Every Mana Fixing Land Cycle Ever Part 1

Ryan Overturf begins his look at every mana fixing land cycle ever printed in Magic, and what they mean for Cube! 

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Transcript

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What's up, gamers? Welcome to episode 50 of 180MTG. My name is Ryan Overturf, and this week I'm gonna start a look at every mana fixing land cycle ever printed in Magic and what those land cycles mean for Cube. But first, I do have an announcement to make. We're coming up on one year of the podcast, and I guess high time that I unrolled ways for folks to financially support the project here. So I am announcing officially a Patreon for the show. It's gonna be patreon.com forward slash 180 MTG. I'm not rolling out really much in the way of Patreon exclusives. I'm really not trying to sell you on anything. I do not currently have any plans to do exclusive content. You're not gonna get 180 MTG after dark. I don't really need to talk to myself more every week. But there will be a Discord associated with the Patreon, and I'm kind of rolling out a pay what you want model. So it's gonna be a $1, $5, $10, and $20 tier. Choose whatever you want. Any of them will get you access to the Discord. So for as little as a dollar a month, you'll be able to access the 180 MTG Discord, which is largely gonna be for the purpose of discussing cube. But honestly, I just don't know what it's gonna look like as people join. You know, we're gonna try to make it a cool, fun social space, and I'm sure that's gonna change over time. But you can check that out if you want to support the show here, patreon.com forward slash 180 mtg. Any tier will get you into the Discord and no tier will get you anything extra beyond that. And if you're not interested in the Discord, if you don't do Patreon, you can also do a one-time tip over on I think it's called Kofi. It's ko-fi.com, where the whole idea there is you can do one-time contributions or even also enroll a subscription over there to financially support the project here. So that page is ko-fi.com forward slash 180 MTG. I'll have links to both of those in the show notes. Please don't feel any obligation to contribute financially. I know money is tight for a lot of people. I do spend like five or six hours a week on the show here. It comes down to a half hour hour of your time. A lot of stuff happens behind the scenes, but I do work full time. Otherwise, I'm not gonna go hungry if I don't make any money off of this. It's totally fine. Please do not feel under any obligation to offer any money to me for any reason. I appreciate you listening. I appreciate all the positive comments I've got on the project, shares and reviews, also very meaningful as well. Alright, that out of the way, let's get to the matter at hand. So this week I'm starting my look at every mana fixing land cycle ever printed in magic. I think I have them all. Uh my plan is to break these down in order of release and then just talk about these things in terms of cycle. If I miss any land cycles, which I'm almost certain I must have. I'm talking about over 50. There's so many of these, and I tried to be thorough and I scraped around on the internet and did a little bit just going by sets, just to double check if there's any land cycles I might have missed, but it's certainly possible I missed one. So keep your ears open and let me know if there's one that I missed that you want to hear about. So for the terms of cycle here, this is gonna be uh typically at least five cards that are gonna be mana fixing lands. So they have capability to give you access to two or more colors of mana, so I'm not gonna be talking about utility lands or lands that only make one color of mana. So stuff that fixes your mana is the idea here, and full cycles. So I'm gonna be talking about any one-offs, even though they can be pretty appealing for cube. Um, it's just gonna be easier to take this by cycle. I would certainly miss a lot if I went into talking about certain one-offs. And part of my motivation here is this is sort of a follow-up to a pair of episodes that Justin Parnell and I did on the 540 about manifesting lands and cube. And we broke things down in terms of a designer perspective and a player perspective. I'm just kind of lumping these all in, largely talking about just matters of incentives, what different land cycles incentivize, what they make possible in Cube, because I think that that speaks to players and designers. It'll have some specific notes that lean one direction or the other, but I'm just gonna be talking about land cycles and kind of talking about all of my thoughts, whether they pertain to designers or players, just on a by-cycle basis instead of breaking it down by player versus designer. I did listen back to those episodes. I think that our discussion was quite solid and a lot of it does really hold up, but there are some things that have changed. So one of the big things has changed is just like they make so many magic cards now, and that was several years ago. At the time, there were only five triums. They only had half of the triumph cycles. We did not yet have the allied colored triumphs. So things are very different. We have surveillance lands now, so those alone are things that are gonna be worth worth talking about. Obviously, I have more experience playing, certainly with the new cycles, but even with the old cycles in different environments. And there's certainly just things that have changed about the landscape of Cube, where in that discussion, it's very funny, kind of an antiquated thing. We talked about what we called the big three of mana fixing cycles, original dual lands, shock lands, and fetch lands. And I even said on the show that most cubes start with those. And just like the concept of most cubes isn't even a thing anymore. People just do so many different creative things. And so just talking about like a starting point for most cubes doesn't really even make sense to me the way I think about cube now and the way that so many creative people engage in the space. So I want to talk about this now in terms of both new game pieces that exist that are worth discussing in this space, and also with just a different perspective that I have about cube today. So I'm gonna be going kind of in order by release, talking about cycles, and when I get to the start of a cycle, even if it's finished later, I'm just gonna do them all at once. So we get to onslaught, I'm not only gonna talk about allied fetch lands, these endicar fetch lands at the enemy fetch lands, the full 10 cycle as we get to the start of a cycle, and I'll I'll kind of talk about the the release as I get to a cycle as well. So, starting off from the beginning all the way back in alpha, let's begin with the original duel lands. For some of these cycles, I'm gonna name every card, but these ones are just so iconic, so known. I don't need to tell you all of them. This is Tundra and all of the duel lands that have two types and just no additional text. So Tundra is an island and a plains, and it has a very charming text box in the original printing where it tells you it counts as an island and a plains and is affected by spells that affect either, and of course can tap for a blue or a white mana. Fun piece of trivia, only nine of these actually appeared in Alpha. Volcanic Island was inadvertently left off of the print sheet, so it made its first appearance in beta. When it comes to the original cycle of dual lands, really these cards are just strong. I'm going to be talking about a lot of land cycles that have drawbacks, multiple significant drawbacks. These ones just enter untapped, freely tap for one of two colors of mana. They're going to be high picks if you establish you want to play both colors. They make splashing easy, they just make things very consistent with mana. They get stronger when we talk about fetch lands, but even just as individual game pieces, these are very strong. For many of the cycles I'm going to be talking about today, there will be reasons why you would reasonably value a basic land over playing them. The original dual lands really scoff at the notion. There's going to be external reasons. There's going to be things like non-basic land hate, sometimes specific typed land hate. It could be a downside to have an island if your opponent's going to cast Boil, for example, and destroy all islands. That's something that you can definitely turn up or down in a cube, but just generally you are going to want to have a dual land in your deck over a basic land. I actually think that the original dual lands are so strong that it diminishes their appeal as a game piece. For many of the other land cycles I'm going to talk about today, the most direct comparison is going to be shock lands when we get to Ravnica that cost two life if you want them to enter untapped. There's something dynamic happening there. There's a decision to make as a player. We are still going to value them more highly than a basic land, but the way that they play is not just a basic land with upside, it's a land that fixes your mana with a decision involved. With the original duels, you just play them and they're just strong. The elephant in the room here is also going to be that these cards are very prohibitively expensive on the reserve list, so access to non-proxy is going to be very low. And I actually think that the highest value the original duels have as a game piece is their really goofy aesthetic, where in the text box they have the layered colored circles that denote the two colors of mana they can represent. So like plateau has red and white, just kind of rectangles that shrink into the text box. And when people proxy these, sometimes they'll use different art and the text box that more references a modern design. But given that these are just strong and they're not that fun or meaningful as a game piece, not as engaging as a game piece, I think that the aesthetic here is actually part of the big draw. So even if I were to proxy these, I would keep that weird text box, just something that no other card has. I think that that is a lot of the fun of playing with the dual lands, just thinking about this is the first set, this is what they decided to make these look like, and then just seeing how immediately they stopped doing that. So for my sensibilities, original dual lands, they are going to be best fit for something like a powered cube, certainly for very high power environments, and then also things that are going for a nostalgic feel. I have these in the pre-modern tubert, even though they're not legal and pre-modern constructed, just because that aesthetic is such a foundational part of old magic for me. It's an homage to the history there, and I value that in my game pieces. As far as just them being cards to play, realistically, these are one of, if not the most disinteresting, land cycles in all of magic. Mostly they're strong, and you want them if you want a strong card, or you really value that aesthetic and that history. And there's certainly nothing wrong with proxying these up with whatever you want to make them look like and fitting them in whatever cube you want to make them fit in, but for my sensibilities, it's going to be the original aesthetic and the high power level for this cycle. Let's fast forward then to Ice Age, where the Allied Pain Lands debuted, which would later be completed several years later in Apocalypse with the enemy colored entries. So these are lands that tap for one colorless mana, or you can pay one life, or rather they deal one damage to you to generate one of two colors. So Ad Archer Waste for Ice Age taps for the colorless, and you can make blue or white, and if you do that, add arch or waste will deal one damage to you. So pain lands aren't typed, but they do enter on tapped. Just an untapped dual land, there's only going to be a small number of mana fixing lands that enter on tapped. So that's very meaningful there. Pain lands stand out for that reason. There's also some interesting stuff going on there where if you make your mana fixing gated a little bit by this damage here, just the presence of pain lands as part of your mana fixing package in your cube, if players are reliant on these for mana fixing, that damage can add up. This can be something that gives a couple points to aggressive decks in your environment, if they happen to be struggling, both just untapped lands and lands that maybe sometimes damage your opponent. Those are going to be meaningful things for aggressive decks in an environment. It's meaningful that they can always tap for colorless, which is partly because that means you don't always have to damage yourself to use them like a city of brass, but it's also something for kind of a niche space where if you have colorless matters cards, my Eldrazi tuber very meaningfully features Painlands. They're kind of the best colorless mana fixing to make Thought Not Seer and the colorless matters stuff work if you're into that kind of thing. And given that Painlands can and have been reprinted many times, these hit an aesthetic and budget note that is arguably more resonant than the original Dual Lands. You still have the original version printed in 1995 for the Ice Age entries, and the pocalypse entries aren't exactly new, first printed in 2001, so you have that old bordered nostalgic hit there, but then also if you don't care about printing, you can get a version, a functional version of any Painland for like a dollar from these recent commander deck printings and some of the more recent, even standard legal editions. So for functionality, aesthetic, and budget, painlands do stand out as one of the most useful land cycles of all time. I have them in four different cubes. They are just really excellent game pieces, very easy to find a home for Painlands. And then there is a lesser known cycle of lands from Ice Age, that is an incomplete cycle, there's only allied entries, and weirdly they haven't come back to do the enemy versions of these. These are called depletion lands. This is Land Cap, Lava Tubes, River Delta, Timberline Ridge, and Velt. Let's talk about Lava Tubes, get to the text box. I'm gonna read the Oracle text, which is slightly cleaner than the printed text. So Lava Tubes does not untap during your untap step if it has a depletion counter on it, hence the name depletion lands. At the beginning of your upkeep, you remove a depletion counter from this land, and it taps for black or red, and you put a depletion counter on it. So these do actually enter untapped, so you can make mana on turn one, but every time you use them to make mana, they're just not going to untap on the following turn. So you get access to mana every other turn, and it tends to be the case that you want to cast spells every turn of the game or as often as possible, and ideally you can start casting multiple spells at some point. So absolutely at high power level environments, these are complete non-starters, but the cube space has expanded in a way. I have a friend that's always joking about making a lava tubes cube, and I hope that he actually does it at some point. And the space where these really become interesting, you know, these these lands are explicitly less appealing than basic lands, but that's why desert cubes give you an opportunity to maybe make use of these as game pieces. In a desert cube, you don't have access to a basic land box, so you just have to play the lands that you draft. So there's actually just going to be room there for these really restrictive lower power level cubes. If your cube only has lava tubes and lands of about that power level, then people are going to have to put them in their decks to play the game. Barring a desert cube restriction or some other kind of rules modification, it's difficult to imagine somebody first drafting one of these cards and then putting it in their deck. But at the minimum, the desert cube space does open up some opportunities to play with these. And if you're interested in nostalgic magic for like the years 1995-1996, where the power level was just not very strong, where a lot of weird cards came up. And there's even some newer cards you can put in the weakest of the weak from any era to kind of mix with it. I know that some friends at one point maintain a project called the Sphere, which is a cube with no sharp corners. It was just supposed to be like the weakest cards of all time. I'm kind of interested in doing like a desert cube that's a sphere where realistically the basic lands are the strongest cards in most of the packs. But anyway, I have more appreciation for lava tubes and the rest of the Ice Age depletion lands than ever before. I am intrigued by the Desert Cube space. I don't think that Kyle's listening, but you are. I look forward to you assembling the Lava Tubes Cube. Which brings us to another cycle of stinkers, this batch from Homelands. This is Anhava Township, Asen Abbey, Castle Sengir, Koshkin Keep, and Wizards School. Wizard School, likely the most known entry of this cycle given some association with the professor over at Talarian Community College. This is a land that taps for a colorless mana, and then these are all kind of in the allied three-color space. So they have an ability for one and tap them, you make a color. So wizard school, you can pay one and tap it to add a blue mana, and then they have two two mana abilities for that color's allied colors. So Wizard School is the allied three-color set of Esper. So for one mana, you can tap it to make blue, and then for two mana, you can tap it to either make white or black. So these are kind of three color lands, but very inefficient. And notably, all five entries in this cycle are just weaker than Shimmer and Grotto, which is just a land that taps for colorless, and you can pay one to filter it into any color of mana, instead of only getting one color or paying two for two different colors, just five color land, and then there's also multiple functional reprints of Shimmer and Grotto, and even some functionally stronger stuff in the space. So this is a land cycle that's not going to get a lot of love. Once again, this is going to be stuff that makes a little bit of sense in the desert cube space, in the nostalgic space. These cards, they'd show up, I think Wizard School showed up a very small amount in Constructed because of the Homelands rule in Old Type 2, where you were required to play five cards from the set because the set was so weak and they had to make you play it. Which really is the same thing as a desert cube, right? You're only gonna play this over a basic land if for some reason you don't have access to a basic land. So once again, these are kind of appealing in the desert cube space and the forcing you to play with these goofy history pieces of the game, and play with weaker game pieces to try to carve out a very unique environment. So rules restrictions, desert cubes, the wizard school cycle, these are very weak, but they have pretty nice art, and I get why you would want to try to play with them as game pieces. And now on to Mirage Fetchlands, one of many cycles that get their name from the set they were first printed in. These are the original Fetchlands, they are notably weaker than Onslaught and Zendikar Fetchlands, and there are only allied entries into this cycle. This is one that I am hopeful to see them someday complete. I do think that these play well, both in nostalgic environments where you like the Mirage card frame, and also as kind of modest fetch lands I can search up type duels. So these are Bad River, Floodplain, Grasslands, Mountain Valley, and Rocky Tar Pit. So let's go with Floodplain. Floodplain is a land that enters tapped, these all enter tapped. You can sacrifice Floodplain to search your library for a planes or island card, put it into play, and then shuffle. So it's planes or island card, not basic lands. You can go find your volcanic island. So this is actually where I was first introduced to these lands in kind of an old border, really nostalgic cube that was using these alongside original dual lands. So these enter tapped, but the land that they find enters untapped. So you only miss out on one turn of production if you go and find a cycle of lands that can enter untapped. These are pretty appealing with original duel lands, they are pretty unappealing with stuff like Triomes and Surveil Lands, because it means that they are entering tapped and finding a land that enters tapped. They're reasonable for two color to go and find one of two basic lands. These give you your graveyard and your shuffling synergies that you get from the stronger fetched lands, but because they enter tapped, they're much weaker. They fit into some environments. I own more copies of these than I play with. Often they are a bit disappointing in practice, but they're a nice piece of the game's history, and they are something that I am trying to fit into more cubes. I'm thinking about adding these into the pre-modern tubert, just giving you a little bit more mana fixing. Though with a bunch of fetch lands and only one set of typed duels, they can be a little bit awkward. I like having multiple typed duel cycles when you have fetch lands, just because then there's less pressure on always getting the right typed duels, especially with this being an incomplete allied-only cycle. It becomes more appealing when you have all ten, given that this won't favor any particular color pair or combination of colors when you have the full cycle. But even as a set of five, they're pretty easy to fit into a cube. Sometimes you just want five more lands. So when I'm working on an 180 card environment, like any tubert that has a fetchable cycle, if I'm thinking about I want five more cards to add from manifesting instead of adding a full ten card cycle, the Mirage Fetchlands are cards that I think about and have had in and out of a number of different cubes. Largely, these are nostalgic hits, they're relatively low power level. But I think they're pretty cool, and again, I would really like to see the enemy colored Mirage Fetchlands printed at some point here. Next up is the enemy tapped painlands from Tempest. There's a good spread of allied-only mana fixing cycles that never got completed from older magic, but this is kind of a rare thing, an incomplete cycle of enemy-only mana fixers. So if you're interested in some of these other weaker allied cycles, you can use these tapped pain lands to kind of round out and get some enemy mana fixing in the spread. And just to say what these cards are, this is Caldera Lake, Pine Barons, Salt Flats, Scabland, and Sky Shroud Forest, and everything is just kind of contained. Tapped enemy painlands. They enter tap, so pine barons enters taps, taps for a colorless mana, and then you can tap it for black or green, and it deals one damage to you. So literally just painlands that enter tap. They do everything that the pain lands do, except they don't enter on tap. So pretty weak, just strictly worse than pain lands outside of some synergies. You know, I guess there's a number of different amulet of vigor effects now. So lands entering tapped can be an upside when you engineer in a specific way. For the most part, this is another cycle of lands that is close in power level to playing a basic land. I can certainly see why you would put one of these in your Deck if your mana is a little bit tough. Certainly, if you're playing with an old frame restriction, there's only so much enemy-colored mana fixing. These are a cut above your lava tubes, you know. So these cards are not very strong, they are generally weaker than just tap lands that tap for one of two colors that we see a lot of now, which we're gonna get to the first cycle of those in a second here. So these cards are kind of in that space where I probably would only put them in a desert cube because it is questionable how much better they even are than a basic land, but in an environment with pretty limited fixing, and they do really fit the desert aesthetic. I mean, even by the art, look at all of these, they're kind of like barren landscapes. So they really fit in an aesthetic that's kind of deprived of resources. Outside of that, the power level on these makes them generally pretty unappealing. And Tempest also has an unappealing cycle of allied lands. These are kind of in the depletion land space. We have Cinder Marsh, Mog Hollows, Rootwater Depths, Thalicos Lowlands, and Vec Townships. So these do enter untaps to look at one Cinder Marsh taps for colorless, or you can tap it for black or red. If you use the colored mana ability, it doesn't untap three or next on tap phase. So these are similarly in the space of the lava tube cycle, except they can also tap for colorless. You can get a little bit easier mana generation, you're not required to only use them every other turn if your mana is functional otherwise. A very funny thing about this cycle is that these cards saw functional reprints in Champions of Kamagawa in Cloud Crest Lake, Lantern Lit Graveyard, Pine Crest Ridge, Tranquil Garden, and Watervell Cavern. Again, Allied Cycle, just the exact same cards with different names. And I will say that this Champions of Kamagawa cycle does stand out as a land cycle that has really beautiful art. These were all illustrated by John Avon, really great use of colors and expansive landscape on all of these. If the cards weren't so weak, I would be really working harder to play with them. And once again, this is stuff that really in my mind exists in the desert cube kind of space. Or for this champions of Kamagawa cycle, I'm a little bit sympathetic to a lot of the design sensibilities of original Kamagawa. Some really weak stuff in terms of filler commons and some stuff that really does not work at the lower power level of champions, but some standouts and enduring cards at the higher power level, and also some stuff in really niche spaces that holds up. So I wanted to design something that was evocative of that. These lands could fit in that space, though they are quite weak, but visually quite stunning. Conversely, the Tempest cycle does have that kind of desert cube aesthetic, really barren landscapes, and then also the old card frame, so these will fit more in and more of a nostalgic old frame environment in that way. Again, quite weak cycles, very funny that these are incomplete, there's no enemy colored entries, and then also these were just functionally reprinted. So you could play with two different copies of this cycle maintaining singleton, which I do think is pretty funny. I don't play with these anywhere, but I do kind of like the aesthetic of both of these cycles for different reasons, and they do seem appealing for certain structures of desert cubes. And now for the original tapped land cycle, just tapped lands that make one of two colors first printed in invasion, and invasion only introduced allied entries. You had Coastal Tower, Elfame Palace, Saltmarsh, Shivan Oasis, and Herborg Volcano. So Coastal Tower enters tapped and it can tap for blue or white. These are not typed, there's no frills, no additional abilities. There's going to be a number of entries I'll talk about later that have this exact same text box plus additional upside. And these have been functionally reprinted and expanded to have enemy entries. If you want tapped lands that make one of two colors, there is no shortage of access to that kind of thing. These ones do stand out because there's a big gap here, getting all the way up to invasion coming from Tempest. There was so little in the way of mana fixing land cycles when it came to old magic, when it came to the original border, that kind of old card frame, the pre-modern aesthetic. So these do stand out in those kinds of old card frame environments. These are pretty strong and appealing in the life and times of Gerard Capuchin, my kind of lore-driven old frame cube. And while there are a lot of cycles that, in terms of power level, improved upon just the generic tapping that makes one of two colors, these are very clear about what they do, tremendously elegant designs. These are cards that leveled up the design of magic in aggregate just by existing. When Randy Bueller was working on invasion and just said, hey, what if we helped players cast their spells? It was still a lot of uphill to be fighting to make the mana bases even close to what they are today. But this was a huge step there. And while you're drafting, if I'm drafting a blue-black deck, Saltmarsh is not going to do anything outside of fix my mana, but it very clearly will help to fix my mana. And what else is a mana fixing land supposed to do? So really clean designs. Aesthetically, I really like the way that these ones look. The old frame with a two-color text box, these do really pop. The original cycle I like a lot, and then mechanically, all of the functional reprints. These play totally fine. Very reasonable and just solid cards for mana fixing at modest power levels. And that brings us to another more obscure land cycle. This is going to be the layers from Plane Shift. These are three colored allied lands that have layer as a subtype, which was in the text box here, not on the type line, because this was a time where putting types on a land type line really just didn't come up very often. So having in the text box just more clearly communicated relative to what cards looked like more often. So we have Crocus' Catacombs, Deragaz's Caldera, Dromar's Cavern, Rith's Grove, and Treva's Runes. These are all named after the corresponding six mana dragon from the invasion block. These lands enter untapped, and when they come into play, you sacrifice them unless you return a non-layer you control to its owner's hand, a non-layer land that is. You have to return some land that cannot be itself. You can't just play these on turn one because you would not have a non-layer land. You only have your layers, you have to sacrifice it immediately, but then they tap for one of three allied colors. So Crossus' Catacombs is our Grixis entry. When it enters, you return a non-layer land to your hand or sacrifice it, and then they can tap for blue, black, or red. This is another cycle that is just reasonable for fixing your mana. There is that drawback there where returning a land to your hand is a real cost. It kind of sets you back on tempo. But in terms of mana fixing for this era, getting access to three different colors is really powerful in terms of fixing. These are appealing options also in the life and times of Gerard Capuchin. And these are lands that I have considered for the pre-modern tubert, though in that format, with the non-basic land hate or even stuff like Avalanche Riders, they're gonna be a little bit too much in the way of feel bads. And the upside is just mana fixing. When you compare these to what we'll get to before too long here, the Ravnica Bounce lands. Those ones tap for two mana at a time, so you're kind of making up a card really in terms of the mana output there. These only fix your mana and they come at the cost of some tempo returning a land to your hand. So these ones they do again kind of play largely in that desert cube space, in a lower power level environment. The mana fixing here is strong, but the cost of tempo is real. These are cards that are certainly something you would cube with sometimes, or something that I happily cube with in a specific old card frame, modest power level environment, and that's largely where they're gonna find a home. Next up is the Odyssey Egglands. These ones I feature in my Stadium Stampede Cube. It's gonna be at KubeCon next month. This is a cycle that started in Odyssey with just allied entries, and then recently this cycle finished in commander products, giving us enemy colored entries. So now we have all 10 egg lands. These are lands that are kind of funky. They do not inherently tap for mana, but they do enter untapped, and for one mana, you can tap them to add two of whatever color they produce to your mana pool. So Darkwater Catacombs is a land. You pay one, you tap it, and you add blue black to your mana pool. So if you have another mana source to bump into it, it functionally is gonna tap for a mana and it kind of filters you into a specific two-color pair. These cards have been reprinted in a bunch of commander decks, probably because you could reprint them an infinite number of times and it wouldn't make a material influence on how people build their mana bases anywhere. These cards are just not very strong. And something that might not be intuitive if you haven't really played with these cards is if you have multiple egglands in your deck, then it really is horrible to draw multiple copies in your opening hand unless you already have another land to get you started. If your opening hand only has two lands and they're both egg lands, you actually can't produce mana because you don't have a manasaurus to get you going. These only make mana if you can first filter one mana into them to start. So this is another cycle of lands that just is not that appealing in terms of mana fixing. They do enter untapped, but you can't do anything with them on turn one. The reason I have these in Stadium Stampede is because that's a cube where you start with a manasaurus on the battlefield. With Strix Savanna Stadium, you'll be able to make two mana out of these just using your stadium every turn. You can filter that colorless mana into some colored mana, but just in general, this is a cycle that's pretty weak. Once you are playing a three-colored deck, it's very dubious if you would want to draft and play all three on color egg lands, just because you're increasing the chance you have an opening hand that can't generate mana, even with two or three lands. So they're very modest mana fixing. I kind of like that they are most appealing for two-colored decks. That is something that I do value in a lot of environments. Once the mana fixing gets out of control, decks can become really homogenous. It kind of makes the draft less interesting when what you're supposed to do is just make as many colors as you can as fast as you can and cast the most powerful spells. So I kind of like modest mana fixing for that reason, though these ones have plenty that makes it unappealing, and I don't really have plans to put them in a second cube. Another funky one that makes sense for desert cube environments, and another entry, at least for the allied ones, where you have the old frame cards that are from the early 2000s. Which brings us to another kind of obscure, pretty cool cycle. This is the smallest cycle I'm going to be talking about in my analysis of mana fixing land cycles. There's only four entries here. This is going to be the tainted cycle from Torment. These are pretty rad. So they're Tainted Field, Tainted Isle, Tainted Peak, and Tainted Wood. These lands all tap for colorless, they enter untapped, and then as long as you control a swamp, they gain a mana ability to tap for black or one of the other four colors of magic. So Tainted Field taps for colorless, or if you control a swamp, you can tap it to add white or black to your mana pool. So if you're not familiar with the set Torment, it was a set that had more black cards than any other color. So a heavy skew towards black. There's not different versions of these for any other color. This is the only like one monocolor kind of heavy focus set that magic ever did. So this is something where you could play in space if you are looking at something to specifically pay reference to Torment, of course, including these to have that kind of black focus in your mana fixing. These make a lot of sense to me in a desert cube or certainly a partial desert environment. Maybe you want to build a cube where only swamps are available in the basic land box, and then these are really cool mana fixing to get into the other four colors. Once again, really nice looking cards with the old card frame. These are very specific, but very cool, and I did want to shout them out in case somebody had not heard of them and you want to play in a more heavily black space. And if you're someone that's into custom cards, this is something that provides inspiration. Maybe if you want to make an environment that is more focused on one of the other four colors, taking this cycle and applying it to any of the other four colors and kind of branching out that way is something that could be a cool lane to go down. And that brings us to a massively impactful cycle of lands. The onslaught allied fetch lands later completed for the full cycle of 10 in original Zendikar. These are lands that you sacrifice them and pay one life to search your library for one of two land types. They're going to be basic land types, but they don't only find basic lands. Most commonly, these are used to support typed duels and really strong mana bases. So Bloodstained Meyer, Entrest Untapped, Tap it, pay one life, sacrifice Bloodstain Meyer, search your library for a swamp or a mountain card, put it into play, then shuffle. These lands are broken. There's just so much that they synergize with whether you're doing stuff with graveyard themes, they give you an easy land as a type for delirium, for the easy land for Tarmagoyf, shuffle effects for your brainstorm. There's a trick with Mishra's bobble, anything where you can see the top card of your library and you want to manipulate that. Fetch lands are useful there for building threshold, they're very strong. And then if you have fetchable typed duels, they just open up your mana bases in a really big way. When you want to have really strong mana bases and make it easier for players to access three and four and five colors of mana, fetch lands with fetchable duels are really kind of the lowest friction, strongest way to do that. But I do also want to say that their mere presence doesn't just make it so automatically you have to play three plus color soupy decks. What's kind of nice about fetch lands is if your spells and your archetypes, the way you've curated your design, really incentivizes players to play a two or even a three-color deck. Once I have one or a couple type duels that I want to play, then any fetch land that touches on one of my colors becomes a very strong mana fixing land. If I have drafted Volcanic Island, suddenly any blue fetch land, any red fetch land becomes another blue-red source for my deck. So depending on your design, these can be really strong for reinforcing, even specifically two color decks, kind of depending on the nature and the volume of the fetchable duels that you have, and then they are tools that can branch you very easily into three colors and then four or five colors if that's what you want to incentivize. So these are really strong. These mostly only go in pretty high power level environments, but you can also do things like just have fetched lands in an environment without typed duels if you just want to maybe touch on delirium in kind of a funky, innovative way and cause players to search up basic lands. In a desert cube, it maybe could get kind of weird with these where you need to draft a certain volume of type duels for them to play at all. There's a little bit of a room to explore here, though these are iconic, they're very high power level. I have these. I actually have fetch lands in five different cubes. I've broken my rule about only owning four copies of lands on this a little bit, uh, because I had uh an extra set of Consitar here fetch lands from when I was working on the time capsule cube that I kind of held on to, and then I ended up because I have allied fetch lands in the pre-modern tubert, I had five extra enemy fetch lands, and I wanted to put those in 30 to 50 feral logs, so I have fetch lands 45 total in five different cubes. They're really strong mana fixing, and if you're going for a high power environment, and then also with the pre-modern tubert, the uh fetch lands, the onslaught fetch lands being the last block that used the pre-modern card frame, these really aesthetically fit that environment. And of course, if you have nostalgia for cons of Tarkir, this this is an aesthetic that can bring you to a specific time period, kind of true of any land cycle. But I started playing during an onslaught block, so onslaught fetches really hit for me with the nostalgic notes. Even with multiple reprints, fetch lands are not the most budget-friendly option, but then they're also just kind of at a very high power level, where I think a lot of players are proxying anyway. And if you're looking for something more modest, you have plenty of options and a lot of newer land cycles that it uh we're gonna get to probably on the next installment here. I'm not gonna be able to do everything today, but you know, Onslaught, Zendikar, Fetch Lands, these are high power, high synergy lands that largely are gonna be for high-powered cube environments. And now jumping to a massively impactful release with the original Ravnica block, let's start with the bounce lands. So these are lands that enter tapped. When they enter, you return a land you control to your hand, and they tap for two mana, one of each color of their corresponding guilds. So there's one of these for all ten guilds. They were rolled out over the course of original Ravnica blocks. So you got four of them in Ravnica City of Guilds, three more in Guild Pact, and the final three in Dissension. At this point, these have been reprinted multiple times, so they all have a guild name. I'm not gonna go through all of them, but Boros Garrison is of course our red-white entry. Enter is tapped, when it comes into play, return a land you control to your hand, then it taps for red white. So these make two lands, they enter tapped, and you have to have a different land you control to return to your hands to ever make any use of them, outside of getting in once again to weird amulet of vigor space. It's not anything that I do in any of my cubes. In fact, Amulet Titan ranks among my least favorite decks in all of magic, so it's unlikely that I'll ever play in that space, but it's something that other designers certainly could pursue. But just in general, these lands were very impactful in terms of retail limited, because what they kind of do, they they functionally sort of create card advantage in a roundabout way, because by returning a land you control to your hand and then being a land that taps for two, you now have the same mana development as playing any other land drop, but you still have this extra land in your hand, so next turn you'll be able to play that, and you just kind of have this extra mana. It's kind of like having an extra land. There's a little bit of give and take with that, because it also means if your opponent can bounce a permanent or destroy a land, you are back two mana, you're back that land drop your turn to your hand, and then you don't want to control your bounce land, it really stunts your development. So something to think about if you want to play with bounce lands, whether you want somebody really punished by some kind of non-basic land hate. If you're cool with that, if that's something that you think is fun, sure, it's something where I tend to only cube with bounce lands in environments where the they're not going to be hostile to that, where there's maybe a very small number of options to really interact with these. It's not the end of the world if you have a little bit of it, but if your cube has like wasteland in it, then you're setting your players up for some bad games some of the time. I tend to like these in low power environments, stuff that's really kind of aiming for a retail limited or even a rarity restricted type thing. I have these in my popper tubert, where just kind of in this land that kind of feels like it's a card advantage-y kind of thing, helping you make your land drops and develop your mana really just kind of stands out in terms of powerful comments, which I really like to have in that draft environment. And there's also some space for additional synergies. I talked about making it so you're tapped lands enter untapped, that's an option, but also like things that untap lands, anything in like that Urza block broken, like untap your lands when this spell resolves space, like snap, or of course time twister. You can get some mileage out of some ability to untap these, whether it's where the when they enter or some point later, just anything that can consistently untap that it'll give you a really big boost in your mana generation. And then also these are appealing for landfall. I didn't really mention this with fetch lands, but of course, fetch lands are big because they can give you two landfall triggers off of your land drop in one turn. Bounce lands allow you to more consistently get a landfall trigger every turn. They make it so you reliably always are hitting your land drop. And then also if there's considerations like uh maybe there's some discard in your environment. This is an aspect of the popper tubert. A number of the black cards will make you discard a card, returning a land to your hand and kind of having just a basic you can discard while still developing your mana in a big way with the bounce land. It's pretty good value when that kind of thing comes up. So I don't cube with bounce lands a ton, but there's plenty of reason to do so. A lot of synergies that these open up, and just in terms of card economy, they're pretty strong as a baseline, provided they're not too easy to destroy. And while we're visiting Original Ravnica, of course, we gotta talk about the shock lands, also rolled out over the course of the entire block. These are ten more typed duels, just a huge impact on Magic when these came out, because the only other type duels at that time were the original duel lands, which were nowhere close to being legal in standard or extended. So just like the original duel lands, these have two basic land types, but they are non-basic lands, and then they can tap for, of course, one of either color of those land types, and then they either enter tapped or you can pay two life for them to enter untapped. So Sacred Foundry, it's a mountain and a plains, taps for red or white. When it enters, it's either going to enter tapped, or you can pay two life for it to enter untapped. These essentially do everything original duels do. If you want it, they are untapped lands, they are fetchable. With anything that can search for either of their land types, the big interaction, of course, there being fetch lands, making really strong mana bases not only possible, but arguably pretty easy. And I do just think that these are more fun game pieces than original duels. That decision point on whether to play them tapped, whether to pay two life, sometimes when you really get into it, you do think about shocking in a shock land earlier, even if you're not necessarily going to use the mana because of the way it can disguise information about making land drops later. If you have other lands that are going to enter tapped, and it will be really suspicious to shock in the land and then leave up that mana when you have three, as opposed to doing it when you have one mana to maybe kind of hide some information that way. It definitely comes up when you really get into things. And these are, of course, strong, but like I was saying with the ABU dual lands, those are just strong. The Ravnica lands, the shock lands, they pose an interesting tactical, strategic decision. And like I was saying with pain lands, that cost of two life, and also just lands entering tapped, that's something that gives some points to aggressive decks. Just lands entering tapped usually means cheap creatures are able to get some hits in, or the cost of two life. At least you're getting something, even if your opponent can easily cast removal spells and interact with your cheap creatures. And there's some opportunities for synergy here as well. I have shock lands in the tempo tuber to just over original duels, partly because I do think they're more compelling game pieces, but then these also explicitly support Death Shadow as a card, just enabling you to deal damage to yourself as you shape up your mana base, gives you access to this overstatted one mana creature that's been a really cool, impactful card in kind of historic, modern, and legacy format. So shock lands open up that synergy there. These are excellent designs. They are my pick for the best designed mana fixing cycle in all of magic. I have these in four different cubes. They've been reprinted a bunch of times, but you still really can't get any of them for less than $10. So they're not, again, the most budget-friendly land cycle. You don't have to play with these with a lot of different options, but I do think that these are great to play with. And if I didn't largely limit myself to only open owning four copies of a given card, Shocklands will be the land cycle that I had in the most cubes. Sometimes I'll need to pick up a mana fixing land cycle for something that I'm working on. For example, the first time I drafted a stadium stampede, I was still waiting. I think of the Buddy Lands or some Land Cycle, I just needed a couple more. And rather than proxy, I just put Shocklands in the cube. And I like the way that they played fine. I prefer the land cycles that I have in there currently, but shock lands, you can just kind of put them anywhere and they're going to play well. These are just great game pieces. I could not say enough good things about these designs. They're great in any two-color deck. The cost is real when you get up to three, four, or five colors, but they also make that possible. So you really get to play with how strong you want your mana to be when you start playing with shock lands. And now for a cycle and set of much smaller consequence. Cold Snap did five Allied tapped snow duels. These are not typed, and that's why you really don't hear about them anywhere. So Arctic Flats, Boreal Shell, Frost Marsh, Highland Wield, and Tresor Horn Sinks. These all undertapped, Arctic Flats then taps for green or white mana. Has no types other than being a snow land. The arts on these are pretty great. I actually really like the way that these cards all look, kind of similar to the Champions of Kamagawa land cycle, where they're visually very appealing, but as game pieces, very forgettable. You have another cycle of tapped allied lands, generally out-modded later when we get to Coldheim and we get the typed snow duels, which are what I'm going to have in the Tundra, my snow cube. If you want kind of an old frame, get a taste of some snow, these ones, I mean they look really pretty, but generally they're pretty forgettable as game pieces. They are out-modded by those typed duels that come later on. It is kind of funny that if you were going to adhere strictly to Signalton and you wanted to do snow, you could have five more but not typed just allied Tap Snow duels. There's reasons to play these, there's space for them. If something about the early 2000s is an aesthetic that you're going for, by all means, this makes a lot of sense to put these in some kind of environment. But like most of Cold Snap, there's not much reason for most players to ever think about these. And now for a really cool one. These are from Time Spiral. This is another allied color cycle. The storage lands. These all tap for colorless, and you can pay one and tap them to put a storage counter on them, and then you can pay one to remove any number of storage counters from them, and add that much mana and any combination of one or two allied colors to your mana pool. So you have calciform pools, redship reef, fungal reaches, molten slag heap, and salt crust step. So calciform pools, like I said, enters on tapped, taps for colorless, pay one and tab it, put a storage counter on it. You can pay one and remove X storage counters from it, and then the Calciform Pools will add X mana and any combination of white and or blue to your mana pool. So these are kind of slow going. They do enter untapped to make some colorless. If you don't have immediate colored mana needs, you can just use these for generic mana in the early game, or ideally you spend some time charging up those storage counters, and then eventually you get a big boost of mana from these. These did show up in both time spiral block constructed and also in standard a little bit. Most notably the red versions did show up in the Dragonstorm combo deck. You would spend some early turns, get a couple extra counters. Once you have two storage counters on them, you can just tap them for colorless, and then it's not a tap ability to remove the storage counters. So if you have two counters, you can just remove both counters and you go plus one mana on that. It would make two mana on the first activation there. And then the Dragonstorm combo deck, the idea is you would make a bunch of mana and then go off with a big storm turn. But these were also useful for slower controlling decks, making a bunch of mana, you can cast like a big draw spell or some tutor spell and play what you tutored for right away. These are kind of at a lower power level, it takes some time to charge them up. If you're playing with a lot of modern design level threats, you're not gonna have time for this kind of thing. But if you are going for a lower power level, kind of an older style magic feel, if you want to play a cube where players can really take their time setting up, these charging up and making mana that you kind of have to build to turn over turn, they can lead to some pretty dramatic moments where you kind of have this really slow build where over time you're kind of setting up resources, and then suddenly you have this big explosion of mana, it's kind of baked into the mana base with this cycle. So this is a really cool one. Um, this is one where I don't have these in any cubes. I think about them in some cube or another now and again. This is one where I guess I wouldn't mind one way or the other if there was ever enemy-colored cycles to complete this, because mostly you only use these caring about one color, so they're very inefficient to fix your mana. Though they are something that could be in a desert cube kind of space if you want to make mana kind of scarce, taking the time to charge over time, these are kind of stronger and more appealing than a depletion lands. They do a similar thing where you can spend some time building up storage counters just to fix your mana, but then they also have that mode to have that big explosion of mana too. So pretty appealing design, pretty fun cards. I would like to play with these more, I'd be happy to see them in a cube. It does kind of rely on kind of a slower pace of game and maybe a lower power level, but these are very cool. And that brings us to the vivid lands from Lorwin, Vivid Crag, Vivid Creek, Vivid Grove, Vivid Marsh, and Vivid Meadow. These lands all enter tap with two charge counters on them. They can be tapped for one of the five colors of magic always, and then they can be tapped to remove a charge counter from them to add one mana of any color to your mana pool. So vivid craig enters tap with two charge counters, can always tap for red, and then you can also tap it to remove a charge counter from it to add one mana of any color to your mana pool. So these are one color lands, but then two times just as a baseline for what the cards do, you can use those charge counters to make one mana of any color. So these allow you to play in a two to five color space. They enter tapped, and there are just so many stronger tapped lands now. Put these next to a triland or heaven forbid a triome, and they certainly look much weaker by comparison. They are referential to a different era in magic. The arts here are pretty cool. They saw a lot of play in block constructed and in standard, with reflecting pool kind of being the big thing there because it sees that these lands could make a man of any color sometimes, so they turn reflecting pool into a five-color land. For cube, these are a five-color option. They're like kind of modest. I know Justin Parnell hates these, hates putting dice on his lands. That's what these do. They're lands with dice on them. I'm not currently cubing with them anywhere. I think they really kind of fit for a desert cube that's not trying to make you struggle immensely with your mana base. Having a land, like if you put Vivid Grove in a non-green deck, it can still make green, which is just functionally generic mana for you, and then twice it can give you a mana of any color. So these can play in any deck if it comes to it in a pinch. So like they're they're playable anywhere, but they're not super strong unless you can reliably use them. Either you end the game very quickly, so you don't need more than the two charge counters to get the right colors, or you are playing the right one, the right colored deck. So they make sense to me in kind of a semi-restricted desert cube where the mana is like strong but not super strong. You know, you'd play the off-color vivid land in the pinch, there's something appealing there. I like these well enough. I certainly don't hate them the way that Parnell does. And while we're in Lore and Block, let's talk about another much maligned cycle of lands, the Filter Lands, started in Shadow More, completed in Even Tide. An improvement on the egg lands. This is a fully 10 card cycle. These all tap for one colorless mana, and then for one hybrid mana of the two colors they generate, you make some combination of those two colors and two mana. So you tap another land, you tap one of these, you get two mana of the combinations of colors of your deck. So Fire Lit Thicket is our gruel entry. Taps for colorless, or for one red-green hybrid mana, you can tap it to add red, red, red, green, or green, green to your mana pool. So just much better at fixing the combination of lands and egglands because you choose you could have red, red, green, green, or red-green instead of just the egglands giving you exactly red-green, and they tap for mana on their own. Making colorless mana means that they play in that colorless matter space, another cycle of lands that I have in the Aldrazi tuberts. These ones also saw quite a bit of standard play. These mostly just function as lands, but I have seen them give a lot of players pause. If you haven't played with them much, you do kind of have to think about making sure you filter mana into them, you can make the right kind of mana. But that second part is easy because they're so good at generating whatever color mana you need. You don't have to think about the output on these very much. They just cast your spells, but the input can be kind of crunchy, making sure you have the right hybrid mana to tap and use them. So once you have like five lands and you're just casting a spell that costs five mana, you just turn on your lands sideways, you'll be able to cast it. It's not really a problem. It does get crunchy when you're using three or four mana and you need three or four pips, you need specific color requirements, when and how you tap your lands is going to be a thing. But if you're using three or four mana for three or four pips, you probably have to think about how you're tapping your lands no matter what the lands are. I have seen a lot of players struggle with these and spend more time than they need to announcing how they're filtering their mana and what they're generating, when these two mostly just work. And you know, it just because I don't feel the friction personally doesn't mean the friction aren't there. I am acknowledging this because it matters if a lot of players don't enjoy playing with these and it causes some kind of brain static to try to use them, then they're not going to be the most fake fun game pieces for those players, so it makes sense to move off of them. Personally, I have these in three different cubes. They are pretty meaningful being colorless mana sources for the Eldrazi tube. I have a project I haven't published anything about yet that really plays with hybrid mana, and so the aesthetic here just really matches that environment. There's plenty of reasons to play with these. I have a friend who has a Shadow More cube, and so of course these Shadow More lands are going to be something that you want in that environment for the aesthetic, so there's a lot of reasons to play these. There's also reasons that people don't like them. For me, I'm a filter land apologist. Which brings us to Shards of Alara's Tri lands. Not the original three color lands, but in my opinion, Magic's best designed three color lands. And this cycle was then completed in cons of Tarkir, so we have all ten three color tapped lands. So these enter tapped and make one of three colors of mana when you tap them. So Arcane Sanctum is our Esper entry, enters tapped, taps for white, blue, or black. Really clean, elegant design, obviously just stronger than the coastal tower cycle, making three colors instead of two. But there's reasons to want to do this. Specifically, if you want to enable players to kind of explore splashing colors sometimes, drafting four or five colors, but having lands that are useful for two-color decks, these original trilands are excellent for that. And that was a lot of what was happening in Alara Limited, where you would kind of maybe focus on a two-color pair, but then branch into playing four or five colors in your deck total, often through some splashes or maybe some hybrid mana stuff. And I do find trilands really interesting in that way, where if you have a lot of mana fixing lands in your cube, if you give a player a three-color land, there's an abundance of other two-color fixing, or maybe some other stuff that can fix for three or more colors. Once you have your first three-color land, you start thinking about making use of all of those colors. And if you have a couple of trilands, then you have mana sources in all five colors just by having some tap lands in your deck. There's a real cost to lands that during tapped, you might make yourself kind of vulnerable to aggressive decks, kind of depending on how your deck plays out once you get going. But just in terms of the output here, they do make you start considering making more colors of mana if there's a lot of mana facing in the cube, even just by virtue of getting multiple trilands. You can already just make a lot of colors of mana, but they do cut the other way too, where if you have the full 10 set of just tapped two-color lands, if you want to put 10 tapped two-color lands in a tuber, for example, you only have four drafters. So you kind of already are looking at playing like a three-color deck. There's not going to be 10 two-color decks, you only have two or four drafters, right? So there's only one specific one of those tap lands that works for a two-color deck, or you're looking for three specific ones for a three-color deck, but then these trilands, it's actually like not super likely in a in a larger cube, like in a 540-card cube, are you ever, how reliably are you going to get Crumbling Necropolis for your Grixis deck? What happens a little bit more often, assuming that the mana base is kind of set in a way where it's not just easy to get all the colors, is you're playing blue-black and you get Arcane Sanctum, you get Crumbling Necropolis, and maybe you have some options with a splash for the white or red mana, but mostly these are just blue-black tap lands that you're happy to put in your two-color deck. And you don't need extra frills, these are just things that work to facilitate two colors, and you kind of get more options. These really line up nicely for small cubes in that way, where you get a lot more fixing for the two-colored decks with a smaller total number of cards on the cube. And then if you have an appetite for it, having a bunch more mana fixing cycles means it's not that difficult to bridge up to the four and five-color decks. Notably, three-color lands are kind of misleading in the way that they rarely are enabling three-colored decks. Three-color decks are largely enabled by getting a bunch of two-color fixing, because once you have a three-color land, if you have multiple three-color lands, getting up to four and five colors is just not that difficult. And it's also not that likely you get the specific three-color land you're looking for. These make it appealing to start branching in to four or more colors, more than they facilitate exactly three colors. So when it comes to trilands, these are really nice for getting a volume of two-color fixing into your cube, where you have this extra third color tacked on, but then they play in one of the three color two-color pairs, or these are going to push players to try to play four or five colors. So something to think about. I really like these in the space where they are enabling you to just have more options for a two-color deck, just more cards with fewer slots. And these are just strong if you want to push players to play four or five colors too. Shards of Alara also had a common cycle of kind of fetched lands called panoramas. There's one for all of the allied color shards. These were never completed with enemy colors, exact analogs, but these are lands that enter untap, tap for colorless. You can pay one and sacrifice them to search for one of the three basic lands of your shard. So Bant Panorama, Taps for Colorless, Pay One, Sack Bant Panorama, search your library for a basic forest, plains, or island, put that card on the battlefield, tapped, then shuffle. So kind of similar to everything I said about Trilands, except at a more modest power level. It is notable, these enter untapped, but then these are mostly just going to be outmodd by the Modern Horizons 3 landscapes, which I'll get to on our next installment here. For the most part, these ones are going to be things that stand out if you want to specifically do like an Alara block set cube, if you have nostalgia for that era. Not gonna be a ton of love for panoramas these days. There's actually a few different options in this three-color common modest fetch land space, but it's good to be aware of all of them if you want to, I don't know, specifically do a limited, like lower power level Esper Cube. This is one more three-color land in the Esper Panorama to explore there. And then Alara Block had one more cycle. These are not lands, but they are honorary mentions here. The border posts from Alara Reborn. So Alara Reborn is another weird set that had a gimmick where every card in Alara Reborn was a gold card, which means you can't put lands in the set. Every card has to be a gold spell, but the border posts largely function as lands, and so you have these five Allied color cards Field Mist Border Post, Fire Wild Border Post, Mist Vane Border Post, Vainfire Border Post, and Wild Field Border Post, where these are allied colors, three mana artifacts that cost one, and then both of their colors. They tap for one of those two colors, they enter tapped, and you can pay one and return a basic land you control to your hand rather than paying their casting cost. So field miss border post, one white blue. You can pay one and return a basic to your hand instead of paying that three, enters tapped, and then it taps for white or blue. So if you have a basic land to play, you can kind of just tap that land, return it to your hand, play that border post. So it's kind of like the border post is your land for the turn, and then they also have the option to cast them for three, and then they are just a three mana rock. Very modest, no matter how you slice it by today's standards, both a three-mana rock or kind of a tapped dual land with hoops to jump through. But they are artifacts, there's some cool stuff going on there. Uh specifically, if you are going after an Alara aesthetic, these make a lot of sense. They really speak to that vibe. These are a form of mana fixing that asks players to put basic lands in their deck, which I am a fan of. It helps keep things in that two, three-color space without things always getting carried away into four and five color soup piles. I'll be honest, it's been a long time since I've played with the border posts, but there's some cool stuff happening here. You know, returning a land to your hand that can have some texture with stuff like white cards that care about your opponent controlling more lands than you, your Knight of the White Orchid type effects there. So there are synergies to explore here, and the border posts are a pretty cool cycle. Next up are what we call Buddy Lands, the Allied cycle debuted in Magic 2010. The cycle was completed in Inistrad. These are lands that enter tapped unless you control one of the basic land types of the corresponding colors they could produce. So Dragon Skull Summit enters tapped unless you control a swamp or a mountain, and then it taps for black or red. So these lands notably always enter tapped on the first turn of the game, but then as soon as you control any typed land, be it a basic land, be it a dual land, they will enter untapped as long as they match the types and colors. So these can be a little bit messy if you're trying to get to four and five colors, but these are quite clean and strong for two and three color decks. And I think that Buddy Lands do a good job of scaling with how strong you want the mana of an environment to be. A difference I want to highlight is how it is to play with untyped Tri lands versus typed triomes alongside Buddy Lands. If your first land is crumbling necropolis, just a Grixis land with. No types, your Dragon Skull Summit, your Drowned Catacomb, your Sulfur Falls, these are all still going to enter tapped. Whereas if your first land is Xander's Lounge, which is an island, a swamp, and a mountain, then all your buddy lands are going to be entering untapped starting on the second turn. So having a typed duel land is a huge difference maker, and so the way that buddy lands play with untyped duels versus typed duels is quite dramatic regarding the kind of decks that they facilitate and enable and really incentivize. So it's really fitting that the name Buddy Lands has stuck. Initially, the idea is they needed a buddy, and often I know, at least for me, I would think of playing them alongside of a basic land, which is very commonly where these lands would show up in two-colored decks, but they would certainly branch into three-colored decks, but there is that difference. If I want to build a cube that kind of pushes players to keep things to two or three colors, I can have trilands and buddy lands, and then those are going to show up, largely gonna facilitate a lot of three-color decks there. It gives some options to branch into four colors, but then a lot of your lands start entering the battlefield tapped. Or if I want you to play a five-color deck and you're fine having a tap land on the first turn, but you're likely to have a lot of untapped, really good fixing later on, then triombs plus buddy lands play really strongly together. I think these are great designs. It's not surprising to me that initially they were reprinted into standard for multiple consecutive years, and then were also reintroduced during Ixilon. These are just really nice lands to play with, and absent the presence of another cycle that would really push players to play four or more colors. These really keep things to two and three colored decks, which is the space that I generally like to play in for most of my cubes. Next up we have Tapped Lands that gain one life when they enter. These first made an appearance in Zendikar, which is kind of funny because Zendakar is a limited environment, really known for blisteringly fast aggressive decks and games that often ended very quickly. At the time of Zendakar's printing, it was just five allied tapped lands that gain a life. At this point, there are now ten different tapped lands that gain a life when they enter. For the Zendikar cycle, you have Grey Pelt Refuge enters tapped, you gain one life when it enters, and it taps for green or white. At this point in time, there's actually multiple different lands with that exact same text box, and now there are enemy entries into these cycles as well. You can play multiples of these without breaking singleton. They are very modest. There are some synergies these open up, specifically in green and white. You can see some life gain matter stuff that can branch in some other colors too. I like experimenting with this stuff in lower-powered environments where maybe the games are ending quicker than I would like. Like I said, with Xendakar, a land that enters tapped and gains one life is not enough to push back on that all the way, but they will fix your mana, can open up some synergies, can pad your life totals, maybe make games last a little bit longer. Versions of these have been reprinted a billion times in recent years. These make a lot of sense for lower-powered cubes, and certainly for environments that are emulating the many retail limited environments that have featured these gain life lands. Next up are creature duels. The original Allied cycle of these appeared in World Wake. That set was rounded out in Oath of the Gatewatch, and now we have an entirely new cycle of creature duels, the Restless Duels that debuted in Lost Caverns of Ixilon and Wilds of Eldrain. These lands all enter tapped, they tap for one of two colors, and they have a varying mana requirement. It's always going to be both of those colors plus some additional mana, with one exception, one of them only costs two, but then for that activation, they become a creature of some type with some abilities until end of turn. And these vary wildly, both there's a range of how much mana you spend to activate them, and also just in terms of the efficiency of activating them, even at these different costs. So these are kind of weird to think about as a cycle because there's usually a small number of them you find very appealing. This is a cycle that it makes sense to me that will show up oftentimes where you have some of the entries and not others, and you go by what the color pairs want most. So let's look at Celestial Colonnade. The original blue-white entry, Celestial Colonnade enters tapped, taps for blue or white, and then for three blue-white until end of turn, Celestial Colonnade becomes a 4-4 white and blue elemental creature token with flying and vigilance, it's still a land. Blue-white decks are often control decks, which are fine having a tapped land, big 4-4 flyer with vigilance, which also means you can use it to cast a spell like Sledge your Colonnade attacks and leaves out mana for a counter spell or a white instant speed removal spell like a swords to plowshares, whatever, is a pretty common play pattern with this card. And then the different Lance in the cycle, in both cycles, some of them are more or less appealing than the others. This is actually a rare case where some of the older entries are more appealing than the newer entries, and then some of the newer entries, of course, are more appealing than the older entries. For the most part, you have 20 cards here that are all kind of nice. I haven't actually drafted a cube that has all 20 creature duels, but I think it's a cool idea. I think definitely for an eight-player cube that's very mid-range focused, having all 20 creature lands makes sense to me, and it also kind of makes sense to pick and choose. Some of them are weaker than others, some some colors want both, some colors want neither, and it kind of also depends what you're doing with your spells. But all 20 of these are kind of in bounds for just playing in a mid-range deck because they just give you a mana sync. They fix your lands, and then even if some of the creatures are more appealing than others, being able to get a spell out of your land column is pretty appealing and powerful and is going to come up and matter in some of your games. And that's just especially strong when it comes to creature duels because they also fix your mana. I have 10 creature duels and a couple different cubes. I have these, of course, in the original recipe tubert. I kinda just pick and chose which I thought were the most appealing for every color pair between the new and the old, so I didn't fully go in either direction. I like some of the new ones, I like some of the old ones. There's a couple color pairs, like with Gruel, I kinda think they're just very close between Raging Ravine and Restless Ridgeline. Neither of the black-white entries really speak to me. I like Shambling Vent more, but I also would be fine playing with the restless black-white land. The only kind of hot take that I have here is that Wandering Fumeral is pretty underrated as far as things go. It's the blue-red entry from the original cycle, I guess the continuation of the original cycle, that for two blue-red becomes a 1-4 until end of turn, and for zero you can switch its power and toughness so it can attack for four. It's pretty good at blocking, it's pretty good at attacking planeswalkers, or if your opponent doesn't have creatures, it cuts down your opponent's life total very quickly. And then I also think that Restless Spire is very weak by comparison. The Restless cards, they all do something a little bit extra when they attack, and Restless Spire is just a 2-1. It's the cheapest to activate. You activate it for blue red, but then it's a 2-1, and it only has first strike on attacking, so it's just a really bad blocker, and blocking is pretty significant for what a lot of the creature lands do. And for blue red, you will very often be playing something of a tempo or controlling deck, and an important aspect of tempo is your ability to switch between being the controller and the aggressor. To the extent that tempo kind of relies on dictating the pace of the game, you do also have to be mindful and follow the pace of the game to some extent. You won't always be in control of what is good, and so tempo decks, the best tempo decks, can play a controlling role, and wandering fumaral is more significant in that space than Restless Spire. Granular hot takes aside, creature duels are excellent, I like playing with 10 in multiple environments. I'd like to see a cube that plays 20. If I'm playing a mid-range environment, lands that are good for spells really just flesh things out and kind of help it so players don't run out of gas and always have compelling decisions to make on their turns. And that brings us to one of my all-time favorite cycles, Fast Lands, introduced to the scars of Mirriding with the Allied entries, later completed in Kaladesh with the enemies. Fast lands are lands that tap for one of two colors that enter the battlefield tapped unless you control two or fewer other lands. So as long as they're one of your first three lands, they will enter untapped. So black cleave cliffs enters the battlefield tapped unless you control two or fewer other lands and taps for black or red. These lands just really stand out as far as lands that facilitate two and three color much better than four and five color, and also really contribute to aggressive decks because they enter untapped on the early turns of the game when an aggressive deck really wants a land to enter untapped, and then they don't contribute as much to the really soupy four and five color decks, those decks are going to suffer the fact that these enter tapped more often as they try to play longer games, and as you play a higher volume of these, there are diminishing returns on them. If you're a three-color deck and you have all three of your corresponding fast lands, you know, your Grixis, you have Blackleaf Glyphs, Dark Slick Shores, and Spire Bluff Canal, if those are your first three lands, great, they all enter untapped, you're set up. You have at least two pips for all your colors, you are hummin. If you're playing a four or five color deck, you have four or five more fast lands in your deck, inevitably some of them start to enter the battlefield tapped. And they also only tap for one of two colors. So you do start to feel the cost of these as you start to oversaturate your deck on them. There's just so many more lands in magic that benefit controller decks or decks that are trying to play a bunch of colors that are really good at making a bunch of colors and helping games go along, that fast lands really stand out as lands that facilitate aggressive decks and decks that are trying to play a little bit lower to the ground. And I know that some players, some cube designers have an appetite for longer games. They're not going to like fast lands nearly as much as I do, and that's totally fine. For my sensibilities, I have these in four different cubes. This is the land cycle that I sometimes think about. What if I just got some more? What if I just had fast lands in like eight different cubes? I can abide these almost as much as I can abide shock lands in so many different environments. They're certainly less appealing than shock lands. You know, they only have those synergies being typed duels. I like the tension, the agency, and the pay to life mechanic with shock lands, where tap lands that just the state of the game dictates whether they're tapped or not. But they're certainly more budget-friendly. And also when I'm looking at a cube, I'm when I'm trying to add more mana fixing, like sometimes in the early development of a cube, I think I want one more cycle of lands. Like the mana is pretty good. I want it to be a little bit tighter. I'm usually looking at two and three color decks and thinking if this deck had one, maybe two more mana fixing lands, it would be a lot more consistent and it would just put it over to be a more enjoyable experience. Whereas many land cycles would contribute a ton to the four and five colored decks. You're kind of playing with fire, you want to add a little, you end up getting a lot. Fast lands, because they play best in two or three colored decks, they really hit a lot of notes that are really valuable to me in a lot of the designs of the space that I enjoy playing in. Now let's talk really quickly about guild gates. There's a couple of different things in this space here. These are lands that have their own special subtype. These are gates on the type line introduced initially and returned to Ravnica. These have been reprinted multiple times, and then Wheetail Limited tends to have some stuff that incorporates gates mattering as a card type that has branched into constructed a little bit in pretty limited capacity, but the original guild gates, there's just one for every two-color pair, the enter tapped, tapped for one of the two colors, just named after their guild. Really easy to follow. Azorius Guild Gate, enters tapped, it's a gate, taps for white or blue. I have one cube, I've started to mess with gates. There's some more gate payoffs that have been printed. There's a number of lands that cue off gates. Basil is a gate is kind of a big card in Popper. It's a land that taps for colorless, and you can pay two and tap it to give a creature plus X plus X until turn, where X is the number of gates you control. And I also think that Maze's End from Dragon's Mage, the original Gates Matter card, you win the game when you activated it if you get up to 10 or more gates. It's such a silly pipe dream. It's very aspirational. I'm messing around with making that work in my cube that has gates. Generally, these are fine if you're trying to go for specifically return to Ravnica Limited or the other retail limited environments that have revisited gates, you have those small gate payoffs. Most of the stuff is very modest. Generally, it is going to be just the lands, the gate cards that care about gates that are going to make these appealing. But if for whatever reason you are somebody who is nostalgic for Dragon's Maze, there's a bunch of kind of fiddly retail limited cards that give you kind of trivial value. A lot of four mana two-fours, it's a cycle of four mana two fours in every color to do something for gates. And there's also some kind of cool stuff to explore with gates matter. Intrinsically, on the cards themselves, being a gate, these are mostly just tap lamps, you can put them anywhere, people are going to recognize them. They've been printed so many times, and there's a little bit of space to explore there. So like I said, I'm working on one cube that has these. There's not a ton of depth to the things you can do with gates, but there are things to do with gates, and they're just kind of fine cards. I'm going a little along today. I wanted to get this down to two parts. So I think talking about one more land cycle will get us to a comfortable spot where I don't just go on for two hours. Let's talk about temples before we wrap things up today. Temples originally introduced in Theros Block, we got all 10 temples there. They've been reprinted a couple times. These are not typed lands, these are just lands and enter tapped, tap for one of two colors, and scry one where they enter. So temple of malady, they're all named Temple of Something. Temple of Malady enters tapped. When it enters you scry one, taps for black or green. So just this nice little extra something on those tapped lands. And scry one tends to be more valuable than gaining one life, unless you're going for explicit life gain synergies, or maybe your environment makes a small amount of life very valuable. I can certainly conceive of that. But the scry lands, they were a pretty big quality of life thing when they're printed into standard. We're still kind of on and off hot and cold with having decent mana fixing and constructed. They saw a ton of play the first time they were printed. They are quite antiquated now. Surveillance really blow these out of the water in a way where I think that I'm very sympathetic. I'm a very big fan of Surveil Lands. They're not the same thing to me as Triomes over TriLands. I think Surveil lands were a good design, just all around in a really nice upgrade. I'll talk about my thoughts on Triomes where we get there next time. But temples, they are something I'm nostalgic for. I do think fondly of playing temples in standard. Ultimately, I agree with Parnell's position that these could and should just be reprinted at a lower rarity so they can be played just outright in rarity restricted cubes without them being an exception, especially because there's so many rare cycles that are just more powerful, and these just keep showing up with a rare symbol and just kind of just doesn't make sense in context today. But lands that fix your mana give you a little agency with that scry one when they enter. These are appealing, these are fun to play with, it's just kind of nice to get a little bit of extra value, and these are something where you'll see over the course of playing with them just how meaningful even very small decisions are in a game of magic. I can't tell you how many times I've played a game with temples and I have scried something to the bottom at the end of the game, just thought, man, if I just never scribed, if I just kept that card on top and set myself to get a little bit lucky, I would have won that game. So it is kind of fun to kind of see that in practice, and that's something that you know in this in the course of playing those games and the tournaments where those games happened, I was kind of frustrated maybe with myself, but it is cool to see that now. You're now that I don't really care about competition nearly as much. I really like kind of digging into how these really small things can have a really big impact on a game. Temples are also dirt cheap, that's the advantage that they have over Surveillance, very accessible for budget cubes, and often people play them in what they call like a peasant plus cube, where you just have them in rarity restricted cubes anyway, even though they technically have a rare symbol on them. I don't personally cube with temples much these days, but they absolutely make sense to me in a lot of cube lists. And that's what I'm gonna call things for part one of my look at every mana fixing land cycle ever, should be able to get all the rest in part two. I did, I think, a little bit more than half of everything I have on my list here, and I'll be double checking to see if I miss anything that I can catch before going live with next week. Let me know if I missed anything chronologically so far. We want to talk about every mana fixing land cycle ever. But for now, thank you for listening. If you like what you heard, consider subscribing over on patreon.com forward slash 180MTG, or dropping a tip over on Kofi. That's KO FI.com forward slash 180MTG. I also greatly appreciate any comments, likes, shares, reviews. Everything you do to support the podcast is very meaningful, even just the act of listening. So thank you for any and all of that, and I will be back next week talking more cube. Later gamers.