(Brushland | Art by Thomas Stoop)

White | Blue | Black | Red | Green | Gold I | Gold II | Artifacts | Lands | cEDH

It's a Warzone Out There

Hey everyone, it's Joshua. I'm here to talk about some landscapes that look a little familiar! Welcome to the Lands Set Review for The Brothers' War.

The tragedy of The Brothers' War wouldn't be complete without looking at the destruction wreaked upon the land itself, so let's see how many of these war-torn wastelands we can cram into our decks!

Rares

Argoth, Sanctum of Nature

Let's start off with the obvious. If you're going to run Titania, Voice of Gaea as your Commander, you're probably running this and Crop Rotation too.

The question is, if you're not running Titania, is this card worth a slot in your deck? Well, four mana makes us a 2/2 Bear token and mills us three cards at sorcery speed. That's not bad, but you might need to care about the token or the mill to really feel this is worth it. It doesn't come into play untapped all the time, after all, so this isn't 'free' to put into decks like some other famous utility lands.

A great home for this card would be in The Gitrog Monster, Sidisi, Brood Tyrant, Grist, the Hunger Tide, and basically any other green self-mill decks. Ayula, Queen Among Bears might want this card too, just to be on-theme. Overall, this is a good card, but I'm not clamoring to throw it into all my green decks like I am for Castle Garenbrig.

Blast Zone

Here we have a very thematic reprint, right at home in The Brothers' War. If you haven't seen this card before, don't overlook it. The removal it offers is quality, and against the right decks, it's quantity, too.

We all know how hard it can be to remove enchantments when you're sitting in mono-red or mono-black. Ticking up Blast Zone to the mana value of that problematic permanent can have those Sythis, Harvest's Hand players sweating faster than you can say "Privileged Position."

Fortified Beachhead

Here we have some fantastic tribal support, with a very relevant anthem effect for sinking mana into, but there's an elephant in the room here: a lot of our existing Soldier commanders are sitting firmly in Boros and mono-white. That means Fortified Beachhead will largely show up for the new Soldier commanders within The Brothers' War set itself, such as Harbin, Vanguard Aviator.

Beyond just the new stuff, I think we can easily find a home for this card in Dennick, Pious Apprentice or Lavinia, Azorius Renegade, too. If your blue-white commander happens to be a Soldier, this is a free dual for you. By going against convention, this land can support a popular tribe in lesser-seen colors, so I'm here for it.

Hall of Tagsin

Hall of Tagsin is very reminiscent of Voldaren Estate. We can tap it immediately, so we can get colored mana out of it by putting a little effort in, but the main effect you'd be running this for is the ability to create a tapped Powerstone token. However, unlike the castle, we don't have a way of discounting this effect. The Powerstones themselves can pay for future activations, which is certainly interesting, but that also takes a while to occur.

It's not bad in the late game if you've got lots of spare mana to pump into it, but even then you can only make one token per turn. In the early game, I'd hope we have better things to use four mana on. Of course, having lots of artifact tokens lying around can add up over the course of the game and make that Cyberdrive Awakener potentially game-winning, but this is a lot of mana, and utility land slots for artifact decks are probably already a little sparse. Maybe Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer will appreciate the extra token type, but I expect colorless decks will be the primary place this land sees any play.

Mishra's Foundry

"We have Mishra's Factory at home."

Here we're paying a little more mana for an Assembly-Worker that's a little bit bigger. We're also getting a pump ability for one generic mana, although that's limited just to Assembly-Workers. To be honest, I think that's kinda cool secret pump for any Changeling deck or Changeling commander, like Morophon, the Boundless.

Some very spicy commanders have used Mishra's Factory for excellent tricks. Winota, Joiner of Forces likes that it's not a Human, Alibou, Ancient Witness loves a tapped artifact creature, Jalira, Master Polymorphist likes a noncreature card that she can target with her Polymorph effect, and Arcum Dagsson loves a good artifact creature to sacrifice. There's no reason to think the Foundry won't join the Factory in all those same endeavors.

One particularly exciting place for this new land is in Baba Lysaga, Night Witch. Once we've animated a Mishra's Factory, we fulfill the 'three or more card types' criteria all on one card, since it becomes an artifact, a creature, and a land. Mishra's Foundry is just one more excellent way to pull this off. Pair this with Ramunap Excavator or Crucible of Worlds for some neat repeatable draw.

The Pain Lands

More welcome reprints! Brushland hadn't seen a reprint since Tenth Edition.

There's nothing too new or groundbreaking to say about these lands, but I'm just happy they're going to be very accessible. Grab them for your decks! The life loss doesn't really matter in a format like Commander where we start at a comfortable 40 life.

Uncommons & Commons

Demolition Field

Oh yeah. Now we're talking.

Demolition Field is a very welcome addition to our land destruction package. I'm going to be swapping out all of my copies of Field of Ruin for this. In a pinch, it was great to be able to destroy that problematic Cabal Coffers or Maze of Ith, but unfortunately, Field of Ruin came with a less-than-brilliant caveat of ramping our other opponents.

Demolition Field solves this nicely. All of the land destruction without the incidental ramp? Count me in. Field of Ruin showed up in over 57,000 decks on EDHREC, and this is a new version that doesn't give free stuff to other players. This is a very significant card.

Tocasia's Dig Site

Finally, rounding off our lands for this set, we have Tocasia's Dig Site.

I quite like this card! Three mana to Surveil 1 isn't a bad mana sink. It offers us card selection, fuels graveyard decks, and is absolutely bonkers with relevant cards like Enhanced Surveillance or Dimir Spybug.

Other commanders that care about the top card of their library, like Falco Spara, Pactweaver, can use this to nicely filter away those cards they'd rather not draw or cast. Yennett, Cryptic Sovereign or Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow players can activate this in response to their triggers to make sure they're getting the right cards off the top of their deck. This is a nice role-filler that will work in subtle but very cool ways, and that's a great place for EDH cards to be.

This Land is My Land

So what's exciting you? What are your thoughts on our new lands? We've gotten welcome reprints, tribal support and spicy new utility tools so I'd love to hear where you're going to use them in the comments below!

If you want to chat, you can find me on Twitter (@PrinceofBielTan) where I'll be brewing some sweet new decks from The Brothers' War. 

Catch you in the next one!

Joshua Clough

Joshua is a Medical Researcher from the UK. He's played Magic since Dragons of Tarkir and loves all things Commander, the more colours the better! When not playing Commander, he can be found insisting Jund is still a viable deck in Modern and painting tiny plastic miniatures on Twitter @PrinceofBielTan