by two stax commanders. If it’s not in a deck for flavor reasons, it’s only in the hardest of stax decks. Anything else would probably rather have one of the many other ways to just destroy lands. Most of them cheaper than Rishadan Port.

Over, Under or Just Right? Just Right: It’s for very specific decks and it’s certainly not the monster it is in other formats, but it’s not useless either.

265: Memorial to Glory: 798 Decks

Yes, I know it’s very cute with Divine Visitation. A loaf of bread is probably busted with Divine Visitation if you try hard enough. This is probably the worst of the cycle. Mono-white really wants the best colorless lands possible because of the lack of card advantage, not more derpy creatures. There are many other cards that make tokens. That’s not a problem mono-white has. Putting this card in your deck doesn’t really fill a hole that mono white needs filled.

Over, Under or Just Right? Overplayed: Five mana for a Raise the Alarm? I'll pass.

264: Sejiri Steppe: 799 Decks

Pretty awkward that the protection is at sorcery speed. Usually you want to give protection from a color in response to removal to save the creature. It’s kind of evasion, if they only have one color of blocker. I guess that's okay. It gets around Auras like Prison Term too I suppose? The only place I think it's really good is when you can get it out at instant speed. Stuff like Crop Rotation can make this an instant-speed trick and that's cute! But aside from that, it's just a bad tapland.

Over, Under or Just Right? Overplayed: Sometimes something can be overplayed and still a fine tool for certain decks. If you can get this out consistently at instant speed with stuff like Knight of the Reliquary then it's probably really good, but that's fairly niche so I think it's in too many decks.

263: (Tie) City of Traitors: 799 Decks

Apparently the theme of this week is lands that are staples in Legacy but less good in Commander. Similar to Rishadan Port, this card is very good in other formats. Going from two to four mana on turn three is really good. But there's a added twist to this card. I get to talk about cEDH.

I don’t play Competitive EDH. Nothing against anyone who plays it, to each their own. But even if I had the budget to play it, it's not what I look for when I play the format, so everything I'm about to say should be taken with a grain of salt. It looks like the decks playing this card are very high power. The synergistic commanders are stuff like Arcum Dagsson, Sidisi, Undead Vizier, and Narset, Enlightened Master. Not exactly a casual lineup. The top cards are mana rocks like Grim Monolith and tutors like Vampiric Tutor. Granted, not every deck that runs those card or commanders is a high-power deck, but compare it to something like Ancient Tomb whose recommendation page features some slower cards like Cultivate or Oracle of Mul Daya. So it's at least some higher-power decks that are playing the card.

“But if City of Traitors is good in higher-power decks, surely it’s just good in EDH, right?” Well, cEDH and EDH are drastically different formats. Compare a cEDH Sidisi deck to a tribal Sidisi deck. The cEDH deck has a low curve, very few lands, and tons of tutors to try and find its win. City of Traitors is great when the game will end on turn four and you really want to cast your commander ASAP. It's less good in games that go longer, where having four mana on turn three isn’t super impactful, especially when it means that any future land sends you back to the stone ages.

Over, Under or Just Right? Just right: Even if it didn’t cost $200, I wouldn’t recommend it unless you have a very low curve.

262: Soldevi Excavations: 802 Decks

The same cycle that brought us Heart of Yavimaya and Balduvian Trading Post brings us an actually good card! Unlike Heart of Yavimaya, playing this card doesn't put you down a mana. I probably wouldn't play it just for that alone, but unlike Balduvian Trading Post, this card does a thing. Crystal Ball is a card I'm happy to play in certain decks as a source of card selection. Plus there are a ton of different decks that care about the top of the library. I’m surprised decks like Aminatou, the Fateshifter and Yennett, Cryptic Sovereign aren’t playing this card. I think the only reason it hasn’t cracked 1,000 decks is because of its $5 price tag. This card is also on the Reserved List so its price won’t go down anytime soon.

Over, Under or Just Right? Underplayed: I suspect this card will follow a similar path to City of Shadows. Pick one up soon!

261: Interplanar Beacon: 805 Decks

When I started writing this week, this thing moved seven places, and when I started editing, it moved up five more. That's the problem with the WAR lands. They keep jumping up. By the time you click on that link, whatever number I finish this article on is probably wrong. Usually it takes at least a day for that to happen.

Over, Under or Just Right? Underplayed: There's not some secret tech here. Planeswalkars are good. Give it time though, it’s only in 191 of the nearly 1,400 Atraxa Superfriends decks.

260: Shefet Dunes: 809 Decks

This is probably a cycle most people are familiar with. The cycle is most comparable to the Odyssey cycle of Threshold lands, but I think it's way better. The Deserts don’t need Threshold so more decks can play them, but the big plus is that they can tap for colorless. A lot of people say that stuff like the Blighted cycle is basically free to play but there is a real downside to running too many colorless lands. Behind the mono-color cycle from Legends, these are about as free to play as it gets. They enter untapped, and only have to tap for colored mana when you need it. Even if the effect is bad, there's very little downside to running it. And Shefet Dunes isn't bad! It's pretty slow but can absolutely matter. It can turn an innocuous board state into a pretty decent force. If you're in tokens or heavy on creatures, why not run this?

Over, Under or Just Right? Underplayed: This is about as low an opportunity cost as you can ask for.

259: Contested Cliffs: 811 Decks

How has the Beast tribe not gotten more support since 2014? Calling Advocate of the Beast support is generous. Anyhoo, this is honestly one of the better tribal effects for a tribe that isn't particularly well supported. It's not devoid of support but you are going to be dipping into stuff like Berserk Murlodont fairly quickly. There might be an argument for this if your commander is a Beast even if you don't run any other Beasts. Playing this in Uril, the Miststalker or Gahiji, Honored One to snip creatures seems pretty good.

Over, Under or Just Right? Just right: Tribal lands are almost always correctly played because the decks are driven by the tribe.

258: Cradle of the Accursed: 826 Decks

Compare this to Gargoyle Castle and this thing look awful. It cost less makes a way worse creature. Other than straight colorless decks, I’m not a fan.

Over, Under or Just Right? Overplayed: Titania, Protector of Argoth, you could literally play 200 cards and still find better lands to play than this.

257: The Lair lands: 834 Decks

(Crosis's Catacombs: 996; Dromar's Cavern: 996; Treva's Ruins 848; Rith's Grove: 718; Darigaaz's Caldera: 612)

I don't like this cycle.

"Wow. You don't like the cycle that puts you back a mana for the rest of the game, shocker." That may be your first reaction, but there is a growing minority that says these lands are actually good. Back in 2015, everyone's favorite Professor posted a video discussing the virtues of these lands. Many people really like running these as great budget Tri-lands. You can even see a couple people defending these in the comments of the very first article I wrote.

And I will say they aren't as bad as they first appear. They are untapped Tri-lands which is amazing value for how cheap these cards are. Sure, you have to bounce a land, but like the bounce lands, you can always tap that land for mana, so they don't slow you down the turn you play them. You can also bounce lands with ETB effects like Bojuka Bog for more value. People argue that although they have downsides, they are great lands for budget decks. But I build a lot of budget decks. For the most part, I tend to try and build around $50 decks. I still think the Lair lands are just bad. I even tried one in a Sliver deck just for this article series but it was just as clunky as I thought.

The easiest comparison is the cycle of three-color ETB tapped lands, so let's compare Crosis's Catacombs with Crumbling Necropolis. First off, Catacombs can't be played turn one. Sometimes you'll have a Ponder you'll want to play on turn one but often, especially in budget, it's safe to play a tapland and prepare for the later turns. Catacombs has no such luxury. Also, Taplands are at their worst on turns 2-4 where you really want to play as efficiently as possible. Catacombs looks like it solves this problem. Playing a Lair on turn three lets you have three possible mana, as opposed to playing a tapland turn three and only having two. But the next turn you still have three mana. By playing a Lair, you're essentially playing a turn behind for the rest of the game. Catacombs is also terrible with other tap lands. Playing multiple taplands isn't great, but it's not game-ending. If you have to bounce a tapland with Catacombs, you're playing behind for three turns! I think a tapland is better than the Lairs in almost every case and even in budget, you can do much better.

Over, Under or Just Right? Overplayed: I don't see any reason to play these. I'd play Transguild Promenade over these!

My Lair is Significantly Less Impressive

Whew. Good to get that rant off my chest. As always, let me know what you think about these lands. Tell me why you run the Lair lands. I'm legit curious and I want to know what use you've been able to get out of them. Thank you again for all the comments from last week! It makes me happy to know people have found this series useful!

Next time, maybe I can talk about a cycle of lands I like a lot!

Joseph Megill

Joseph started playing in Theros Block but decided that the best way to play the game was to learn every single card and hope that would somehow make him good at Magic. It hasn't. He is a college student in Santa Fe, New Mexico and also enjoys reading and other games of all shapes and sizes.